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Comment by lores | Hacker News Reader

Endearingly amateur work next to Untergunther, the people who built an apartment and a workshop behind the clock of one of Paris' most famous buildings, repaired it, and left.

https://urban-resources.net/untergunther.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/26/france.artnews

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Or there's Van Allen, who built himself a 14x10 concrete bedroom under part of London's Hampstead Heath...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22493078

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/mar/05/invisible-city-...

This is a great read, thank you for sharing. Van Allen comes across as capable and making the best of things after being dealt a bad hand of cards in life and being continually let down by interactions with state bureaucracy while trying to obtain secure housing. When he gets the message the state isn't going to help, he figures out how to look after himself. Then years later the state finally notices him and gets all stirred up about perceived terrorism/drug threats and gaols him for five years.

's/perceived/hallucinated/'

The law enforcement & security org leaders who went ballistic over one elderly homeless man, who dug himself a little dirt cave to live in, should have been forced to undergo psychiatric evaluations. What's next? Arresting poor kids for chewing gum, because "what if the gum was plastic explosives, and they were actually suicide bombers!"?

There's a lively discussion on that thread regarding whether the alleged "pipe gun" is actually a gun (the general agreement seems to be "no") and there are many comments praising his ingenuity.

I wanted to check how Mr. Van Allen is doing these days. From what I can gather he escaped an open prison less than a year into his sentence [1] and is mostly known in the media as "man jailed for stashing homemade gun". He was in the list of Sussex's "most wanted" [2] in 2021, but that's about it.

I wish someone would write a book about his life, but I guess they would have to find him first and I kinda hope they don't.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/police-hunt-for-prison-escapee-pu...

[2] https://www.sussexlive.co.uk/news/sussex-news/sussex-most-wa...

Ohhh this tops my first thought:

https://collider.com/secret-mall-apartment-jesse-eisenberg-j...

I gotta say fixing a clock is way more impressive than a secret mall apartment.

Any idea where you can watch that? All I can find is the SXSW event

Are they still active? Can't find anything much later than this 2012 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99z-GT8y1jA

But why does a French project have such a Germanic sounding name?

Contrary to rumour, the Parisiennes and Parisiens are not obligate monoglots?

The land of the Franks and germanic influences? I would never!

It really has a ring to it. Untergunther. Un. Ter. Gun. Ther.

"Unter und Gunther Winter Kneipe" - this must be subtle Gallic humor.

What an interesting group including their parent org. I can’t really find anything about them post when this article came out other than a single reference to the clockmaker getting an official position in 208 maintaining that pantheon clock due to his experience fixing it in the first place.

I wonder if they fell apart, all the details on them on the internet are only in French, or they actually practice good opsec and don’t talk about their shit online

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