Jeremy Mehrle has parlayed his love for Macs into a unique-looking basement office you can view pictures of online through Flickr.
Going by the nom de Flickr “Soyburger,” Mehrle’s photo collection has garnered interest far and wide since they were posted last summer. The images show a very modern-looking basement office graced with recessed lighting, a painted white floor, and about $4,000 worth of furniture — much of it from Ikea.
Mehrle recently told Macworld that he began his Mac collection back in 2000 with a Bondi Blue-colored iMac he bought from eBay.
“I eventually got the original Mac and fell completely in love,” he said. “I figured that any computer this advanced in 1984 had to be a good machine.”
His first new Mac was an iMac G4, which he bought in 2004. He said he’s been a switcher ever since.
“The collection became large and I needed a place to display them so I decided to finish my basement,” he said. Realizing that his collection — comprising Atari, Commodore, Compaq and Tandy computers as well as Macs — had gotten unwieldy, Mehrle decided to narrow the menagerie mainly to Macs, though he still keeps a few old PC relics, a Power Mac G4 Cube and an Apple II around for company as well.
“I really have no idea what I spent on all of these computers and I’m sure I’d be better off not knowing,” Mehrle mused. He noted that there are a few items that haven’t made it into the pictures, such as a vintage Apple Lisa and some Newton MessagePads — Apple’s long-defunct PDA.
Points of interest in the basement Mac collection include a bar made up of Mac Classic II systems and a wall of CRT-based iMacs.
Mehrle explained that he’s particularly fond of the iMac wall.
“It has every color of iMac, plus I can control the whole thing with VNC (Virtual Network Computing, a freeware remote access tool) so it’s easy to update the software and visuals,” Mehrle said.
Mehrle’s girlfriend gave him a pair of iPod posters as a Christmas present — they add a splash of color to the room.
“My girlfriend is not big on computers, but she likes they way I displayed them,” he said. “I think if I didn’t show them off in such an interesting way she would make sure my collection was a lot smaller.”