8800 Blue Lick Road

2020Viral real estate listing / interactive explorationdead

Also known as: Blue Lick Road House · The Kentucky DVD and Crack Mansion

8800 Blue Lick Road is a 2020 Redfin 3D tour of a Louisville church filled with energy drinks, bootleg DVDs, and hidden rooms that internet users speedran and praised for environmental storytelling.

8800 Blue Lick Road is the address of a former church in Louisville, Kentucky that went viral in October 2020 after its bizarre Redfin 3D virtual tour circulated on Twitter. The building, previously raided by police in 2014 for housing thousands of stolen goods, contained rooms packed with energy drinks, bootleg DVDs, a Halo action figure collection, and hidden rooms. Internet users praised the tour's "environmental storytelling" and began speedrunning it with categories like "tub%" and "100%."

virtual tour memesaccidental fame memescrime memes2020 memesgaming

Overview

8800 Blue Lick Road refers to both a physical building in Louisville, Kentucky and the internet sensation its 3D real estate walkthrough created. The property, a converted church at the intersection of Blue Lick Road and Bonaventure Boulevard, looked unremarkable from the outside but contained a staggering maze of rooms stuffed with consumer goods, bootleg media, and bizarre personal effects. The Redfin virtual tour allowed users to click through the space like a first-person video game, discovering hidden rooms, a basement DVD warehouse, and increasingly strange living arrangements. The building had a documented criminal history involving a large-scale fencing operation, adding an extra layer of intrigue to the already surreal tour.

The building at 8800 Blue Lick Road originally belonged to the Bonaventure Boulevard Church of Christ1. At some point, the church closed and the property changed hands. Neighbors noticed a shift in activity. "Slowly but surely they started having a lot of traffic coming in. You know, like the church used to have. More than the church actually," resident Thomas Gnadinger told WLKY1.

In 2014, Saint Matthews police, working with loss prevention units from Kroger and Target, raided the property after a four-year investigation1. Officers arrested Troy Curtis on charges of engaging in organized crime and receiving stolen property1. Police described the building as packed with stolen goods from across the county, possibly spanning multiple states, with enough merchandise to fill several trucks1.

A 3D virtual tour of the building was posted on Redfin on August 8th, 2020, as part of a real estate listing4. The property was listed at $375,000 with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 3,161 square feet5. The listing noted the building had been used as a church, daycare, and home business3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Redfin (3D tour), Twitter (viral spread)
Key People
Jenny Jaffe, Pat Ashe
Date
2020

The building at 8800 Blue Lick Road originally belonged to the Bonaventure Boulevard Church of Christ. At some point, the church closed and the property changed hands. Neighbors noticed a shift in activity. "Slowly but surely they started having a lot of traffic coming in. You know, like the church used to have. More than the church actually," resident Thomas Gnadinger told WLKY.

In 2014, Saint Matthews police, working with loss prevention units from Kroger and Target, raided the property after a four-year investigation. Officers arrested Troy Curtis on charges of engaging in organized crime and receiving stolen property. Police described the building as packed with stolen goods from across the county, possibly spanning multiple states, with enough merchandise to fill several trucks.

A 3D virtual tour of the building was posted on Redfin on August 8th, 2020, as part of a real estate listing. The property was listed at $375,000 with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 3,161 square feet. The listing noted the building had been used as a church, daycare, and home business.

How It Spread

On October 15th, 2020, a shooting was reported inside the building, with one person taken to University of Louisville Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. This incident drew some initial attention to the address.

In the early hours of October 26th, 2020, writer Jenny Jaffe tweeted a link to the Redfin 3D tour, saying she'd found it in a Facebook group. The tweet took off. Later that day, Pat Ashe tweeted that the tour was his "game of the year," a post that pulled in over 18,000 likes and 6,000 retweets within 24 hours.

The tour spread rapidly. Users on ResetEra discovered what appeared to be Curtis's eBay account with over 18,000 items listed. The forum thread, titled "For 375K This Kentucky DVD and Crack Mansion Can Be Yours," encouraged readers to explore the basement DVD bootleg warehouse and find a secret room. Users compared the experience to exploring a video game level, praising the "environmental storytelling" packed into every cluttered room.

People began posting speedruns of the virtual tour with categories like "tub%" (finding the bathtub as fast as possible) and "100%" (clicking through every accessible room). Wave3 News in Louisville covered the sudden online attention, noting the home "looks much larger than it appears at first glance".

Yogscast member Lewis recorded a guided video tour that picked up over 40,000 views in less than a day. On October 27th, Wave3 reported on the viral attention the listing was receiving.

