Holger Schubert has a problem. No, it’s not that some drunk Ferrari owner drove his car into Holger’s house- that 512BBi belongs to him. His problem isn’t finding accessories to go with his home decor, as the place is done up in various shades of white. No, Mr. Schubert has a problem with his neighbors. You see, they don’t like the fact that he built a bridge from the street to his hillside home in Brentwood so he could park his Ferrari in his living room.
Now, when Simon and Garfunkel sang about the Boxer, he was standing in a clearing and carried the reminders of every glove that touched him. It’s pretty obvious that Holger doesn’t let anybody touch his boxer, and you’d think that the neighbors on the narrow Tigertail Road would be grateful for him giving up a street spot. However, as the Los Angeles Times reports they’re all up in arms over what they claim is an illegal bridge, and a safety hazard. Why they’re bringing this up after both the planning commission, and the building inspectors have already given the house – including the Ferrari-floating bridge – the crowned okay is a head scratcher, but they did get the planning commission to reverse the approval, causing Schubert a whole passel of hassle.
Maybe the neighbors don’t share Shubert’s passion – or perhaps this could be considered a fetish – with the sensuous lines of the Berlinetta Boxer? Regardless, the glass-walled, and halogen-illuminated concrete structure doesn’t seem to appear garish or inappropriately scaled.
It should also be duly noted that Schubert’s house, since undergoing a five-year renovation, has won the prestigious Architectural Digest magazine’s Design Driven contest. It’s an embarrassment to the neighborhood that complaints about the appropriateness of the house in relationship to its surroundings should be raised after it has received such a notable accolade.
Now that the Planners have rescinded their approvals for the bridge, the city could conceivably require Schubert to tear down the bridge, forever dooming the 512 to live in the house, should he forget it’s there when the jackhammers start pounding.
The reason given by the Brentwood Homeowners Assn. for their opposition to the bridge is the fear that it would set a precedent. That’s right, they don’t hate this bridge so much per say, but are afraid that sometime in the future an auto bridge will be built that really juices their fruit of the looms and they’ll have no recourse in opposition of it due to precedent.
Yes, it does seem like Schubert may have watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off one too many times, and in case you’re wondering if he fills the house with carbon monoxide every time he pulls the boxer out for a trip to T.C.B.Y., it should be noted that he had a batman-like hydraulic ramp installed to roll the car back onto the bridge before he fires it up. Yeah, that’s the kind of ingenious design I would complain about if I were his neighbor too.
Check out the whole shootin’ match over at LATimes.com.
Source and photos:[Los Angeles Times]
The Boxer in the Living Room
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Turn off the lights… you're gonna kill the battery!!!!!!!!!
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Here is what happened when I tried the same thing…
http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/connections/spr…
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Ferrari owner. Typical.
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On the one hand, the architecture is beautiful and I love the idea of parking a car like that in the living room. It's a piece of kinetic sculpture, almost. On the other hand, I've seen this kind of "screw you, I have money and I'll do what I want" mentality in action before. It's just wealthy people bickering about pointless things, and I can't make myself care.
Also, instead of the ramp, couldn't you just… I dunno, put it in neutral and push it? I do that with my car all the time. -
I applaud that this guy has a car he likes so much that he's willing to give it living room space. I like my cars, but can't say that I'd park either in the living room.
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My dad bought an RX-7 from a guy with a Porsche in his living room. This would be a typical suburban subdivision, not some mansion, mind you.
Dude also had a rotor mounted on the wall by the front door, like where there would normally be numbers or a flower pot or something.
The front yard contained another RX-7, a rotary-powered pickup, and a turbo AWD 80s 323.
Such was Crazy Ivan. -
Some day my living room shall consist of a 2000 square foot garage with several couches interspersed between all the cars, and a gourmet kitchen in the back. The rest of the house shall comprise of a 300 square foot addition to the roof, housing the bedroom and a second bathroom.
I have the wife's permission. -
If my house had a different layout (read: living room on the same level as the driveway), some day in the future, I would.
(Assuming Paul would let me – which is unlikely, I'll admit.)
See. a Volvo makes an excellent bench, an excellent table… possibly not a bad bed, either, but I've yet to find out.
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I agree, the neighbors really need to lighten up. That's a lovely bit of architecture, it's non-invasive to the view of the street from their houses and it keeps his car safe. He has an idea and the funds to act on it. I'm callin' jealousy.
All I can say is don't hate the player, hate the game, beeeetches! -
But really, if he's gonna spend $1.4M on a garage with a hydraulically-operated ramp to help the car coast back out of the building, etc. etc., uh, couldn't he have spent a bit of money on a decent car to display? Something at least a little bit attractive? Like, hell, put a Kia Soul in there, it'd be more worthwhile.
