Mr. Breaker's Bunker
Written by: Coupe
Boxing is, and always will be, one of the greatest and oldest escapes for the working class. Two fighters at the peak of physical conditioning trying to outwit eachother in the ring of honor, at times it blurs the line between sports and art. Mr. Breaker's Bunker in uptown Raleigh has became one of North Carolina's most popular venues for the time-honored sport, with a dedicated gym in its spacious basement-floors and a luxurious small-hall arena up top for hosting matches. Now a lot of people notice that the owner and namesake of the place, Mr. Breaker himself, is rarely on the main floor during opening hours. That's because he's downstairs, checking out the real fights: Around the back of the gym, in rooms that on paper belong to an adjacent building, Mr. Breaker's Bunker hosts a different kind of fighting beneath the notice of the authorities, the sort where the audience are betting with money that isn't theirs and where some matches only end when one of the fighters' heads is five feet away from its body. As well as being a second source of undeclared income, Mr. Breaker uses the underground levels of the Bunker as his hub for illicit trades and deals, making him one of Raleigh's more popular and well-financed fixers and employers. Word to the wise, chummer: If you're caught causing a scene, pray like heck they'll take you outside and not downstairs.Purpose / Function
The main floor is a classic boxing theater, with a big ring in the middle and seats all around for spectators to come and watch all sorts of professional fighting-matches from amature to professional, as well as an open-bar and a 'takeout mezzanine', an elevated dining area where you can order food from nearby restaurants and takeouts and have it delivered to your table. Underneath the arena is a fully stocked and staffed gym, primarily for boxers but no strict rules or exclusivity for non-boxing members to use, and behind that is a second, smaller boxing-ring and bar, for the less legitimate bloodsports frequented by Raleigh's underworld.
Alterations
The interior of the building's had a lot of renovations over the years, but its biggest changes came in the 60's when the above-ground floors were turned from a gym into a dedicated small-hall arena, with the gym moved into the freshly acquired bunker below. The biggest change down below however, is where one of the reinforced-concrete walls has been knocked through to illegally expand the basement-space into one of the adjacent buildings' basement, prodiving a nice unlisted set of rooms to discreetly host their not-as-legal matches.
Architecture
Up top, the Bunker's decoration is modelled after an old-english pub sort of look, with plenty of synthetic oak veneers and brass trims on everything but the ring itself, and while the furniture's only made of synthetic leather, it's the comfiest kind of synthetic leather money can buy. Down below, some of that aesthetic is still around but the overall design is far more ascetic, reflecting its former life as an emergency bunker and the practicality needed in a gym's enviroment.
History
The bunker was one of the more recent structures in uptown Raleigh, having its roots in the irrational fears of a billionaire called Brian Chandler. See, Brian was by all means a decent guy for a rich business-mogul, and pretty well-known for his acts of philanthropy around North Carolina, sponsoring hospitals and buying crateloads of toys for the local orphanages and such, but he was also paranoid, and I meal real paranoid. Never left his house without a bulletproof vest, had all his purchases and employments screened weeks in advance and even paid Crash-Cart to have an EMT-group and ambulance on standby at his house 24/7.
More than anything though, Chandler was paranoid about the day society would collapse. Nuclear war, violent revolution, insect spirits, Brian was convinced that one of these things would turn Raleigh into a warzone and he'd be one of the first to go. To remedy this terror in 2056, Chandler put a sizeable amount of his fortune in comissioning the construction of two secure underground bunkers, capable of withstanding a direct hit from a nuke and remaining fully self-sufficient with specialised drones doing all the work, one of them beneath his home in Glenwood and another in Raleigh's northern parts, adjacent to his current workplace and underneath a small gym he frequented back when he wasn't scared of everything, then called 'The Jawbreaker'
Damn son, ain't he late by a century to be worrying about nukes?
Maybe for the full-scale nuclear war that was all the rage back then, since all the Megas have alternatives that are more fiscally responsible than turning someplace into a radioactive hellscape, but I wouldn't put some kind of terrorist act completely out of the question, far-fetched as it might be. Besides, the contractors aren't gonna let a cash-cow like that walk away, are they?So Chandler had these two bunkers under construction and nearly bankrupted himself doing so, having to hand over large portions of his law-firm, Chandler & Weston, to the local megacorps along with a few other properties just to get the permits to build downtown. But five years later construction finished, and the guy had his ultimate security. Chandler's life took a weird turn for the worse after that, because once the bunkers were finished and he took a look inside the one at his home, he was pretty reluctant to leave. Like, ever. Chandler went from a shy but socially-active phinanthropist to a complete hermit over the span of about a week, conducting all his business remotely from the confines of his bunker at home. Chandler was able to keep what was left of his company going along, but the budgetary concerns that come with selling off chunks of your company to fund a nuclear bunker meant he had to life pretty frugally to keep the business going and pay for upkeep on his bunkers, even if he wasn't likely to ever visit the one uptown. Then in 2064, Crash 2.0 happened, and the world got a little chaotic as the matrix imploded on itself again. For Brian Chandler's fragile and paranoia-wracked mind, this was the last straw: Later that day, after being told what was happening in the aftermath of his company's network going down, Chandler snapped and closed the door to his personal bunker, along with cutting off all contact with the outside world completely. When it became apparent that Chandler wasn't coming out any time soon, let-alone managing his assets or paying his bills, Raleigh city-council decided at the end of a long legal discussion to quietly reposess Chandler's posessions and hand his company over to the board of directors. Chandler's actual house was put on auction but with the former owner still potentially living underneath, nobody put in a bid, and so the house became property of the city and made into a local tourist attraction. All that remained was the second bunker, still gathering dust underneath the gym in uptown Raleigh. The establishmen'ts new owner, an illegal gambling-mogul and boxing-enthusiast called Roger Breaker, decided he wanted to make some use out of the property sitting beneath the one he had acquired a few years back. The bunker was set to go for auction, but through legal chicanery, Roger was able to convince Raleigh that he should 'inherit' the bunker.
'Legal chicanery' in this case meaning he sent some guys like me around to intimidate the right people before the discussion.Over the years, the bunker was stripped of most of its interior and turned into an underground gym, with all the old equipment (and plenty of new stuff) moved down from the gym up top, which was renovated and turned into a proper small-hall boxing arena. The loans needed to pull this off in the '60s was monumental, but Mr. Breaker, being an experienced criminal shot-caller, had the perfect way to pay off his loans without cutting into his legitimate profits: While renovation was underway, one of the reinforced walls was knocked down and a near-identical facade along with a hidden door was put in its place. Slowly and under of the legitimate works going on around them, a crew of Roger's men worked around the clock digging out a tunnel into the basement-floors of one of the adjacent buildings. Nobody was really using those basement floors anyway, and the owner of the building above was 'convinced' by Mr. Breaker to forget they existed, and so in those unmarked and unlisted rooms, Rory set up a second boxing-hall, once where he could make a fortune selling fights to the compulsive-gamblers of Raleigh's underworld, and set up different kind of fights that might be frowned upon in legitimate establishments. Renamed 'Mr. Breaker's Bunker', the establishment has since exploded in popularity, from a small but reputable gym to an outright arena, where anyone looking to get their fix of violence can have a drink and watch two men liquify eachother's brains with their fists.
Alternative Names
The Bunker, The Red Ring
Type
Arena
Parent Location
Owner
Characters in Location
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