You Baby Gorilla.

The Kunker War Bunker, a Historical Analysis.

In various posts on this blog and in some zines I've done I've made reference to the time I spent living with Greg and AJ at 41 Kunker Ave in Latham, more affectionately/accurately known as "The KWB" or "The Kunker War Bunker." I can't remember who came up with that name, I'm going to say it was either Greg or Kyle, but for awhile Greg listed his occupation as "General of the KWB." Which was pretty appropriate because that was during his long, drawn out unemployed phase, which was a dark and strange world that I got drawn into for awhile, bur more on that later. As a brief aside, it wasn't dark and strange because he wasn't working, but because of the hours he started to keep and the way he occupied that time.

But moving on, the time I spent living there and some of the times just hanging out before and after have added up to make up a large chunk of some of the best/most ridiculous moments of my life. Rather than just try and do a big entry about those times, or mention them sporadically throughout this thing, I decided to start putting together a timeline of sorts of the house in it's various stages and occupancies.

This first entry is just a very general history of the house predating my time there, as best I understand it. It's not exceptionally comical or interesting, but it helps to explain how Greg and AJ came to be the quasi-owners of an entire house.

When I met them, Greg and AJ were living up the street with their folks on Grandview. Kyle did a really good job of talking about the neighborhood and its inhabitants in his blog, so I won't go into that at all. But at the time, which was a little less than nine years ago, they lived up the street on Grandview and their Grandmother lived down the street at the future KWB. She was their maternal grandmother, and their Mom grew up in that house, and (I think?) their grandfather built the house primarily with his bare hands, which is pretty awesome. Somewhere around 5 or 6 years ago she moved up the street to Grandview and then passed away a few years later. The house was then semi-used until Greg came back from culinary school in pittsburgh and then working in Nashville, at which point he and AJ first occupied the house simultaneously. Being that the house had been in the family for generations it was well beyond paid off, and so it was a cheap and easy way to get Greg and AJ out of the house up the street, so it made sense all around. And essentially, this is where our story begins.

The next entry will be my first stay in the house, and it's birth as the KWB in a fire of fun and idiocy.