Houston, Texas
The story behind
C-Drive’s Garage.
It’s my garage. There’s a pool table, karaoke, games and probably too much stuff on the walls. I like it here.
How it happened ↓Before there was room for any of this
The seats
came first.
The garage was still full of junk when I got the old church seats.
There wasn’t a pool table in there yet. The seats were me thinking, one day this is going to be my own man cave, and I’m going to have a pool table. So there they were, waiting for the rest of the room to catch up.
I’d had a pretty good example of what that room could be.
My granddad’s place
Up the little
spiral staircase.
My granddad had a pool-table game room you got to by going up this tiny, narrow spiral staircase. As a kid, that alone was pretty great.
He had Notre Dame football posters—his alma mater—German beer and Lufthansa stuff, and lots of model airplanes. He was an aeronautical engineer and loved planes. He’d even owned a little plane of his own. There was a small bar area in the corner.
All his stuff, in his room, with a pool table in the middle of it. It was magical.
That stuck with me. The staircase, the planes, the bar, the whole thing. I wanted somewhere of my own that felt like that.
My dad’s garage
The other
blueprint.
My dad’s garage was the other place that showed me what a room like this could be.
There was a pool table, beer signs, fishing gear, antlers, old tools, neon and whatever else he liked, all packed into a working garage. It wasn’t polished. It was used. People actually played pool there.
C-Drive’s Garage comes from both places: my granddad’s upstairs game room and my dad’s garage. Different rooms, same idea—make a place for your stuff, your people and a game that keeps everyone in the room.
Eventually, the garage
Room for
my stuff.
Now there’s a 1963 Valley pool table under a Budweiser blimp. There’s boxing, darts, video games and putt-putt golf. Houston sports, German beer stuff, Japanese stuff, LEGO, music, space, old ads. Whatever I’m into tends to find its way out here.
The posters and magnets go with the games, or they’re something I thought was funny, or I just liked looking at them. The garage doors have become a whole collection of their own.
Some people call it a man cave. Nerdvana has come up. It’s a detached garage in Houston that got a little out of hand. That works too.
Same room, different screen
So I made
a website.
I used to code websites. I’m always coming up with something, so now there’s a place to put it: the garage, the game, photos, projects, whatever happens next.
The virtual garage is still a beta. Walk around. Play pool. Pet Heinrich. Tell me what’s broken.
My boys get to grow up with this room. Maybe someday they’ll remember the blimp and the microphones the way I remember that little staircase.