The building Ba is in was built for a bakery in 1921. It was commissioned by a baker and the walls were built around the oven. The flue door was built into the outside wall to regulate air going into the oven. The bakery was such a success another room was built on to it.  That is the room Ba is in. So the old outside door to the oven is inside our space.

This building has been baking bread every day for ninety years. Mr Vargas, our landlord, is the second owner of the building. The first owner had turned this room into a cafe in the ’60’s. It had booths, and a jukebox, and a kitchen where ours will be. Lots of the older people in the neighborhood remember it fondly. In the 70’s Mr Vargas turned the space back into a bakery and had people working here around the clock. But in the ’90’s the big super market chains started doing their own baking in factories and that hurt the mom and pop places like this very badly. So this room was not used much till I asked to rent it. But it must be easier to just take a check from me then bake that much worth of bread.

We have to take this oven door out of the wall to build our kitchen and that makes me very sad. We will put it back someplace else though.