Artifact No. 2

Varhaus and Father's Day

It’s Fathers’ Day. My dad told me something several times when I was a kid. “You can be anything you want to be, if you’re willing to work for it.” I have a problem with that statement: I still believe it’s true.

At 52, I can still look up to my Dad and say: the fucker was right. The purpose of this transmission is not to write about my Dad. However, I would not be writing it at all, without him. I could write for twenty Sundays about my Dad, but I can sum it up in one thought:

My siblings are the people I admire most.

What follows is a series of links to the nine published editions of the Varhaus story. I think that the serial process on this platform may be difficult to follow along as a reader. The story moves quickly through time. Miss one email, you may lose the whole plot.

There is one chapter here that I am most proud of: No. 8 No Moms Allowed.

It reads as a chapter about little boys being little boys in the best way. My intention was to write about the magic of boyhood, instead, I think I wrote a celebration of Fatherhood. Of Mentorship. Of Men. Men and how they love through teaching and modeling. Men standing on True North. Real motherfucking men.

Healthy men.

Fellas, you may find yourself in the pages of No. 8. A thing you taught, or a thing you were taught. Or both.

One man, if he reads this, and if he reads closely, will find himself permeating every page of the whole book; the result of the raising a grateful son.

PS. This is Million Dollar Garage’s 100th article!

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The first visit. A stranger walks into an empty building, pours themselves a coffee, and watches a man paint through glass walls with Wu Tang shaking the room. Nobody explains anything and somehow that is the whole point.

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A few months later the place has already transformed. Ten paintings where one used to be, a woman named Ruth who has made herself indispensable without anyone asking her to, and a purple curtain hiding the next thing.

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A Christmas party that begins with a cryptic invitation and ends with a nail crucifix inside a garden shed that stops the room cold. The night Varhaus stopped being an idea and became something people would remember for the rest of their lives.

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Before any of it. One man gets the keys to a wreck of a building and moves in alone with a shopvac and ten pounds of coffee. The origin story, told without romance.

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Jason destroys a painting in the driveway and declares himself finished, which is when BB sends him to bed and calls Ruth. The first time he gets fired from his own dream, it costs him nothing and saves everything.

nnnnnn

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A city reporter spent a year trying to crack Varhaus, got handled beautifully, and published the most honest thing he could: what twenty other people said about it instead.

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Sara Douglas joins the inside of the operation for the first time and Ruth immediately tells her not to lose herself to the shiny thing. In the next room Mike says something he doesn’t know she can hear.

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The one. Sixty boys take over Varhaus for a day and every man in the building shows up to teach something. It reads like chaos. It is actually about how good men love.

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Gabriel Thomas finally gets Jason on a podcast and Jason spends the whole episode talking about someone else. Mike walks in, refuses to sit down, yells one sentence, and leaves.bout someone else. Mike walks in, refuses to sit down, yells his motto at the microphone, and leaves.

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Varhaus: Built in Imagination First

I’ve been building Varhaus in my mind for years, long before I had names for any of this. Before Million Dollar Garage, before newsletters, before pricing ladders, before trying to explain myself.

Million Dollar Garage was the first iteration. Necessary. Small. Personal. A place to learn what could be made with limited means, stubbornness, and whatever was in reach.

Varhaus is the larger endeavor.

A place for doing cool shit. Art. Food. Experience. Motion. Surprise. Attraction. A destination people hear about from someone who says, you have to see this place. A room that keeps changing. A business that earns its keep. A place where discovery is part of the product.

It is being built. Slowly. On stubbornness and grace and the right people showing up at the right time.

So I built it first in public imagination.

The work becomes energy. The output becomes memory.

This is the serialized account of how it’s actually happening.

Begin with Varhaus No. 1.