About Basement Retro Club

Basement Retro Club is a collection of written works, thoughts, and analyses by John Thomas. If you grew up in the 1980s or 90s, you are witnessing many pop culture trends of that era returning to capture the minds of a new generation or recapture the hearts of those who smile at those memories. These include retro gaming, movies, television, books, and more.

You may be trying to make it through the middle years of your life, focusing on your health, fitness, wellness, food, and technology while raising children and wondering how you got old so quickly. Or perhaps you need something to read during your kid's next travel baseball (or soccer, volleyball, softball, etc) tournament and somehow found yourself here.

I write about this crazy but rewarding time in life. It's "retro" in some ways but more about navigating a world where the music you listen to is suddenly considered "oldies."

Operationally, Basement Retro Club has two things: a link blog and a newsletter. Each has a different frequency, and my end goal is to post interesting links several times per week with some commentary.

The newsletter will be a bit different. It will have a paid subscription tier that focuses more on my experience trying to create and grow multiple revenue streams and passive income. You may not have much interest in the paid newsletter if you are here to read about Nintendo, Saved by the Bell, MTV, or pop culture in general. That's ok, and that's why I'm walling off the newsletter into a separate tier.

Why is a newsletter on multiple revenue streams and passive income interesting? Generation X and early millennials have experienced a transformation in how people make money. Many of our parents worked at the same company for 40 years. Many of us went from company to company every few years but mainly relied on one main source for our income. Our kids' generation use multiple, diverse methods for their income, such as podcasting, social media, and the low cost of computing power, which was unavailable 20 years ago. With this change comes different benefits and risks.

I want to reap the benefits of this transformation. Perhaps my experience over the past 25 years can help me accomplish that goal, or that experience could prevent me from seeing a better solution. The newsletter will discuss my path, successes, and failures I encountered while figuring out how to work through this transformation.

If this sounds interesting or you're experiencing this lifestyle, follow me here or on Threads, and let's discuss it.