We're based on the hill. You're ten minutes away.

Down at the base, where Signal Hill runs into Long Beach, the housing is small pre-war and wartime stock — bungalows and duplexes from the twenties through the forties. Those bathrooms almost always have a porcelain-over-steel tub built into a tiled alcove, and the tile is usually original. When the enamel chips, the steel underneath starts rusting outward from the chip, which is why the stain keeps growing no matter how hard it gets scrubbed.

Up on the hill it's a different city. Most of what was built after the oil fields were cleared is from the nineties onwards — townhomes and hillside houses with acrylic or fiberglass tub-and-shower units. Those don't chip. They go dull and chalky, and they crack in spidery lines around the drain where the floor flexes.

Same service, different preparation. It's worth saying which one you've got when you call, because it changes the quote.