Man Caves, The Ultimate Sheltering In Experience

April 7, 2020,

The world is not going away anytime soon. Sometimes just indoors, inside or underground.

Fortunately.

Things are being altered a bit though.

Very altered. Super altered. Pandemic altered.

When things outward are challenging, go inward.

Setenil de las Bodegas is a town (pueblo) and municipality in the province of Cádiz, Spain, famous for its dwellings built into rock overhangs above the Río Guadalporcún.

According to the 2005 census, the city has a population of 3,016 inhabitants.

This small town is located 98 miles northeast of Cádiz and 20,000 kilometers directly through the Earth from Auckland, New Zealand (its antipode).

It has a distinctive setting along a narrow river gorge.

The town extends along the course of the Rio Trejo with some houses being built into the rock walls of the gorge itself, created by enlarging natural caves or overhangs and adding an external wall.

Setenil has a reputation for its meat products, particularly chorizo sausage and cerdo (pork) from pigs bred in the surrounding hills. As well as meat, it has a reputation for producing fine pasteles (pastries), and its bars and restaurants are among the best in the region. Its outlying farms also provide Ronda and other local towns with much of their fruit and vegetables.

To view this unique “in your rock” incorporated town makes you want to dwell.

In times past, a long, long time ago, people used to go inside of their caves.

They still do. In Coober Pedy.

grapplingstars.com, femcompetitor.com fciwomenswrestling.com articles, Kerry-Raymond-Own-work-Wikimedia-photo-credit.

Coober Pedy is a town in northern South Australia, 526 miles north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway.

In the 2016 Census, there were 1,762 people in Coober Pedy (State Suburbs). Of these, 962 were male and 801 were female.

The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there.

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Cave men are still alive and well.

Now, they just say “mate” a lot.

Coober Pedy is renowned for its below-ground residences, called "dugouts", which are built in this fashion due to the scorching daytime heat. The name "Coober Pedy" comes from the local Aboriginal term kupa-piti, which means "boys' waterhole".

The first opal was found in Coober Pedy on 1 February 1915; since then the town has been supplying most of the world's gem-quality opal.

Coober Pedy today relies as much on tourism as the opal mining industry to provide the community with employment and sustainability. Coober Pedy has over 70 opal fields and is the largest opal mining area in the world.

They make cave living look very shiny and sustainable.

They have to.

The harsh summer desert temperatures mean that many residents prefer to live in caves bored into the hillsides.

The educational magazine smithsonianmag.com speaks about in glowing terms, “he Australian town of Coober Pedy looks like something straight out of a movie—probably because it is. In 1985, Mel Gibson, Tina Turner and a team of filmmakers descended onto this barren mining town in the South Australian Outback to shoot Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The otherworldly landscape, which is checkered with ruddy-colored mounds of sandstone—the result of years of opal mining—was the perfect backdrop for the post-apocalyptic movie.”

Remember Mad Max? It’s been awhile.

So, when the real estate agents show the caves off to prospective buyers, what do the dwellings look like?

A standard three-bedroom cave home with lounge, kitchen, and bathroom can be excavated out of the rock in the hillside for a similar price to building a house on the surface.

However, dugouts remain at a constant temperature, while surface buildings need air conditioning, especially during the summer months, when temperatures often exceed 40 °C (104 °F).

The relative humidity rarely gets over 20% on these hot days, and the skies are usually cloud-free. The average maximum temperature is 30–32 °C (86–90 °F), but it can get quite cool in the winter.

In looking a pictures, the dwellings do look cozy even if they could use some windows. Maybe you can create a false window and paint a beautiful ocean scene inside.

It certainly has inspired today’s man caves.

A man cave or manspace, and less commonly known as a manland or mantuary, is a male retreat or sanctuary in a home, such as a specially equipped garage, spare bedroom, media room, den, or basement.

The term "man cave" is a metaphor describing a room inside the house such as the basement or garage or attic or office, or outside the house such as a wood shed or tool room where male family member are supposed to be able to do as they please, without fear of upsetting any female sensibility about house decor or design.

Paula Aymer of Tufts University calls it the "last bastion of masculinity".

While a partner may have substantial authority over the rest of the house in terms of design and decoration, they often have no say in the look of a man's personal space.

Because, stereotypically the woman decides the decor of the home due to the role of caring for the family and managing household affairs. A man cave is a space where a man can express his creativity and sense of design.

We have a friend who designed his own man cave but he didn’t want to call it that so he described it as a movie room.

He decorated the room one of the bedrooms in his house with posters from a movie theater and covered the one window with black curtains so no light would come through thus any time of day, like a hotel room, the room could be converted to darkness.

Cocooning and watching movies there was incredible.

There is an important psychological element to it.

Man caves have multiple purposes: they are a place to be alone, to indulge in hobbies, and to hang out with male friends. It is, loosely, a male-only space to retreat to watch sports matches, play video games, or hang out with friends.

According to psychiatrist and author Scott Haltzman, it is important for a man to have a place to call his own, referring to a male area to which to retreat.

Rules there are more relaxed. Sports on television, more a plenty.

There is a television show about this. Remember?

Man Caves is a home renovation reality television program hosted by former NFL defensive tackle and Super Bowl winner Tony Siragusa and licensed contractor Jason Cameron, broadcast by DIY Network.

In each episode, Siragusa and Cameron visit a house at which the male resident wants a particular room transformed into a male-themed hobby room, otherwise known as a Man cave.

Each man cave is custom-designed for the recipient based on his hobbies and likes. The rooms are then renovated to include a media center, minibar, and a lounge among other elements.

Previous themes included hockey, surfing, car racing, skiing, golfing, rock-n-roll, and others. During the renovation, the hosts offer ideas and do-it-yourself instruction to help homeowners construct their own personal hangouts.

At the end of each episode, the newly renovated "man cave" is revealed to the recipient, who did not see the room during its transformation.

He tends to cave in with delight.

So when the world becomes too much for you, listening to a song by the legendary crooner Jim Reeves can sooth your soul:

Make the world go away
And get it off my shoulder
Say the things you used to say
And make the world go away…

Oh come on Jim. We don’t want the world to go away.

Just be altered a little.