2023-06-24 11:00:29
Photo “Garage Sale”, 2012, taken from the “Homegrown” series by Julie Blackmon. JULIE BLACKMON
The “teenage cocoon” of Nicolas (28 years old, in marketing), near Brussels
“When I was 12, my family moved into a new pavilion where my room was half the size of the previous one. So, the following year, I asked my parents to partition off the part of the garage that they used as a laundry room, and I got them to leave the rest to me: I got an old sofa bed, I I laid a red carpet all by myself, I tinkered with a platform, a screen. With my savings and the help of parents who were happy to see me lead a project on my own, I bought a projector.
Uses have evolved over time. I first played video games, then around 16 I moved on to films, at 18 I bought lights and organized “electro dance” evenings for twenty people. The “room” was the place of all my first times: first beers, first cigarettes, first joints, first night with my girlfriend… I had peace there, the walls were thick and there was a key on the door. This piece was very special to me. Everything was allowed. Between the ages of 12 and 24, I spent half my days there. When I come back to it today, it freaks me out, it’s become a big junkyard again. I will always go there with a bit of nostalgia. If one day I have children and a cellar, I will make a similar room for them because you grow up there quickly. »
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Jeoffrey’s “man’s cave” (33, engineer), in Finistère
“I am part of the generation of deconstructed men. But the garage is my “man cave”, my man’s cave, the place where four times a week, I spend two hours playing sports while listening to the music at full blast, thinking of myself. For generations before, masculinity was expressed through DIY and gardening tools, in the garage – and the storage of the car. Me, I leave the SUV in the driveway, it seems absurd to me in 2023 to store a vehicle in an interior where we could accommodate someone.
My semi-buried garage of about thirty square meters, I made a gym because I live in the countryside, in Finistère, 20 kilometers from the first room. I installed a rubber floor, an elliptical trainer, a whole armada of weights, a squat rack, a lumbar bench, a pulley… I miss the emulation of the room, but, at least, I don’t do the queuing at the machines. On YouTube, we see this “home gym” movement gaining momentum since confinement, even if not everyone is lucky enough to have a garage… I bought the house in big part for him. During the visit, I had my laser meter to check the height under the ceiling: 2.25 meters, that’s just for the equipment, it’s not a Haussmannian garage! Friends wink at me a bit. They find that I devote a large budget to this garage, that I sanctify it. It is true that it has become my secondary living space. To my companion, who is not very sporty, I say: “Come and see me downstairs”. »
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