Boring Company filings: first look at Elon Musk’s ‘brick store’

Screenshot

• The Boring Company plans to open
  a retail store near its headquarters to sell bricks of
  excavated Earth. 
• Its first tunnel is scheduled to open December 10 with a
  launch party.
• CEO Elon Musk also recently announced
  plans to build a 50-foot “watchtower” out of the bricks in its
  headquarters. 

Your chance to buy bricks made from Elon Musk’s Boring
Company‘s excavated Earth appears to be getting closer.

The company
filed plans last month with the city of Hawthorne, California
— near both the Boring Company and SpaceX’s headquarters — to
turn a former cabinet shop into a retail store for its Lego-like
bricks.

Here’s what the site may look like, from the filings:

The Boring Company

It’s not much different than the current decor of the building,
and the surrounding neighborhood, though the fresh coat of paint
may be welcomed.

Google Maps

“The proposed colors avoid monotony throughout the project site
and blend well together,” the submission to the city council
reads. “The color scheme does not create an incompatible look to
the surrounding neighborhood.”

Last week, Elon Musk tweeted plans to build a 50-foot “watchtower”
near the Boring Company’s test tunnel near the proposed retail
site.

Read more: 
Here’s
a look inside the first of Elon Musk’s underground Hyperloop
tunnels in LA

The bricks, made from natural waste of digging tunnels, are
supposed to help bring down the costs of excavating —
historically the biggest drawback to tunneling versus surface
construction. The Boring Company hopes to reduce traffic
congestion by transporting people in pods beneath roadways
through tunnels with smaller diameters than traditional ones, at
up to 160 mph.

Critics of the Boring Company’s vision, including a
number of transportation
analysts, argue that improving mass transit systems
would be more efficient (and likely less expensive) strategy
toward decreasing traffic. Some transportation
experts say that
Boring’s tunnels would create even more gridlock.

The first tunnel is set to open December 10, Musk recently tweeted.