TWiT Brick House
The TWiT Brick House (aka "Brick TWiT House" or "TWiT Studios") was the home of the TWiT Network until August 21, 2016. It succeeded the previous TWiT Cottage and was located just about two blocks away from said cottage. The first show to be broadcast from the Brick House was TWiT #311 on July 24, 2011. A few weeks later, King Leo hosted the official grand opening party for the Brickhouse, which Brian Brushwood attended despite a very busy college show schedule.
TWiT was not the only occupant of the Brick House; it was shared with Alex Lindsay and Pixel Corps until late 2015. The Pixel Corps studio had a green screen wall that it made available to TWiT as needed, and Brian has been a participant in some green screen shoots when visiting the Brick House.
Much like with the Cottage, Brian would drop by the Brick House and appear on the Sunday TWiT show when he is in the San Francisco area to shoot episodes of Scam School prior to Scam School production moving to Austin at the end of 2012. With the launch of Game On, Brian was flown in every week at TWiT's expense to participate from the Brick House. This was clearly part of Leo's grand plot to convince Brian to move to the Petaluma area.
In 2015, the owner of the building that houses the Brick House and the failed Social Club restaurant next door sold the building to restauranteurs from San Diego who plan to open a brew pub. As a result, TWiT had to move to a new location elsewhere in Petaluma. TWiT's final regular broadcast from the Brick House was August 21, 2016 with the first broadcast from the new studio during This Week in Tech that same day.
Eventually, the overly ambitious entrepreneurs planning the new brew pub backed out. The landlord begged TWiT to move back. (HA HA! Yeah, right.) Another restaurant opened in the space formerly occupied by The Social Club next door to TWiT, but it closed so fast that you may have missed it if you blinked. The former TWiT space is now occupied by a co-working space that renovated the space and made it fairly unrecognizable from its TWiT days.
Features
- 9400 square feet (ground level) / 6000 square feet (basement)
- Five sets:
- Leo's Office (The Tech Guy, Security Now, Windows Weekly)
- News Room (Tech News Today, Tech News 2Night and Breaking News)
- Roundtable (many shows including TWiT, MacBreak Weekly, TWiET, FourCast, NSFW)
- Living Room (Triangulation, The Social Hour, Before You Buy, Frame Rate, iPad Today, TWiT Photo)
- Radio Corner (Know How..., The New Screen Savers, The Giz Wiz, Coding 101)
- Sky Desk (iOS Today, NSFW, This Week in YouTube)
- The Control Desk (which houses the Tricaster and can rotate to face the active set)
- The Brick Wall of Honor in the entrance lobby (JammerB and several Diamond Club members bought bricks with catch phrases and other quotables from NSFW during the fundraiser campaign)
Fun Facts
- Justin Robert Young technically made the first broadcast from the Brick House during a guest appearance on Tech News Today a couple weeks prior to the move. (JammerB let him in.)
- Leo purchased a number of Gopher balls in various sizes and beanbags for staff and visitors alike to sit on.
- NSFW was the first show to have used almost all of the sets (except Leo's office) in a single episode (#96) TWiT's New Year's Eve specials used all the sets as well.
- Throughout the entire history of the Brick House, Night Attack is the only show that used cameras on every TWiT set including Leo's office. This was done on the episode "Don Juan de la Trash" when Jason Howell was a guest.