About

A town where one door often belongs to four.

One van, out to any door at any hour: a street door that four households share and one of them has lost the key to, a flat door upstairs that will not latch, a row of mail doors with a lock drilled out years ago, a shop door on Park Street that stopped throwing its bolt. Cylinder stock, a key machine and the pinning kit ride with it, so a whole key plan can be cut and handed over the same afternoon. This is how a call runs.

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Fernside Lock Shop covers Alameda and Bay Farm Island from a van rather than a storefront, because a lock is bolted to a door and does not come to a counter. The name belongs to the streets along the east shore by the Fruitvale bridge, and the working base sits near Park Street. Eight neighborhoods make up the island and the van reaches them in 12 to 27 minutes: Park Street District about 12, Gold Coast 14, Fernside 16, Central Alameda 18, South Shore 20, West End 22, Alameda Point 25 and Bay Farm Island 27 across its own bridge. Eighteen minutes is the usual arrival. Oakland, Emeryville, Piedmont, Berkeley, San Leandro and San Lorenzo are worked at identical figures, at 16, 21, 23, 25, 26 and 29 minutes. Somebody answers the phone at four in the morning, on a Sunday, and on Thanksgiving.

The idea this business runs on fits in one line: here your own door is rarely the first door. Alameda is a wooden town of Victorian and Edwardian houses with deep porches and bay windows, and a significant share of them were divided into flats long before anyone now living in them arrived. From the sidewalk that is invisible. One porch, one leaf, one handleset, and behind it a stair with two or three separate homes off it. So a single cylinder on that street door is carried by every household in the building at once, a rekey there reaches all of them, and the question of who is entitled to order the work has to be answered before a van moves rather than while a technician stands on the porch. Your own flat door is yours and takes nobody else's permission. The street door, the row of mail locks beside it and the gate into the side yard belong to the building, which means the owner or the management company. We do not have views about that arrangement and we do not give advice on it. We just ask, early, so that nobody drives out to a job that cannot start. The second thing worth knowing about this town is that everything arrives over water. Two tubes under the estuary and three lift bridges, and a bridge goes up when a boat needs through, which is a working port doing its ordinary day. It is the reason arrival times here are quoted from where the vehicle actually stands and which crossing it faces, rather than from an average.

One price list covers the whole island and the $89 visit is a component of every number on it. Getting back into a home is $132 to $242, into a car $108 to $202, into a shop, an office or a storage bay $141 to $258. After a forced door, rebuilding the jamb, the keeper and the cylinder is $169 to $445. Rekeying is $30 to $47 a cylinder, with the ones after the first at the bottom of that range because the trip is already paid for. Hardware is $127 to $332, a keypad or app lock $192 to $479, a safe opened $198 to $529. On the commercial side, exit devices run $302 to $769 a door and shopfront hardware $162 to $472, while master key systems and access control carry no published range, since both get counted opening by opening on site and quoted afterward. For vehicles: a key $154 to $415, a fob $92 to $199, an ignition $182 to $455, motorcycle keys $125 to $285. The clock adds $50 from 8pm and $88 from midnight, folded in while you are still deciding. Ninety days on the labor, in writing. Two things stay off the list deliberately: springs, cables, panels and opener motors on garage doors are another trade, and you hear that on the call instead of after a van has crossed the estuary.

Whose Door It Is Comes First

Four things that hold the same way on a divided Victorian in Central Alameda, a thirties house on the Fernside bend, a glass shopfront on Park Street and a warehouse man-door out at Alameda Point. Ninety days on the labor, written on the receipt as its own line.

Who may order the work gets settled on the call, not on the porchYour own flat door is yours to arrange and nobody else is phoned about it. The leaf onto the sidewalk, the row of mail locks beside it and the gate into the side yard are the building's, so the owner or the management company is the one who says yes to work there. That question is asked in the first minute, while the address is being written down, because a technician who arrives at a shared door with nobody entitled to approve the job has driven out for nothing. No opinions about landlords or residents come with it. Just the one question, asked early enough to be useful.

One number, with the late hour already sitting inside itWhat you hear on the phone takes in the visit, the labor and anything that ends up screwed to the door, and the $89 call-out is a component of that figure rather than an extra waiting at the end. An arrival between 8pm and midnight carries $50, and between midnight and 7am $88, both said while you are still deciding. A cylinder older than the listing claimed, a strike anchored in casing, a mail cam that turns out to be seized: none of them reopen the arithmetic.

A shared cylinder is a key plan, not a purchaseOne lock on the street door means one decision that reaches every household on the stair. So the useful conversation is about which keys exist and who should hold them: the street door on a blade every resident carries, each flat on a blade only that household carries, one key held by the owner or the manager that covers what they actually need to reach, and the mail row kept separate from all of it. Cylinders with life left in them are repinned rather than sold against, at $30 to $47 apiece, and every old key comes back in a labeled bag so it can be counted against the list.

The minutes are counted through the crossing the van actually takesNothing reaches this island except across it. Two tubes under the estuary and three lift bridges, and the bridges go up on the schedule of the boats passing under them, which is the ordinary working day of a port town rather than a fault. What it means for you is simple: the arrival time you are given depends on where the van stands and which crossing it has in front of it, so the number quoted is drawn from that rather than from an average printed on a card. Eighteen minutes is the usual, twenty-seven out on Bay Farm, and when yours is one of the long ones you hear the long one first.

Shared — one leaf, one cylinder, every household on the stair carrying a key to it: The door onto the sidewalk
One flight up or straight back along the hall, and yours alone to decide about: Your own door behind the stair
Four small locks in one frame beside the porch, and the side gate the neighbors also walk through: The mail row and the gate to the yard

Where we work

Alameda, the island and Bay Farm, any hour

Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.

Park Street District Gold Coast Fernside Central Alameda South Shore West End Alameda Point Bay Farm Island Oakland San Leandro Emeryville Piedmont Berkeley San Lorenzo

(510) 439-0869

Open 24 hours, 7 days

Say whether it is the street door or your own, and the rest of the call is short

Alameda and Bay Farm, at any hour. Which leaf it is decides who approves the work, the door itself decides the work, and the work decides the number, which is settled on the phone with the $89 visit and any late hour already inside it. It reads the same on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.

(510) 439-0869 Book online