CHRISTMAS DRUG WITHDRAWAL Among the worst memories of the company's early days was Christmas 2002, spent in paradise, A.K.A. The Bracebridge Dinner at The Ahwahnee Hotel, in Yosemite National Park. Julie's father had won the literal lottery and our family attended during the third week of December. Our cars were among the last to make it into the valley; we awoke to a stunning 18" of fluffy and too-perfect powder. I took the picture above and many more equally unbelievable.
Beautiful, yes. But I was presently having the most terrible nightmares.
"Maybe this is why the doctor told me to not stop the pills," the anti-anxiety, anti-depressant, and apparently, anti-everything drug Paxil. I was staring at the ceiling of our just-OK hotel room in The Ahwahnee. I had had, yet again, another wowzer of a nightmare that night. Another term I'd come to understand, night terror, was more apt.
The downward trajectory of Casa Integration was, of course, also my own. So I sought the services of a psychiatrist, explained the freak-outs of starting a business, and onto Paxil I went.
While I may be first in line for most adult intoxicants, I immediately despised the fake way this drug made me feel. I think I took it for about 6 weeks; I quit it cold turkey, not long before we headed to Yosemite.
Bad idea.
These fucking things were wild because of their duration - in addition to their chemically-modified electric vividness. My mind was in a state of imbalance, and that was coming through loudest and clearest at night, during the worst nightmares I had ever had before.
Or since. I got over it, and we trudged through the snow back to San Francisco and into 2003. BLOOD, NOT JUST TEAR, STAINS Finished with my short personal experiment with SSRI drugs, and the withdrawal nightmares, I tried to stay strong. On New Year's Day 2003, Julie signed off on another year of Casa Integration, so I had to. After all, we told ourselves, it had only been one year, and we knew that wasn't enough time, one way or another.
But the optimism inherent to starting a business was fading, and fast. 2003 will always be a low point, for any number of reasons. For one, I'm still driving the utilitarian Honda Civic sedan and now actively wondering what the hell I am doing.
And also locking its keys in the trunk on one particularly bad day.
As late as 2003, I still had no real relationship with any wholesalers that could supply me with quality consumer A/V products, at least not from brands people had heard of. I couldn't because I still had no business license - let alone a reseller's permit.
I said to myself: I'm bootstrapping.
So the already-classic Paradigm Atom speakers I was installing at Randy Clough's old house - the one on Filbert - had been sourced just over the crest of Pacific Heights at the A/V shop to the rich, Performance Audio on California Street. It could have been the set for a movie it was so textbook, including the people working there. I explained to a sales guy, the balding Cory, what I was doing, and he gave me 15 points off.
He and they had seen my type come and go before: A/V hobbyists trying and failing to make a business out of it.
Those speakers, where they came from, and what comes next are indicative of this entire two year period. Not knowing where to professionally get products or how to easily install them was a hallmark of the time.
The speakers were to be mounted in Randy's kitchen nook, where he had had speaker wire run previously - it was sticking right out of the wall, about 8 feet above the floor. Easy, I thought - I'll just attach the speaker mounts to a wall stud (which I understood now) and that would be that.
It turns out I'd have to spill a bit of blood first. And sweat. And tears, as usual, it seemed.
Because there was no stud anywhere near the speaker wire, yet I understood so little, I didn't know what to do.
As I would learn in the not-far-off future, when you can't attach to something solid - like a stud - behind a wall, there are many options for attaching a smaller, lighter speaker.
If only I had known about them then.
I moped to a local hardware, pled my case, and returned, with some half-assed sheetrock anchors.
I persevered, and by some kind of divine intervention, I got the speakers mounted.
I had now sweated approximately one gallon's worth, mostly on their kitchen nook table, but worse was the two knuckles I had taken off of my fingers during the installation. I didn't care about my fingers, but how to remove the blood drops and smudges now on their white wall?
I ran out to the car to get some rags from the trunk.
I returned, sweat about another gallon, and using soap from their kitchen sink, I made the whole thing look like it never happened. The speakers were installed and they sounded good.
But I thought I was going to die from the panic of the installation that day.
