Get your mancave “mantiques” from Mylo Macario at SD Tuff Stuff

“Mantiques,” says the sign. “SD Tuff Stuff. The Mancave Store.”

This I’ve got to see. We’re on a less-visited stretch of W. Main in El Cajon.

Guy’s in the next room, working on a weld. So I look around. Room’s filled with every kind of guy thing, from doorstopper chunks of railroad track to anvils to old record players to antique telescopes to curved cement trowels which you could turn into cool mancave lampshades, to old milk cans, to long-nozzled oil squirters, to an 1886 school bell, to toy earth movers, to an ancient model truck, “Marcrest Livestock Lines.”

“This place has saved my life,” says Mylo Macario, when we get talking. He’s turning 52. He says it has taken him all this time to find his true calling.

Well, actually, he knew he was good at making things way back, like in welding class at high school. But the day he really knew he was good at making things was in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. “I was a Navy Seabee, attached to the army, to build everything from battle ladders to fighting positions on roofs.”

Then one day, Macario had to figure a way to stop the enemy firing RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) from their pinch point just down the road. “We put up serpentine concrete barriers which slowed down their [vehicular] attacks. But they’d just walk out and shoot an RPG over the top and try to destroy our strong point. The Army said, ‘What can we do?’ And I came up with the idea of using chainlink fence, stretched across the road between two ‘goal posts.’”

He constructed several. And, under threat of enemy fire and in extreme heat, he and his men scrambled out into enemy territory with them. They set the heavy nets up. Macario collapsed from heat stroke. But they stopped the RPGs.

Years, and a lot of PTSD treatment later, Mylo Macario has drawn on those Seabee skills again to create a life he loves. “I was so tired of working for The Man. Big organizations. I just came in here to buy a wheelbarrow. The guy said ‘anything else?’ And I said, ‘Yes. I want a shop.’ And come to find out he was actually looking to lease out this space. So I went for it. Left my job. Took a chance.”

That was earlier this year. Macario has since created this refuge for men, antiquers, and steampunks. One of his most popular items is the blacksmith’s forge blower. “The whole Forged In Fire TV show has created a blacksmith craze,” he says. “So, I sell hammers, different tools, horseshoes, anvils. With larger anvils, people make knives, axes. This anvil would cost you $750.”

But actually, he spends most of his time creating custom metal fabrication solutions for customers. “Just like Ramadi, in a way,” he says. “I’ve worked on Model A’s, four of them. A brew hood, for the brewery next door. I’ve built metal lattice work, vine hoops, I have rewelded doors onto trailers, I’ve even shown other people how to weld. I’m happy.”

But honestly, what’s with the mancave cult? In this day?

“We all need a refuge. I sure do. This is mine. And it’s not sexist. I also do she-caves.”