I’m Jake Hounds, and this is one thousand words or less
Episode 4: A Man’s Castle is his Cave
Lately, because of some unlikely algorithmic gyrations, Facebook has been prompting me with male-oriented groups. Mostly I ignore them, but one group that celebrates home bars, rec rooms, cigar lounges, home theaters, gaming spaces, memorabilia display rooms, or anything that might fall under the heading of a Man Cave, somehow grabbed my attention.
A man cave is usually regarded as a derogatory slight for men, or cavemen, as it were, who want to have a place to share their passions be they sports, music, comics, or other collections. Within this group, you will find user pictures from basic garage bars to the most elaborate male playrooms, some of which must have cost tens of thousands of dollars or more to build and collect.
They all seem to have pithy names like “The Dive Barn” or “Boom Boom Room” or “Caddy Shack,” and the decor ranges from antique bar fixtures, lamps, jukeboxes, and advertising signs, to taxidermied forest animals, mounted antlers, and gun racks, to homemade bar top mosaics created with bottle caps. There was even a New York Yankee room where the bar itself was a replica of Yankee Stadium.
I never really thought about a man cave for myself, but as I keep seeing all these rooms, I find myself kind of wanting something themed around my interests. A place to be me. I am suffering from man cave envy.
Now, our house is modestly sized and over one hundred years old, so the basement is a cellar with a lowish ceiling, which is perfect for storing wine, but not great for mounting a seventy-inch television. I have a large garage which is more of a storage area for garden tools, sports equipment, bicycles, holiday decor, and books we don’t want to read, but somehow can’t let go of.
I work from home and my home office is in the sunroom of our house, a peaceful retreat overlooking our garden where you can hear birds at the feeder in the full southern exposure sunlight. My desk is there, and that is where I spend most of my time.
It’s my very own “Mascularium,” for while it looks nothing like a rec room or a home bar, some aspects of my workspace overlap with the generic man cave.
There are pictures of my family, and of me, like me wearing a Hawaiian shirt with Mickey Mouse, one in front of the Eames house, or in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. There’s a screen-printed rock poster, a poster from an old Cindy Sherman exhibition, a vintage New York City subway map, and the famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover.
There’s my Funko pop collection, including some of my heroes like James Bond, Mr. Spock, and Billy-Ray Valentine. Small objects of affection from my kids, a hook with my running medals, a tiki mug for my pens, and a Betty Boop dish where I keep my guitar pics, including one from a Ramones concert I went to in Munich.
My computer has two wall-mounted twenty-one-inch monitors which if you add them together is over 40” of viewing space. That borders on man cave dimensions. I can watch TV or stream any service on one screen, or both. Sometimes I watch a show on one screen and have a virtual fireplace on the other to give me that log cabin vibe. I have a great pair of bookshelf speakers that serve as an audio system for my monitors, or to stream music.
For the winter, rather than make the snowy slog into the garage, I brought my mountain bike and trainer inside. I have gym padding on the floor, a yoga mat, some dumbbells, a kettlebell, and resistance straps making it a small but versatile workout space.
I like spending my time there and it’s functional. But there is no bar, no fridge, no espresso machine. There is no vintage jukebox. There are no couches for the gang to hang out (if I had a gang). There is no place to party.
I was raised in a man cave, of sorts. When my parents moved into their house, my father claimed the basement as his own, and he transformed it from a concrete bunker with a leaky outside wall, into “Bud’s Bar,” the neighborhood party palace.
My dad collected memorabilia and he acquired some great items over the years, like a Seburg 100 jukebox, which played 45s from the 50s, a vintage telephone booth with a working pay phone, a Coca-Cola “button”, restaurant booths, vending machines, and dozens of other artifacts.
When he eventually dispersed his collection after twenty or so years, he offered me anything I wanted. But as I was somewhat of a nomad at the time, sans cave, I only took one piece, a 1950s-lighted trapezoid Budweiser sign I admired. I hadn’t much thought of it, as it is in storage in the garage, but I decided to bring it inside and give it a place of honor.
As I was poking around for the sign, I found an album of pictures from Bud’s Bar. So many memories were made there, and we would always bring our friends to hang out as teenagers. It was a safe place to have a party, and my parents never cared how much noise we made. They were happy to have us nearby.
Thinking about the old days, made me a bit melancholy, as both my parents have long since passed away. I looked around the garage, cluttered, but with good bones, over three hundred square feet worth, and instead of a storage depot, I started imagining where a giant TV might go, or a pinball machine, making a quick mental list of the steps to get to that point. There are hurdles, but nothing that big, and so I am inspired to create a family entertainment space. A place for everyone. A human cave.
This has been 1000 words or less, I’m Jake Hounds.
Thanks for listening.
One Thousand Words or Less is one hundred percent created by flawed natural human intelligence.
Please subscribe, rate, and share this podcast. I’m interested in your feedback, you can follow me on X/Twitter @houndsjake, Instagram/Threads @jakehounds, or email me contact@jakehounds.com.
