Coffee & Kayak Building? Ferndale's Minds Eye Manufactory

I am so excited. We're in Ferndale and I have found the most incredible coffee shop. It's the Mind's Eye and I'm here with Mark and Leah Daniels. And Mark, this is incredible. Everybody so far has said you've got to go to the Mind's Eye. Why is that? I'm Pat Patterson and I love California. Well, first, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, why would you come to Mind's Eye? Well, it's a good place to gather. It's a good place to be creative, have a good cup of coffee. We hear the best cup in Humboldt County, but you know, we love hearing that. Yeah. And Leah, tell me a little bit about how this all got started for the family. Oh boy. Well, we wanted to create a place where people can come and create and be inspired. Community is a big deal. And be safe. Oh, great. Okay. Now, what do you mean by that? Tell me that. Be who you are. I love that. But be good. So authentic and good and safe. I love that. So, and part of the thing I've noticed about Ferndale is everybody pretty much knows everybody. Right. It is a small town and a lot of the families have been here for generations. And yeah, you know, everybody's watching out for each other, taking care of each other. That's so great. It's wonderful. So everybody knows everybody, but I didn't realize everybody's related to everybody. So we are doing an interview with Lowell Daniels over at the Victorian Inn. And I say, you know, I'm going to go interview this incredible guy over at the Mind's Eye coffee shop. And he says, oh, that's my son. So you're Lowell's son. That's right. And you asked about, oh, whose art is this on the show? That's so incredible. So Ferndale is a family enterprise. And so Mark, you know, one of the incredible things that I found out about your place is not only is this a coffee shop, but Leah, what else gets done here? I see something out in the back up on the wall there. What is that? Where? Up there. What is that? He's looking at the kayaks. Oh, the kayak. Why is there a kayak there? Well, because coffees and kayaks. Why not? So here's the secret. In the back of this place is what, Mark? Well, when you walk into the coffee lounge, this place here, there's a wall of windows at the back and you're looking into my workshop. And there's boats everywhere. OK, we go check that out. Let's all walk into the workshop. So, Mark, this workshop of yours in the back of your Mind's Eye coffee shop, tell me what's going on here. Well, we teach classes back here, and the idea with Mind's Eye in the beginning, it was kind of a brainstorm that came to me years ago, walking a beach in Alaska, is that I wanted to get a variety of artists and artisans together under one roof because we could be greater creatively than the sum of our parts. And so that was the that was what brought this whole idea to me. And then, you know, my thing is the boat building, and I'm surrounded by other ceramic artists, metals artists. And we can all you know, we can create more more beautiful things, better things together than we can. It takes a village. It does. It takes a village. And so we created that and we sort of cross pollinate. You know, that's sort of the idea and a lot of ideas. It's more than just making things, though. You know, we get together, we share ideas and check in on each other to make sure everybody's well, you know, that sort of thing. And for a long time, we didn't have the coffee lounge. Oh, interesting. And we sort of have this belief that you create the world you want to live in. I wanted a coffee house. I wanted just the right kind of coffee house. So we made it up front. That's incredible. And so a little bit about the craft, because what you're reproducing, tell me the Alaska connection. This is based in California, but we're going to talk about Alaska. Well, it started in California. OK. Yeah, I was doing some hang gliding and kayaking back in my youth, in my 20s. And in a small museum there, I found an Alaskan sea kayak from King Island, Alaska. And I just instantly I needed to battle it. It had to be a past life thing. It's something like that. I've tried to understand. I don't know. But it was it was an instant longing to feel that in the water. So, Mark Daniels, thank you so much for keeping this incredible craft alive. And all the work you're doing, we're going to show your charity on the screen. What can people do to help support it? Well, let's see. Donate, I'm sure. Donate would work. It is a nonprofit. We are a dream maker project of the Inc. People's Center for the Arts. Great organization. Right up in Eureka. And we do have a link on our I think it's our Facebook page. Right. Make access. Apprenticeships. Wonderful. And they can look it up that way and come visit us. Come to Ferndale. Come to the Mind's Eye coffee shop. Come check out the kayaks with Leah and Mark and Mark Daniels. Thank you so much. I'm Pat Patterson and I love California.