Meet Linko and Braque

You never know where you are going to find a story in the big city, I guess everyone has one, but this week I ran into a very interesting one. I met them here, on the street, in front of the lot. The black-top hole in the street is their domain. However, before I get to Linko and Braque I should point out the extension of the courtyard/garage wall that was framed and poured this week.



The completed wall is shown here along with the cement blocks that will be used to raise it even higher.

An unscheduled pour. It appears that the neighbor's wall does not have a footing deep enough so we will have to reinforce it on our side.


One of the 16 foot long windows went in this week. There is a view there to Catalina on a clear day. The landscaping is designed to screen out the house to the right and frame the view with trees.
This pop-out design element went in this week. The original design only had one window on this side of the room and the pop-out was to the left. This was done after construction started.


The guy in the hole looking for the sewer pipe is Linko. The tall frail guy is Braque who hands Linko tools and watches the street making sure cars don't fall in. They have strong Eastern European accents we can't tell from where. They've been in the business of digging for sewer lines for decades and smoke constantly. Mateo says Linko smokes cigars all day to block the stench of the sewer. It's a slow, tedious process, Linko is careful not to hit any other pipes in the street.


The pipe was found about 10 feet deep. It took Linko all week to find, over 40 hours, with Braque faithfully standing over.

This just went in today.