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at least it's a semi exotic. I'd be pissed if he parked a cobalt in there.
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People who care what goes on behind closed garage doors?
/confused -
L.A. neighbors are complaining about what they say is a dick in a Boxer? Yeah, that's really more of a New York thing.
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This is why I'm never moving to a neighborhood with a homeowners' association. You pay hundreds of dollars a month to a coalition of people with nothing better to do with their time than complain about other people's property.
Don't like what the guy down the street has going on with his lawn? Here's an idea: talk to him. Maybe offer to help clean things up.-
Said the guy with 4 cars in the driveway. Not tht there's anything wrong with that. I'm him, too.
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You forgot the Jeep trailer…and the Falcon's in the garage now.
That said, you can barely see my driveway from the street, as it runs along the side of the house, up hill.
My neighborhood's pretty low-rent, so it's more like we're concerned about the decrepit van in the driveway of the house with 12 people living in it and front yard full of trash.-
I'm with you on avoiding HA's. My parents lived in a neighborhood like that when I was growing up. You could paint your house almost any shade of beige you wanted. I think the subdivision was called Camry Estates.
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Amen to the "no HOAs" rule. The craziest restriction I ever heard is in my cousin's gated McMansion community outside Dallas. They have a "no-pickup trucks in the driveway" rule written into their covenant (in TEXAS, for crying out loud!) but make exceptions for "high-end" pickups like Escalades, Blackwoods, and…Ridgelines. Seriously.
As for the Boxer bridge uproar, well, that's par for the course in Brentwood.-
In Texas?! I would understand if the rule was no compact pickups.
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I'd buy a late-'70s Ford half-ton pickup, spraybomb it a halfway-decent black, polish all the chrome to a mirror shine (have it redone, even, if necessary), and cut up and mount a junkyard Lincoln grille and appropriate badging and hubcaps. Just to piss them right off. (Oh, and of course I'd do it all inside the garage; not like I'd have any choice.)
A Chevy/GMC C/k10 de Ville would be a worthy equivalent. I doubt those clowns know what an Imperial was, so never mind that.
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I agree. There's no way in hell I'd live in such a place. In my folks' neighborhood, there are retired old farts with nothing better to do who patrol the place and write nasty letters for each and every bullshit violation. I mean, if you put the trash can out too early the evening before pickup they get you. Petty stuff.
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You Rang?
<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/100/251970620_739c5f7194.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Buddy (4)" /> -
You Rang?
<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/100/251970620_739c5f7194.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Buddy (4)" />-
Boxer? I want a boxer. Mrs. engineerd isn't too keen on them, preferring something more like a black lab or a retriever. I also want a rotweiller. She's definitely not liking that idea.
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Hey Buddy!
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That was like the first day we got him from Boxer Rescue. He was like 53lbs (over 60 now) and had a bunch of scars…and dysentary. The cops confiscated him from his previous owner (not sure on the specifics, but the scars and cowering said enough). You'd never know it today, though.
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If I was this guy, my neighbors would wake up to find bridges being built to all their living rooms.
(As a side note: What's with all the Palin bashing the last few days? Did Ray Wert start writing for Hooniverse? Did y'all forget about the "let's keep politics out of this" creed laid out in the early days of the Hooniverse?)-
Noted.
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Does she count as politics? I pretty much assumed she'd been rejected by everyone as actually being a "politician" and demoted to "laughing-stock Fox personality".
I'm not saying that as a dig, or a shot, or snark, or anything. That is how it appears from the material coming out of the 'States. I just thought she'd been relegated to the "footnote of history" train-wreck celebrity pile of Britney and LiLo. So I apologize if I offended, it wasn't intentional. And though I might have just made it worse, I don't mean it as a political statement or anything; just that what might be coming OUT of the country is clearly different than what is INSIDE the country, if that perspective is inaccurate.-
I'm not trying to be a dick. I just like the apolitical Hooniverse much more. If I want politics mixed with my car blogginess I can go to Jalopnik.
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Well, as the guy that wrote this, I should state that not political motive was behind the caption- it just needed the reference in order for the joke to work.
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I figured. I just don't want Hooniverse to turn into a political flame war like that other place tends to be. I think we can be more mature about it (and that's backed up by this thread), I know political discussion has a tendency to devolve in a hurry. Since there have been several Palin jokes over the last couple days I could see that happening.
BTW, I did like your joke in this article.
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[against my better judgement]
The US political discussion has degraded to opposite poles hurling insults at each other and an "us versus them" attitude.
As such, those with a right-leaning point of view are likely to take mockery of what Palin became as a tacit approval for everything coming out of the Obama administration and respond along the lines of "at least Palin doesn't…".
