Pink House Forever

The Pink House was like an underground United Nations. Chapel Hill's aspiring artists, musicians, poets, DJ's, activists, actors, writers, nudists, flutists, knuckleheads, and couch-surfers, all living together in (relative) harmony, united by their common bohemianism. Life inside the Pink House often consisted of weird shit happening at all hours, every day, it rarely stopped. And there's something about that place that won't allow the vibe to ever fully dissipate. / PinkHouseForever.org

Pink House. 130 North Street. Back In The Day.

Fellow residents from the 1991-94 years were Clint Curtis, Shyam Patel, Raj Krishnasami, Lydia Craft, Jess Deltac, Kyle York Spencer, Caroline Rivers Hall, Mel Lanham, Michelle Sinnott, Jay Murray, N'Gai Wright, Scott Bullock (who crashed on the couch for a year before finally moving in), Bryan Ellerson, Karen Hurka, Sally Stryker, Ryan Mathias, Charlie Speight, Chris Palmatier, Trent McDevitt, and Steve William.

Besides holdovers and returnees Jay, Scott, Mel (& Laverne!), Chris, and N'Gai, residents during 1995-97 included Ian Williams, Greg Humphreys, Allen Sellars (who, like Jay, lived at both the Pink House and 401 Pritchard), Zak Bisacky, James Dasher, Linden Elstran, Jiffer Bourguignon, Grant Tennille (who first made the scene as a fixture in N'Gai's room circa summer '93), Zia Zareem, Ben Folds, Tom Holden, and Chris "Chip" Chapman.

- Erik Ose

Friday, March 31, 1989

Back in the Spring of '89

I'm home for a week's vacation in RI. Taking things slow and easy. Right. Anyway, so my folks have me on trash detail, going through piles and secret stashes of all kinds of long-forgotten shit that's accumulated as a result of my adventures and travels. Naturally, there's lots of treasures and funky stuff. So I come across the 57th pile, and check it, turns out to be DTH's and other campus publications that I hoarded when first coming down to check UNC out back in the spring of '89.

What's going on in that world? It's a wild one, with places like Fowler's, Colonel Chutney's, and the Carolina Theatre on Franklin Street still in full effect.

The Cradle has just re-opened its doors in February in its "new" location across from Hardee's. SEAC members are staging a protest against dolphin-killing tuna expeditions, with Don Whittier at the helm. Brien Lewis has just defeated Trey Loughran in an SBP runoff election. Outgoing BSM leader Kenneth Perry is shaking things up by saying some pissed off things that white Carolina students don't want to hear.

This woman named Kasey Jones is producing controversial lab! theater plays. Some cat named Ian Williams is writing funny columns for the DTH. Dave Suroweicki is the DTH assistant photo editor coming on strong. Ed Davis, or Ruffin Poole, or whoever the fuck that kid was, is cutting up as editor of the Phoenix. Speaking of Davises, there's this media whore named Gene who seems to get his ass quoted in every freaking DTH article published.

And there's even a radical new voice on the scene, some kid named Dana Lumsden (and yes, he is a male) writing guest columns about how George Bush needs to stop helping his friends profit off the arms trade while he's hypocritically leading a hyped up War on Drugs.

- e-mail to Dana, 7/23/98