This Man’s House Was Turned Into A Pokemon Gym And It’s A Disaster
The best thing about Pokemon Go is that it forces you to get up off your ass and do some exercise. Of course, hunting for Pokemon is an odd excuse for exercise, but get it in wherever you can right?
Like everyone else in the country this past week, designer Boon Sheridan downloaded the new Pokemon Go app. Rather than noticing the joy other gamers seem to have, Sheridan noticed something very odd.
The gamer's very own house showed up as one of the app’s gyms — absolute chaos followed.
Boon Sheridan is a designer who lives in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
He and his family live in a house that was originally built as a church in the 19th Century.
Their lives changed forever when Boon found out that their house was designated as one of the important gyms in Pokemon Go.
Gyms were designated by Niantic from points of information on a map. So naturally, churches and parks will be tagged as gyms.
He didn’t think much about it — until droves of people came flocking to his house and stuck around for minutes on end.
Imagine driving up to a stranger’s house in the middle of the night just to train Pokemon for five minutes. That takes some kind of weird dedication that apparently only this app was able to evoke.
While some of the gamers go up close to his house, he noticed that others found a “hack” by staying in the park across his house to do their training.
Those people who chose to stay at the park were obviously raised with more manners than the others.
And apparently, he isn’t even the owner of his own gym!
I want to know how this happened, because obviously, Sheridan owns the “gym.” How did this guy get into the picture?
Sheridan is very amused about the whole thing, but he isn’t very happy about having gamers prancing about his house in the middle of the night. So he started researching.
Sheridan claims that maybe the map used by the developer was really old, but no one really bothered to check whether the old church still existed. According to Boon, he hasn't been able to find a way to bring the issue up with Niantic.
He does interact with the gamers that stop by his house, though. So I guess he isn’t completely ticked off — not yet, at least.
For the most part, those gamers are lucky he’s just having fun with it.
But gamers, be respectful. The man has his own Pokemon to worry about, you know.