Artist and developer Sam Blye, known for work on Manifold Garden, spent nearly eight hours ripping and porting the entire 8800 Blue Lick Road tour into VRChat. The VR recreation let users physically walk through the space, and YouTuber Coopertom uploaded a guided tour of the VRChat version. Kotaku noted the slightly pixelated VR port looked "as though the home had been ported to the PS2".

The property eventually sold for $350,000 on March 10th, 2022. Although the original Redfin tour was removed from the main listing, it remained accessible via direct link for some time.

Media

How to Use This Meme

The 8800 Blue Lick Road meme was mostly experiential rather than template-based. Users typically shared the Redfin 3D tour link and encouraged others to explore it blind, treating it like a discovery game. Common approaches included:

1

Share the tour link with no context and let friends react to what they find

2

Set speedrun challenges with custom categories (tub%, 100%, secret room%)

3

Screenshot the most bizarre rooms and post them as reaction images

4

Compare the experience to exploring a video game level with rich environmental storytelling

Cultural Impact

Multiple news outlets covered the viral tour. Wave3 News ran a segment on the attention the listing was attracting. Kotaku featured the VRChat preservation effort and called the tour "one of the strangest delights on the internet" that week. Andy Baio compiled a roundup that included an interview with the property's owner and a history of the building.

The speedrunning community's adoption of the tour blurred the line between real estate browsing and gaming. People applied gaming vocabulary to a Redfin listing, with completion categories, time trials, and the language of exploration games. The VRChat port by Sam Blye took preservation a step further, ensuring the experience would survive even after the listing was taken down.

Fun Facts

The 2014 police raid was the result of a four-year investigation that began in 2010

Neighbors thought the unusual traffic at the former church might be drug activity, but it turned out to be a massive fencing operation for stolen retail goods

The ResetEra thread that helped the tour go viral specifically instructed people to "really explore the basement DVD bootleg warehouse for a secret room"

The property's listing described it as "the building of your dreams" and noted it could be used for multiple purposes

The VRChat port took Sam Blye nearly 8 hours to rip and convert

Derivatives & Variations

Speedrun categories

— Users created tub%, 100%, and secret room% categories for timed runs through the Redfin tour[4]

VRChat recreation

— Sam Blye ported the entire 3D tour into VRChat for immersive walkthroughs[6]

Yogscast tour

— Lewis from Yogscast recorded a narrated exploration that hit 40,000+ views[4]

Frequently Asked Questions

8800 Blue Lick Road

2020Viral real estate listing / interactive explorationdead

Also known as: Blue Lick Road House · The Kentucky DVD and Crack Mansion

8800 Blue Lick Road is a 2020 Redfin 3D tour of a Louisville church filled with energy drinks, bootleg DVDs, and hidden rooms that internet users speedran and praised for environmental storytelling.

8800 Blue Lick Road is the address of a former church in Louisville, Kentucky that went viral in October 2020 after its bizarre Redfin 3D virtual tour circulated on Twitter. The building, previously raided by police in 2014 for housing thousands of stolen goods, contained rooms packed with energy drinks, bootleg DVDs, a Halo action figure collection, and hidden rooms. Internet users praised the tour's "environmental storytelling" and began speedrunning it with categories like "tub%" and "100%."

virtual tour memes accidental fame memes crime memes 2020 memes gaming

Overview

8800 Blue Lick Road refers to both a physical building in Louisville, Kentucky and the internet sensation its 3D real estate walkthrough created. The property, a converted church at the intersection of Blue Lick Road and Bonaventure Boulevard, looked unremarkable from the outside but contained a staggering maze of rooms stuffed with consumer goods, bootleg media, and bizarre personal effects. The Redfin virtual tour allowed users to click through the space like a first-person video game, discovering hidden rooms, a basement DVD warehouse, and increasingly strange living arrangements. The building had a documented criminal history involving a large-scale fencing operation, adding an extra layer of intrigue to the already surreal tour.

The building at 8800 Blue Lick Road originally belonged to the Bonaventure Boulevard Church of Christ. At some point, the church closed and the property changed hands. Neighbors noticed a shift in activity. "Slowly but surely they started having a lot of traffic coming in. You know, like the church used to have. More than the church actually," resident Thomas Gnadinger told WLKY.

In 2014, Saint Matthews police, working with loss prevention units from Kroger and Target, raided the property after a four-year investigation. Officers arrested Troy Curtis on charges of engaging in organized crime and receiving stolen property. Police described the building as packed with stolen goods from across the county, possibly spanning multiple states, with enough merchandise to fill several trucks.

A 3D virtual tour of the building was posted on Redfin on August 8th, 2020, as part of a real estate listing. The property was listed at $375,000 with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 3,161 square feet. The listing noted the building had been used as a church, daycare, and home business.

