Back in February we ordered a new VW R32. I just found out from Brendan at Boardwalk VW in Redwood City, CA that 1) the car was “born” on Dan’s 40th birthday (6/15/07), and 2) that it will be at the port on 7/6/07. Brendan’s not our dealer, but he’s been really generous with all the people on VW Vortex who’ve pre-ordered their R32s - letting them know the status of their cars. He even found out the VIN number for us… WVWKC71KX8W021052…

But other people are saying that VW will be holding the cars at port and not releasing them until August since they want to do a proper ‘launch’ for the car and not have the cars trickle out one at a time… While I’m not happy the car will be sitting in the hot sun for the better part of a month, at least we should get it early in August… Hopefully we’ll be able to take it to Canada when we go up to renew Dan’s visa in mid-August…

Slicksurface is growing to the point where we’re needing to find office space. It’s a really frustrating experience. The factors, are 1) space, 2) location, and 3) price. No matter what we look at we’re giving up something…

But the really frustrating part is that none of the real estate agents bother to measure the spaces they advertise. It’s common to only have 60-70% of the space that’s advertised. I’ve seen two spaces that were advertised at 1,000 square feet. When I pulled out my laser/sonic measuring device the first place (in East Harlem) was 999 square feet, the second was about 600 square feet (weird shape - still not quite sure how big it was exactly).

So now I ask the agents what the actual, usable space is, but I’m finding no one can tell me the real dimensions… They have a listing and haven’t even bothered to measure it - so it’s impossible to compare advertisements. You have to show up and measure it yourself, which is a complete waste of our time and the agents’ time.

So now we have to figure out whether we want a small space with no view in midtown west, or a larger space in a place like Gowanus (Brooklyn) or East Harlem where the space and view will be nicer/larger, but the location isn’t as good…