The (mt) Headquarters Mystery

Our story begins on a sunny Thursday afternoon while I was looking around Media Temple's website — intereted in their new hosting plans. Everybody and their dog either hosts with Dreamhost or (mt), so I thought:

Besides, I was starting to feel bad leeching off my friend who had faithfully be paying for our little venture's hosting. I had some time on my hands that day, so I started to dig around the site. Eventually, I came upon their contact page and found this:

(Yes, there's a data center address too, but I wasn't going to go all the way to Downtown LA just to see a bunch of servers.)

"Wow," I thought. "That's right near Jen's place." You see, one of my favorite places to hang out with my sweetheart is the Santa Monica Pier and the Third Street Promenade, so I looked it up on Google Maps I know what you're thinking, "Okay buddy, what's the big deal, so they have an address. Big deal."

Being the type of person that I am, wanting to believe that companies on the internet also exist in real life, I was pretty excited to actually see where Media Temple was located. Maybe walk into the office and say, "You! I want hosting," or something obnoxious like that. Maybe I wanted to see the famous (mt) logo on an actual window. So the story continues to Friday, when my sweetheart and I spent the night strolling the pier and the promenade. We drive to the corner of Broadway and 4th, and I ask her to look around for anything that says "Media Temple", she finds nothing. I thought to myself, "Well that's weird, I guess I'll come check it out later."

So after shopping a bit, and spending some time at the Apple Store, we grabbed some frappuccinos and headed back to the car after a fun night. Then I remembered to check the same building since we were coming from the other direction. We found ourselves kitty-corner from the place, and all I saw were shops. I was sure that the address was correct. Wanting to take a closer look, we ran across the street and then Jen pointed to a shop that had the number 410, but it wasn't Media Temple:

"A fashion store? This can't be right," I thought. But there it was, 410 Broadway, but there was no "B" no second floor, no nothing. Jen and I just sort of hung around there, looked to one side of the building, and then the address of the side of the of the building that did have a second floor, which was on 4th Street. So we went back to the fashion store and looked again and found 3 mailboxes, 410, 410B and 410C. Just as quick as a Japanese man would say "Nani?" I thought, "This is nuts!"

But there it was, 410B. Couldn't deny it. "So people get their hosting from a mailbox," I said, not trying to be serious or anything — the whole matter was pretty funny as it stood, "At least they could have gotten their mailbox from a UPS Store or something." Laughing it off, we headed back to the car and so the story ends there. The moral? There is none. This was just a funny exercise in trying to find out the whereabouts of one of the internet's top hosting companies. Hope you enjoyed it.¹