About yours truly (and caveifying)

Maybe you are wondering about whether this blogger has his own ManCave?, maybe you aren’t and it’s not for me to say. Well the simple answer is no I don’t and that is a great sadness in my life. But you deal the cards you have been dealt..or something like that. When you are in a similar situation like me, you don’t just lie down and wait to rot without first chilling out and enjoying whatever it is that rocks yr boat. You must learn to adapt and caveify your surroundings when the moment is right. Here in Finland, especially in any of the town centres, a lot of us men don’t have the luxury of having a permanent space to make our own so we are resorted to caveifying our surroundings when time permits. (On a side note there was a potentially exciting developement in my abode when my kids were discussing how fun it would be to move into the same room which would have freed up one of the rooms. BANG, my head started to go into ManCave mode but the combined kids room talk eventually fizzled out and with that went my temporary dreams.)

This apartment style living with limited space has been a regular fixture of my life (and many other men) but I consider myself fortunate to have access to a couple of top notch places when they are aren’t occupied by others.

So apart from the classic armchair right in front of the TV to emulate the cinema experience that I am reduced to (and when everyone else has gone to bed), there is a communal room with a sauna on the top of our apartment building that is generally free at night. This means that i take my chosen form of entertainment up there, be it one of my guitars and/or my laptop for dicking around with music or simply to watch a movie.

Pro’s

The view isn’t too shabby though for me, ManCaves should be in relatively dark lighting and away from wide open spaces. Imagine a dog being put in the middle of a wide open space, it would think all its Christmases have come all at once. Now put a cat in the same space and that little bastard with clam up. Same difference

The space is mostly free when I want

There is a sauna

Great acoustics for guitar playing (sweet roomy echo)

Kitchen facilities for cooking up some munchies

Cons

Possibility of surprise when entering that the room is already taken on account of certain individuals in this building not honoring the intranet booking system

It’s not my space

It’s not my space

Another place that I use when possible in the summery months is a little summer cottage in a quaint little allotment of similar cottages not far from here. They are really glorified cubby houses but you can sleep there and there are amenities as well when you need to do your business. My mother in law occupies the place for the whole time that its bearable to be (its not made for the bullshit winters in this country) so she normally has to be asked nicely to vacate the premises and go back to her city abode for the evening. Sweet old lady that she is, she sometimes forgets the arrangement and stays put, wanting to talk about whats on the radio. I gently start off with some slightly intense expressions on my face to indicate the need for her to leave and these will gradually increase in intensity until she realises. Then the place is mine.

An aerial view, duh!

A very similar example

Once I have fortified the cottage for my means, it’s actually very pleasant and even though the old neighbours are all very closeby, this is Finland so they are either pissed off and or reserved. In any case, they leave you alone

Mad Max Fury Road review

I know that this is a mancave blog site but the link below is for what might possibly be my first and last movie review and we are talking Mad Max here! If I was gonna have a Mancave all to my own (more on that later..) then it would simply have to have some kind of reference to the glorious interceptor which made a welcome return to Fury Road. And this is my blog so I decided to share this because because.

http://finlandtoday.fi/this-is-why-mad-max-fury-road-receives-five-stars/

A god among men

I would like to bring to your attention a story about a man who is actually the inspiration for this blog. A 22 year old construction worker from Toronto and whom I am endeavoring to get an interview with one day.

Maybe you have heard the story but maybe not, so I would like to share with you something that made massive news in Canada and was covered briefly elsewhere in the world about one Elton Mcdonald. Word got out earlier this year that a mysterious tunnel had been found out in the woods with very well made reinforcements and electricity supplied by a generator nearby. The alarm bells went off as police and public speculated about the intention behind this, not helped by the fact that a crucifix and rosary beads were found down there as well. Could it be terrorist activity aimed at the approaching Pan American games?  Oh what could it be!!!

It took a while before Elton eventually  fessed up with his reason. “ I just wanted to make a Mancave..”

When I first read that I laughed but then I thought about it and it struck such a nerve with me that I am still reeling. This guy did what I have wanted to do since I was a child! You see this blog celebrates the Mancave in all its forms but digging a tunnel underground that leads to a TV room…..that’s a whole new level, and all with his own hands. I have personally always been fascinated with tunnels since reading about former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley having a tunnel that led to his personal studio.

Ace Frehley in his studio/mancave. Might’ve been a bit tricky navigating the tunnel with the boots dude

5 years ago Elton decided to dig a hole in the backwoods not far from his house. What started as a simple digging exercise became an obsession to keep digging and make a tunnel that led to one or two recreational rooms. “It was going to be my underground cottage” he said after the police discovery. It was going to be meaning past tense in that as soon as the fuzz got wind of it, they filled it in. Now I don’t want to resort to potty language on this blog but FOR FUCK SAKE!!!. He spent 5 years digging that thing, sometimes staying overnight with the rain pissing down on him and he even had very well made reinforcements  installed along the way!. It seems that the authorities were spooked by the crucifix and the rosary beads that Elton kept down there to “feel safe”.  This led to speculation about some wacko terrorist activity that might be afoot. Even after Elton came forward and confessed, they filled it in, all in under one day and that was that. After all of this he said he had just wanted somewhere to disappear and get away from it all……..(excuse me while my eyes well up).