Thankfully, now I could drive home, take a hot shower, and collapse. And then try to assess what I had learned and how to improve.
Except, as you've likely guessed, I had locked the keys in the trunk when I went to get the rags.
Luckily, then, as now, Randy lived not too far from my own home, where there was another set of keys. Down and back up the hill I walked. And down I drove back home.
I think I drank a bottle of wine mostly by myself that night.
PORTICO AND JULIE GO TO CHICAGO But there remained a difference about me, one that I didn't understand at the time.
Plus, I had Julie.
By the summer of 2004, I was about the fattest I had been in my entire life of 41 years, but my girth was among the least of my worries.
Paramount instead was the state of Casa Integration. Between the panic attacks and nightmares, I had begun to successfully complete some projects - just not enough.
I had felt - rightly as it would turn out - that the ever-increasing complexity of home technology warranted a more formal and structured approach. Mind you, these were the earliest days of things like WiFi and home theater, and smartphones and high-def flat screens and Sonos were still years off.
But it was not happening. To call me naïve would be a major complement; I had skipped the research part of starting a business and not done my homework.
Because in fact, there were already well-established companies focused on supplying and installing home technology professionally, thank you very much. And while this improved slowly over time, I remained mostly ignorant of the contractor-level skills and specialty tools required.
This all led to a drastic reduction not only in my self-esteem, but income. In my last year at Schwab in 2001, my salary had been $120,000, plus lucrative bonuses, and that was after the glory years of Asia and London.
But In 2003, I made $17,000, up from $12,000 in 2002. There had been some progress with Casa Integration, but not much, and nowhere near enough.
So it was, nearly 3 years in with my own business, that my wife Julie and I sat in a steakhouse in the River North district of Chicago, in June of 2004. My former employer Charles Schwab was on our minds that night, because I had a chance to go back.
I had stayed in touch with Schwab Senior VP Douglas Merrill, who would go on to even bigger and better things with Google. But at the time, he headed cyber security for Schwab, and he had offered to bring me back in as a Director in his organization. He knew I had ruffled some sensitive feathers while there previously, but he liked that and me. The offer to go back to corporate and the fat, direct-deposit paychecks that come with it were right there for the taking.
But I didn't take it. When I started Casa Integration, Julie and I agreed that at the beginning of each year, we'd sit down, look at what's happening, and decide if we'd give it another year.
In January of 2004, there were just enough bright signs that we agreed I would soldier on until the end of the year.
At the restaurant, my wife reminded me of this. It is part of why I didn't take the easy way out. In fact, as I look back now, if I had known that night how hard it would continue to be, I just might have taken the cushy office job.
But it wasn't just the agreement (or ignorance or a very supportive wife): I wanted it badly. I felt it.
While I had participated in start-ups as a co-founder before, I had never done it myself, as the leader with a vision. That night, at a pretty good steak place in a steak town, something inside told me it would be now or never and that I couldn't quit and go the easy route.
Great one. I feel like I have been missing out by almost never going that far west and south! Thanks!
Having lived it: She's not wrong.
Hunter Deuce? He really should start his own blog. Although at least wait until the roadwork is finished, and/or Gold Mirror reopens.
You hit Underdog's Too and Whitecap but passed by Tunnel Records? Great vinyl shop sandwiched in between the two. I have trouble NOT buying an album or two when I'm there, particularly after a couple of pops at the aforementioned.
A lot of people head straight out there but there are some great spots along the way up and down Taraval: Guerra Meats, Gold Mirror (temporarily closed), Shannon Arms, Grandma's Saloon, Karl's, Lost & Found, Marco Polo Ice Cream (soon to be another Golden Boy Pizza!), Four Deuces, and a bunch dumpling and dim sum places.
It's a bit of a shitshow right now with the SFMTA work on the L Taraval, but when it's finished I think it's primed for a pub crawl beginning at Riptide and ending at the Philosopher's Club.
Thank you for reading this newsletter.
KLUF
If Maybe It Was Destiny is ever brought to the big screen, I may ask Dave Grohl to do the soundtrack. Until that comes to pass, we have this, a Killer album from this period that still sends shivers down my spine.
