Hi. Hope you're all as good as can be in this shitshow. I am once again doing something fucking crazy and making a thread about it. I've left China after 7 years. Just felt like time to go, all considered. Currently, I'm in Mexico City, poking around the punk rock scene. It's awesome. The World Underground will continue. In fact, Albini is mixing Hiperson / Lonely Leary live recordings for EP3 and is sending them one by one to me, as we speak...so that's fucking awesome.

I bought 5+ acres of lakeside land in Northern Wisconsin. It's a long story, but as a kid, our whole family used to go up near Eagle River, Minocqua, St. Germaine. We stopped going when my mom got sick, but the feels remained. I spent 2 years poking around cabins and raw land, and never found anything I would consider a good deal. For raw plots, anything on a main chain was like $300,000+ for less than an acre. Fuck all that. If I was going to do this, I simply wanted more, and for less. Finally, I found a 5.5 acre plot on water, 15 minutes from Eagle River. Don't ask me how, but I closed on this while in China. It was insane.

Long story short, I stayed up until 6AM every day for weeks and got Amish contractor's on board (somehow via the phone, which...wew, that was work lemme tell ya) - I then basically became my own general contractor and spent more weeks calling around assembling a crew of all the pieces to do the thing. Exhausting, but done.

In October, we went and stood on that land, and met all the people.


Another long story short : A small cabin is being built first, and I will live there all winter, so I can be on site for the larger build come springtime. We’re almost there. I now have an 800 foot gravel driveway, and a bunch of plots are cleared. Construction on this little guy begins within the next week or so. Building permits are in. I’m finding myself increasingly annoyed with cities, so having the option to choose when to be where is going to rule. Final stretch. January is going to be interesting.

Here's parts of the building plan.
Cabin3
Cabin2
Cabin1

Anyways. I just wanted to start a thread on this because it's going to be insane, and I want to document it and open it up to you all as you like doing THINGS and I always found the compound talk to be funny. Shit is getting real. I'll be bouncing around the midwest in Q1. I now own a car that I'll pick up in January as well, finally. Damn.

I hereby invite any and all to come relax when this is finished in summer. If anyone wants to do a thing, has advice, ideas, feel free to throw it at the proverbial wall. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing, but all considered, it's going extremely well. I kept waiting for this to all blow up in my face, but the things just keep happening.

Also if anyone wants to riff of this buildable design in the future you can totally just have it. Nearly every one I found online is garbage. I paid an architect, so you don't have to.

Ok. That's all for now. Cheers.

Here's a zoomed / cropped plot photo. The road is private and dead ends at the plot next to mine. Dude living there just has a garage without water. They gamble and drink beer and he doesn't hang much. If 2022 is good to me maybe I'll buy his plot too. We'll see.

Good fun. Nice work.

jason from volo wrote: Is it time to set up a GoFundMe to make it a true PRF effort?

I’m not sure if I’m kidding or not.

Ha. Well, i'd say a PRF BBQ test run could happen in 2023. Gimme a year to test things out and make sure it's no longer a mud-fest. If ya'll really wanna do a thing, i think we would really DO A DAMN HELL ASS THING on this property.

Just got off the phone with a landscaper who likes DEVO and Black Flag. Consider him hired.

so you hired steve albini to do your mixes and amish contractors to build your house?

story checks out.

Very cool space and generous offer. It would be very cool if our group here, which is totally not at all a cult, was able to put on something there.

Do you have anything planned for the internet/WiFi setup, if any? Connections between all the buildings like PVC pipe underground, or even just Ethernet or fiber, so you could bring WiFi to wherever, is something that I’ve been through with a couple of multi-building compounds in Wisconsin, closer to Chicago but still Out Of Town. It’s not the end of the world to deal with it later, but, it’s easier on the front end when everything is as tore up as it’s gonna get from the construction process. In one of the two cases it was like “no, we’re not doing that here, this is not a video cafe it’s cabins in the woods” and then a year later it was like, “yeah we’re using this place a fair amount and having no internet is actually crippling sometimes can we please get WiFi to all these spread out buildings now” . Having the infrastructure there even if not using it…wait did you say Amish Telephone? I love their second record

Does it have a sweet fenced in area where dogs can frolick without worry of them chasing a rabbit two miles down the road?

Already stated on FB, but this is awesome.

Also sorta wondering if this has all been made possible because of the cryptocurrency thread.

i also had scott and tommy's questions in my head. is this all a front for a btc mining operation?
if i haven't said it yet, this is awesome!

scott wrote: Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:20 pm Do you have anything planned for the internet/WiFi setup, if any? Connections between all the buildings like PVC pipe underground, or even just Ethernet or fiber, so you could bring WiFi to wherever, is something that I’ve been through with a couple of multi-building compounds in Wisconsin, closer to Chicago but still Out Of Town. It’s not the end of the world to deal with it later, but, it’s easier on the front end when everything is as tore up as it’s gonna get from the construction process. In one of the two cases it was like “no, we’re not doing that here, this is not a video cafe it’s cabins in the woods” and then a year later it was like, “yeah we’re using this place a fair amount and having no internet is actually crippling sometimes can we please get WiFi to all these spread out buildings now” . Having the infrastructure there even if not using it…wait did you say Amish Telephone? I love their second record

Does it have a sweet fenced in area where dogs can frolick without worry of them chasing a rabbit two miles down the road?

Yo. I'm figuring this out now, before we do the main build. The norm even for more expensive rentals is not to have Wi-Fi. Since I'll live there, I'm going to get it set up. The small cabin will be 150 feet away from the larger house that'll be built in spring / summer, and I'll be living in the smaller one first, so I'll talk to all the people and see how it shakes out. It's something to note for sure. Options are pretty dire up there. Frontier seems like my only choice. Maybe Musk will get this Starlink shit going in the next few years. Mobile hotspots also seem to be picking up speed.

That said, as far as electrical, there's a "farm style" box going on that can supposedly handle whatever I want to do in the future, so that's nice.

tommy wrote: Already stated on FB, but this is awesome.

Also sorta wondering if this has all been made possible because of the cryptocurrency thread.

100%. Yep! Let's just say the land is paid in full already, which is fucking nuts.

Doubt it'll ever be a mining spot, due to the weather, but damn...it could be. I've thought about possibly setting up some sort of hydro-power thing as well, somewhere else. We'll see just how integrated I actually stay, and what all the people have to say about it.

Talking with Steve while dealing with Amish builders is quite the mind melter indeed. Wew.