MARCUS THE LOCKSMITH WHO WILL NOT OPEN YOUR APARTMENT WITHOUT ID

On Geary Boulevard since 2008. The cheapest locksmith in the city and the slowest. Both of those things are choices.

The call comes in at 11:43 p.m. on a Saturday. A woman, locked out, sober but tired, says her name and the address. Marcus Chen asks her to wait fifteen minutes while he gets to her. He asks for her phone number. He calls back from the car to confirm. He arrives at 12:01 a.m. He asks for her ID. He matches the name to the address she gave. He matches the address to the mail in her hand. Then he opens the door.

This is the protocol. It has been the protocol since 2008, when Marcus opened the shop on Geary between 22nd and 23rd. He does not skip the ID check. He does not skip the callback. He has lost customers over both. He has also never opened a door for someone who should not have been on the other side.

The shop is sixteen by twenty-eight feet. Marcus is the only person who works there. Behind him on the wall, forty-seven small wooden drawers, hand-labeled in his handwriting, hold the key blanks. The labels are in three languages because that is what the neighborhood speaks. He cuts on a 1972 Curtis Industrial machine that he bought used in 2008 from a retiring locksmith in Daly City. He has had two service calls on it. Both were preventive.

Marcus is the cheapest locksmith on Geary by about thirty percent. He is also the slowest. The cheap part is a choice. The slow part is a choice. The two choices are connected. He charges what he can charge while still feeling honest about it. He arrives in the time it actually takes to be careful. He does not advertise either price.

The advertising he does not run is the more interesting choice. There are locksmith Yelp listings on Geary that are entirely fake. The fake ones pay for placement. They use bait pricing in their listings. When you call, they quote $19. When they arrive, they charge $350. They bully cash from you in a moment of panic, then disappear. Marcus has been called to repair their damage seven times in 2025 alone, after the bait-and-switch locksmith left a door scarred and the renter still locked out. He fixes the damage at the same price he would charge for a regular call. He does not charge extra for the cleanup.

He keeps a list of the fake listings in a notebook by the register. When a customer mentions one, he shows them the notebook. He tells them how to spot the scam. He gives them his card. He tells them to call him next time. About one in three of those customers does.

He learned locks from his uncle, who ran a shop in Oakland from 1974 until 2004. His uncle made him do six months of cutting before he taught him pin tumblers. The first six months were just metal, just precision, just the feel of the machine. Marcus has been doing this for twenty-three years. He still cuts every key by hand. He does not own a digital code-cutter. The code-cutter would be faster. It would also be wrong.

His phone rings during our interview. He answers. A woman locked out of her car in the Sunset. He asks her to wait fifteen minutes, asks for her phone number, says he will call back from the road. He hangs up. He looks at me. “Excuse me. I need to be careful with her.”

He gets up, gets his bag, locks the shop behind him. He will be back in forty-five minutes if the call is what she says it is. If it is not, he will be back sooner.

“I lose customers who want a fast unlock with no questions. That is fine. The customers I keep are the ones who notice I am being careful with them.”

MARCUS CHEN, OWNER