While driving to work Friday morning with visions of bbq food and plenty of booze in my head, everything appeared to be smooth sailing. Driving home from work on Friday was an entirely different experience to say the least. Backing out of my parking space at work I noticed that I was having to give a considerable amount of pressure to get the car to even slow, let alone stop. "Great", I say to myself, "I've got 30 miles on the freeway to get home". Luckily for me, I live right around the corner from House of Brakes (seriously). Unluckily for me, they were closed Friday-Monday to celebrate like any reasonable person would be. Being that my plan now had a decent sized wrench in it, I was relegated to Yelp! in hopes of finding a place close by that might be able to take a look at my car and see what the hell was going on. Turned out there was a place closer to Downtown at 6th and Folsom. What I found was golden. Literally:
Turns out I had a cracked/broken 'vacuum hose' that was necessary for my 'brake booster' to work. Or as I was told by the old Asian mechanic with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth that was half ash, "you real lucky". Lucky because, had that hose completely fallen off, the odds of me being able to come to a stop on the freeway were slim to none.
Aside from the fact that these guys were open until 5pm on a FRIDAY...before a 3 day weekend...they were extremely prompt and professional. Within a minute of pulling in, they had the hood up and within 5 minutes had diagnosed the issue. Within ten minutes the tube had been replaced, and they even gave it a complete once over to make sure there was nothing else that could cause any issues.
Seriously, these guys were on top of their game and were eager to help a brotha out.
The craziest thing happened at the end though. From the onset of the brake trouble, I was fully expecting to shell out a couple hundred bucks minimum. One I realized it was just a tube that needed replacing, I figured I'd still be in the hole about $65-75. When I asked what I owed, the guy at the desk told me "don't worry about it." That's right. NO CHARGE. Name one mechanic that you have never met that just flat out did you a favor...just plain good ol' karma. Kinda sad knowing that my life was literally worth "zero dollars", but in the best way possible, I suppose.
Needless to say, I was super stoked that my weekend would not be ruined by the overarching thoughts of brake trouble/failure/maintenance. As a token of my sincere appreciation for the timeliness and quality of their work, I gave each of the guys who were working on the car a 10 spot and told 'em to have a drink on me for the 4th.
If you ever find yourself needing any brake work done and are in or around the City, I HIGHLY recommend checking these guys out. They are also a 5 star rated business on Yelp! by the way: http://www.yelp.com/biz/golden-auto-muffler-and-brake-center-san-francisco
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