More officially, it probably was in 2012, when I graduated early from college, bought a big 60" LG TV with my sign-on bonus money from my first job, put that in the basement, with two adorning futons, a comfy as hell chair from IKEA, and two lamps to provide some mood lightling. From say the 90 day period from then until I left for my RTW trip, I probably spent four nights out of five in the basement, with just the lamps, on the futon, watching god knows what. That was perfection.
But maybe perfection was these last five years, or more pointedly, 2020-2022, when the outside world was still a bit of an unknown. I would spend Monday to Friday working upstairs, and then Friday evening cooking, and then come 11pm Friday would descend to the basement. I've probably spend roughly 60% of my weekend nights since Covid started in the basement, watching something or the other from roughly 11:30pm to 3:30am on that same TV I bought with my bonus money.
What did I watch, you ask? Well at first it was random old football games. Then, when Tom Brady won another damn Super Bowl in Feb 2021, I swore off football and watched random old tennis, soccer, basketball, baseball games, and concert videos of Van Halen, Billy Joel. And then when Tom Brady retired, it went back to football. For the last 18 months or so, it's been a fairly normal routine - the 2015 AFC Championship and 1999 Super Bowl plus random stuff on Friday, and the 2007 Super Bowl and 2006 AFC Championship Game and random stuff on Saturday. And music - a ton of random old music on both days (more to come on that).
The basement was my refuge. Everyone knew that, from my parents and sister, who ceded that space to me for no real reason (or in my sister's case, a very specific reason - the crickets and mice that would infest it from time to time... my friends!). My friends knew it - I remember so many zoom calls with my friend group in the height of covid, the joke being the fire alarm that perpetually had an expired battery that would beep every ten minutes or so. From a Zoom angle, it was a haunted place. From my angle, it was amazing.
The real peak, if there was one, of the basement was before my stated date of taking it over. It was earlier, when I role played every sport in that say 15x30 part of house. I threw footballs to myself, but that was more silly and performative than anything. It was tennis and baseball that were the real ones. In the beginning, on one wall was a couch and the other wall I used to stand, and hit tennis balls against the wall. Now, it was an unfinished concrete wall - I don't think there was anything detrimental about this, but still, that was my forte. That was coupled with me throwing baseballs, pretending to be random made up people, against the old couch until it gave way.
When the couch did way (which coupled as the "net" for my tennis), what did I do? Well, I turned 90 degrees, to the longer dimension of the basement, and threw baseballs as a pitcher against a mattress I would move and stick up against a wall. I spent so many evenings, particularly October evenings, throwing baseballs against it, pretending to be some pitcher. When I started this random routine, it was probably 2004 or so. I used to pretend i was in the year 2035. Somehow, we aren't so far away from that at this point.
The basement has been a constant part of my life, even from before I really remember what "my life" is. It used to be unfinished in every way, and I used to roller skate on it until I tore up the concrete where that wasn't possible anymore. It was the place my cousins and I used to hang out. In the early days that was innocent. In the medium days (say 2009), it was where I would sneak beers down and play ping pong with Ian, Carl, and Andy. In later days, it was where the cousins (including me) would sleep - but in more reality just chat away until 5am or so.
But more than anything, the basement was my refuge. I already spoke earlier about my Covid night routine in the basement, but the turning point if anything, was when I came back home the day after Thanksgiving in 2022, in what should've in theory been a celebration, but instead was a dour, scary trip. My Dad the week before in Florida was diagnosed with a small brain hemmorage. Luckily it was small, adn caught early, and he's fine, but I had flown back to get some things to then return to Jacksonville (where thsi all took place) the next weekend. I returned to the basement in my normal routine, but this time needed a pick me up. So, around 2am, I just put Youtube up adn started playing old 90's and 00's music. And played it loud, probably close to max volume. It was a way to esacpe a scary time, even if just for a short period.
I make no apologies for making the basement my place for basically the last 20 years. If anything, no one else was battling me for it. It was dark, it was scary (for a child). It had a mouse infestation in 2015 or so (which has lingering 1-2 mouses a year ever since), which was only adorable to me. The rest of the family ceded the basement to me, adn I took full advantage.
My parents new house doesn't have a basement. It has a lot else - it has basically the same amount of above-ground square footage as our current house, but there's no basement. I'll need to jerry-rig some random room into my version of my cave, but it won't be a cave. It won't be nicely warm in winter, and nicely cool in summer. It won't be with this minimalist, semi-finished combination of wood and stone. It won't be that basement. More than anything, it won't be my basement - that semi-finished place that I continually saw the beauty, the equity and the flexibility of for over 20 years - more like 30 if you include my roller skating days.
I write this two days before my final weekend in the basement. In about 75 hours, I'll be sipping a beer in teh basement, with Billy Joel's "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" playing on Youtube, with me sitting in my chair that I bought from Ikea a decade-plus ago, looking at old vacation photos on my laptop. And soon after that, I'll ascend the stairs back to level ground, back to modernity. I've climbed those stairs probably 100,000 times. I'm not ready for the final one.