Origin & Background

Platform
Redfin (3D tour), Twitter (viral spread)
Key People
Jenny Jaffe, Pat Ashe
Date
2020

The building at 8800 Blue Lick Road originally belonged to the Bonaventure Boulevard Church of Christ. At some point, the church closed and the property changed hands. Neighbors noticed a shift in activity. "Slowly but surely they started having a lot of traffic coming in. You know, like the church used to have. More than the church actually," resident Thomas Gnadinger told WLKY.

In 2014, Saint Matthews police, working with loss prevention units from Kroger and Target, raided the property after a four-year investigation. Officers arrested Troy Curtis on charges of engaging in organized crime and receiving stolen property. Police described the building as packed with stolen goods from across the county, possibly spanning multiple states, with enough merchandise to fill several trucks.

A 3D virtual tour of the building was posted on Redfin on August 8th, 2020, as part of a real estate listing. The property was listed at $375,000 with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 3,161 square feet. The listing noted the building had been used as a church, daycare, and home business.

How It Spread

On October 15th, 2020, a shooting was reported inside the building, with one person taken to University of Louisville Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. This incident drew some initial attention to the address.

In the early hours of October 26th, 2020, writer Jenny Jaffe tweeted a link to the Redfin 3D tour, saying she'd found it in a Facebook group. The tweet took off. Later that day, Pat Ashe tweeted that the tour was his "game of the year," a post that pulled in over 18,000 likes and 6,000 retweets within 24 hours.

The tour spread rapidly. Users on ResetEra discovered what appeared to be Curtis's eBay account with over 18,000 items listed. The forum thread, titled "For 375K This Kentucky DVD and Crack Mansion Can Be Yours," encouraged readers to explore the basement DVD bootleg warehouse and find a secret room. Users compared the experience to exploring a video game level, praising the "environmental storytelling" packed into every cluttered room.

People began posting speedruns of the virtual tour with categories like "tub%" (finding the bathtub as fast as possible) and "100%" (clicking through every accessible room). Wave3 News in Louisville covered the sudden online attention, noting the home "looks much larger than it appears at first glance".

Yogscast member Lewis recorded a guided video tour that picked up over 40,000 views in less than a day. On October 27th, Wave3 reported on the viral attention the listing was receiving.

Artist and developer Sam Blye, known for work on Manifold Garden, spent nearly eight hours ripping and porting the entire 8800 Blue Lick Road tour into VRChat. The VR recreation let users physically walk through the space, and YouTuber Coopertom uploaded a guided tour of the VRChat version. Kotaku noted the slightly pixelated VR port looked "as though the home had been ported to the PS2".

The property eventually sold for $350,000 on March 10th, 2022. Although the original Redfin tour was removed from the main listing, it remained accessible via direct link for some time.

Media

How to Use This Meme

The 8800 Blue Lick Road meme was mostly experiential rather than template-based. Users typically shared the Redfin 3D tour link and encouraged others to explore it blind, treating it like a discovery game. Common approaches included:

1

Share the tour link with no context and let friends react to what they find

2

Set speedrun challenges with custom categories (tub%, 100%, secret room%)

3

Screenshot the most bizarre rooms and post them as reaction images

4

Compare the experience to exploring a video game level with rich environmental storytelling

Cultural Impact

Multiple news outlets covered the viral tour. Wave3 News ran a segment on the attention the listing was attracting. Kotaku featured the VRChat preservation effort and called the tour "one of the strangest delights on the internet" that week. Andy Baio compiled a roundup that included an interview with the property's owner and a history of the building.

The speedrunning community's adoption of the tour blurred the line between real estate browsing and gaming. People applied gaming vocabulary to a Redfin listing, with completion categories, time trials, and the language of exploration games. The VRChat port by Sam Blye took preservation a step further, ensuring the experience would survive even after the listing was taken down.

Fun Facts

The 2014 police raid was the result of a four-year investigation that began in 2010

Neighbors thought the unusual traffic at the former church might be drug activity, but it turned out to be a massive fencing operation for stolen retail goods

The ResetEra thread that helped the tour go viral specifically instructed people to "really explore the basement DVD bootleg warehouse for a secret room"

The property's listing described it as "the building of your dreams" and noted it could be used for multiple purposes

The VRChat port took Sam Blye nearly 8 hours to rip and convert

Derivatives & Variations

Speedrun categories

— Users created tub%, 100%, and secret room% categories for timed runs through the Redfin tour[4]

VRChat recreation

— Sam Blye ported the entire 3D tour into VRChat for immersive walkthroughs[6]

Yogscast tour

— Lewis from Yogscast recorded a narrated exploration that hit 40,000+ views[4]

Frequently Asked Questions