As a vehement centrist and pragmatist, I find all of the above distasteful. I refuse to believe the government has the ability to fix my problems and similarly refuse to blame them for them. Our political system gets hijacked over issues that make great rhetorical fodder, rather than focusing on actually governing and managing the country.
As a perpetual member of the minority, pretty much no matter what's going on, I'm convinced I can effect more change in my environment by voting with my dollars. My choices as a consumer hold significantly more weight than my vote while living in a state that's not relevant in the electoral process.
In defense of Palin, I think it has to do a lot more with being out of her league than truly being a dolt. She wasn't vetted, wasn't handled well, wasn't prepared and kinda did the best she could, given who she was. What works in a chummy small town in a state with a smaller population than my congressional district* doesn't always scale well on a national level. That said, she's obviously not free from blame for what she became in the public eye.
*factual according to 2000 census data
[/against my better judgement]-
I will consider all of that as "duly noted" as well. Your politics down there sometimes completely elude me, but I need to keep in mind that they are considerably different in our two countries. Up here, the government still fears the people, for starters.
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"Up here, the government still fears the people, for starters.
Really??
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Keep in mind that Palin was Governor of Alaska, not Mayor of Wasilla. Yes, Alaska is kind of a folksy place with a small population, but so is Arkansas and I don't think many people — Left, Right, or Center — would call Clinton and idiot. The only reason why I say this is because it can be dangerous to dismiss a candidate just because they come from a lower population area.
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It's more like knowing that being at the center of a highly publicized, highly charged national election is not to be handled in the same way as small-state politics. Clinton was smart enough to know the difference.
And not wink at the camera. -
Ah. I got your point, and agree.
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A bridge too far?
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The Bridges at Brentwood-Ri?
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Winnar!
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+1 clicky.
Worse comes to worse, fill in the underside of the bridge with dirt and cap the sides with retaining walls. That way the bridge can stay, but it's no longer a bridge.
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Do I hear MOAT?
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I keep trying to convince my wife to let me dig a moat around our house. I see nothing wrong with this, and as they said in the 1400s: deep moats make for good neighbors.
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Ha, I once worked on a porject where the owner wanter a taller fence than code allowed. His solution? Build a narrow berm and retaining wall facing out from his property, then put a shorter fence on top of it.
So yeah, I could see that happening. -
No, they'd damn it as being unauthorized landscaping. You can't win with these bastards.
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You, sir, are my hero today. It's that type of creativity that will earn you big dollars from people with HOA Nazis.
IANAL, but there's some sort of legal term that says that things like this can't be turned down after they've been approved & built. Basically, he had to go through the whole approval process, and that's when you were supposed to voice your concerns, not after he's already spent the time & money.
Oh, and this is pretty freakin' sweet!
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Exactly right. It's one thing to get the commission to reverse the approval — that probably just required the president of the homeowners' association to be a prick to some clerk in the office.
Once it goes to court — and it will — the Association will have pretty much no ground to stand on. That said, however, what will likely happen will be that Mr. Schubert will be given a special exemption, and as such no further houses will be allowed to have drive-in living rooms like that. A compromise that makes everyone angry.
Schubert isn't following the herd, therefore he must be punished! I've had a few, ah, interesting neighbours over the years (the grow op really didn't light my fire) but what this guy has done is admirable. His neighbours need to lighten up.
Ummmmm, someone needs to check their facts. This bridge never went before the Planning Commission. It was issued a building permit WITHOUT going through the necessary variance hearing — that's why people are so pissed!!!!
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Ummmmm, if you have a more legitimate source than the LA Times, which seems to say that the bridge was fully approved by the necessary channels, I'm sure the esteemed gentlemen who run this site would love to include that information.
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Agreed. Source, please, RT4? Are you a shit-stirrer? An angry neighbour? What's your story, and what's your proof?
I also wish to say that it's pretty cool to see a negative number beside a post.
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I love living in the sticks.
We had an experience at the Mad Science Sr. home when I was buying my '93 RX-7 from "Crazy Ivan" the Czech. He was a guy who bought and worked on Mazdas. He and a couple other of his buddies lived in his parents house while they had moved back to Prague. He had a bunch of cars in the driveway, the back yard, and the garage. He has rotary block as decoration next to his front door.
When I went into his house to pay for the car, it was spotless! No dishes out, no messes, nothing you would expect from a bunch of single guy mechanics living in a house. Except for the Porsche GT3 sitting where the living room table belongs (on a show room floor no less).
Ivan told me he keeps the Porsche in the dining room as he was one ticket away from loosing his license. Every time he drives that car, he gets a ticket.
It really did look nice.
If this guy's driveway/bridge access to the street is so unsafe, how is it any worse than the neighbor across the street…as shown above? What a crock!
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