He has said that he will definitely make another one but when he has his own property.

Still smiling after “the man” took away his dream

This was a very summarised version of Eltons story. If you want to read a more thorough version, check this out

The incredible true story behind the Toronto mystery tunnel

Welcome to the Batcave

In a suburb of outer Helsinki called Pirkkola, there are many free standing houses that generally have a tasty little yard with plenty of room for chicken coups, external saunas and so forth. It’s here that Samuli resides with his wife and two kids. As is the case in these kinds of houses, there is generally a downstairs cellar space with multiple rooms (see where I’m going with this?) and Samuli has managed to transform what was once  his cold car shed into a very cosy space that he has injected with his own  flavor. Former bus driver to the rock stars but now a budding watchmaker, Samuli was initially using the car shed for his passion of doing up cars and he had a number of projects going over the years. He was cleaning up the space one day and decided to paint the back walls white and it was here that he had a eureka moment. “Of course this would make a fantastic Mancave” he thought to himself. From this point on, with his “Batcave” on the go, the car projects withered away (for the time being at least….). He started collecting the equipment needed to transform his vision into reality but not without some bumps along the way. There was a tense moment at one point when he realized that the hot water pipe that was running directly under the T.V. (exposed pipes are quite common in the cellars) might cause a heating problem for his beloved newly acquired 60” TV. Samuli and his extensive knowledge of car maintenance overcame this potentially problematic problem with the idea of wrapping heat absorbing tape that he used for car exhausts around the water pipe. Boom!!

Samuli greeted me at the front door and the moment I stepped in to the house  I noticed his two boys doing 360 burnouts with their bare feet in the loungeroom, clearly they were having a great time and I noticed a palpable energy of fun in the house which was great for them but draining for adults. Before long, Samuli led me downstairs to his haven. “ The Batcave “ was painted on the door, yeah baby!! The Batcave has a lusciously warm lighting, not too bright and not too dim which suited me as bright lights stress me the hell out. Genial host that he is, Samuli offered me the main seat to park my ass. I melted into it, reclined and launched the leg rest, not before being offered an ice cold Sandels beer. We proceeded to watch Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise and I was still reeling from watching HBO’s Going Clear a couple of days prior which is a scientology doc featuring Tom as a class A nutcase. This is a shame because he’s a top notch actor in a great many things including this stormer of a movie. At the end of the flick Samuli was happy to answer some questions I had.

What is the definition of mancave to you?

”A place to hide”

Ok moving on..

“Also it doesn’t matter if you have a TV or movie theater or a bar with darts but for me I wanted to have this kind of thing. It was initially my “Race Cave” where I could race cars with my friends online , I used to go to my friends place to race cars in the games and the whole reason this came about was that I wanted to race my friends online but from here. As it turned out I started watching more movies and so it became more of a movie theatre.

So what is the ratio between racing games and watching movies?

50/60 and not necessarily fixed in favour of one or the other. It depends from week to week. (it should be noted that 50/60 is the Finnish way of saying 50/50). Now since I got GTA V I have been playing that a lot but before that I was watching a lot of T.V. series.

                                             Feel the warm glow  

                             But it doesn’t overpower the TV

So how often do you come down here?

Again it depends, sometimes it has been over a week that I don’t come here but now that I got this good game (GTA V), I have been coming every night. My friends are always going to me “ You have this great place and you don’t use it every night?!” but of course when I first set it up, I was here all the time but then the novelty wears off and then it’s just part of your life.

Why do you think Mancaves are so important to men?

I think it has something to do with the last corner of manhood. I think what happens, and not so much in this home is that when you move in with your significant other, they mainly think about what the place is going to look like, they buy the stuff and basically design the man out of the house so that’s why it’s nice to have your own place where you can have it how you like and no-one can say anything. If its shitty for weeks then that’s your problem.

                           Uhoh, the fridge is getting low on cans      

   But first Franklin needs to get the schematics for the robbery

                                                                  

 In realistic terms, how would you change or improve your space?

I would like to improve the acoustics, the roof is quite low and the sound isn’t as good as it could be. I would also like to have bass traps to process the bass frequencies better. One in every corner would be great but this room is very small so it’s only possible for one.  Maybe also a PS4 console but that will come in time..

So what is your dream Mancave where money, physics, nothing is limited?

I would like to have an aircraft hangar and have everything in there. I could have a car workshop again and bigger and better kit.

Anywhere in the world in particular?

If I would win the lottery I would buy the Gas station across the road and set up over there, maybe keep the workshop side but get rid of the bar side (A karaoke bar no less that the old pissed up locals go to practice their cat dying in agony sounds that pass for singing) and I would just make it more of a space to have my friends.

Specs List                                                                                  

• LG 60” HDTV
• Genelec 6010 studio monitors x5
• Genelec 5040 sub woofer
• Harmon Kardon amplifier
• Xbox 360 console
• PS3 console
• Fanatec driving console (compatible with both consoles)
• Mazda mx5 leather car seats x 2
• Lazy boy reclinable armchair with extendable leg rest (I can confirm its very comfortable)
• Old school fridge made in Pori