Show Caves of the Nouveau Riche

I’ve got a new post up on io9 this morning, and it may or may not be of interest to BLDGBLOG readers.

It’s about what the world might look like if Hollywood celebrities, hip-hop moguls, international financiers, and so on got addicted to digging tunnels…
So they start excavating multi-million dollar show caves beneath their mansions in London, drilling vast catacombs throughout the Hollywood Hills. Robert Downey Jr. Colin Farrell. Ludacris.
Even Bob Dole.
It’s the show caves of the nouveau riche.

13 thoughts on “Show Caves of the Nouveau Riche”

  1. When I lived in Los Gatos in the late 80s, my neighbor, Steve Wozniak dug a cave in the hillside in his back yard and held “grotto” parties.

  2. i have this recurrent dream in which I find the cellars of my parents house suddenly grow extensions. removing some wooden boards I discover rooms and vaults filled with artifacts and secrets.
    when i rise from these mysterious cellars again, neither the house nor the site are the same as before and I shake in horror, setting out to discover what mutations the subterranean abyssus has caused…
    I wake up sweating, asking myself “will it really be true someday?”

  3. Late commenting, but of course this only continues a long tradition of cave-like dens for the rich and famous…in 1630, the Earl of Pembroke is said to have spent 10,000 pounds on his grotto at Wilton (roughly a million and a half USD now) dotted with artificial stalactites, carved marble bas-reliefs in watery themes, statues that wept and moved, and jets of water to surprise the ladies…an archaic version of the home theater.

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