The Bamboo House, the Purple House, and the Russian House

The Pink House tried to give back to the community by running exchange programs with a few other group houses in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. We hung out at their cribs, they hung out at ours.


Flyer for party at Bamboo House, 1993

Two of our faves included the Bamboo House, aka 108 Kenan Street, where Susan Comfort, Sarah Davis, and other SEAC veterans lived (and Caroline Hall used to, and Caroline Philson lived for a semester, with Deidre Campbell and her then-boyfriend Chuck up in the attic, who would later hook up the anti-Jesse Helms cause with TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of free copies while working the 3rd shift at a local copy shop), and the Purple House at 220 McCauley, home to Ian Williams, Clay Boyer, Matt McMichaels, and Lindsay Bowen.




Invite for Purple House Halloween Crawl, 1992

And then there was 120 Mallette Street, where Tony Deifell set a standard for off-campus house parties that we later tried to live up to at the Pink House, by hosting such events as The Furious Party. It was the first off-campus bash I went to at UNC when I got to campus as a freshman in the fall of ’89, a party so historic it had its own t-shirts.

Later, Tony’s younger brother Dave took over management of the spot, and it survived throughout the mid-00's as a refuge for anarchists and beatniks. When local DJ and then-manager of Internationalist Books Darren Hunicutt lived there, touring noise bands from around the country made the basement space at 120 Mallette a regular stop on the underground house party circuit.

Also 505 N. Greensboro St. in Carrboro; the house on McCauley where Caroline Philson lived; 210 Ransom Street, where Lydia Craft moved when she left the Pink House; and the amazing Russian House, where Chris Pedigo held court in a spooky, decaying, UNC-owned mansion surrounded by woods on a hill overlooking the Dean Dome.


Erik, Chris Pedigo and Pam Hartley at Russian House, 1992

In 2003 or 2004, UNC finally developed the tract where the Russian House stands, also known as the Baity House. The surrounding woods were replaced with a new married student housing complex, Baity Hill. The Russian House was preserved, and became the complex's office and community center. If those walls could talk!


The Russian House circa 2007.

Letter to Wall Street Journal re BCC

Dear Editor,

Re your October 9 letter to the editor from University of North Carolina Student Body President John Moody, who claimed to represent majority student opinion on the Black Cultural Center issue: Not all of the story was told.

Mr. Moody was elected last spring by a bare majority of just 43 votes out of more than 3,000 cast. His victory was strongly aided by virtue of his being a white male member of the greek system, running against a liberal, Indian female student. She firmly supported the construction of a free-standing Black Cultural Center. Ironically, her narrow defeat can more accurately be traced to lackluster support among black students concerned she would not fight hard enough for the BCC, and not an outpouring of student opinion against its construction.

What Mr. Moody's election did illustrate is that student opinion at UNC-Chapel Hill is somewhat evenly divided over the BCC. More disturbingly, it showed the issue's potential to be exploited by self-serving politicians. Mr. Moody ran what many perceived to be a subtly racist campaign, using his stance against the BCC to foster division, not dialogue. Recently, North Carolina Lt. Gov. and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Gardner has seized on the BCC controversy in much the same way. Trailing in the polls, he has also taken an aggressive stand against the BCC, hoping to further politicize this campus issue by appealing to white North Carolinians' racial fears.

I am not one of the student activists who have dedicated their time to building a broad-based, multicultural student coalition in support of the BCC. I am an ordinary, run of the mill UNC-Chapel Hill student who happens to be white and progressive. I support construction of the BCC, and there are many others like me. My anger is reserved for those who would exploit this issue for personal political gain, and in doing so contribute to the racial divisions they so hypocritically profess to deplore.

Erik Ose, Senior, UNC-Chapel Hill
130 North Street
Chapel Hill, NC

(This letter was sent, but predictably, the right wing boneheads in charge of the WSJ's editorial page didn't publish it.)

Clinton/Gore GOTV rally at NCCU

I've only seen Erika a couple of times this semester. Did I tell you that I ran into her dad at a pre-election rally for Clinton/Gore, at NCCU in Durham, held about a week before Nov. 3? All I had to tell him was that I was a friend of Dana's, and his eyes lit right up! Then he started screaming and hollering and asking me why Erika couldn't be going out with a nice boy like that polite Mark Bibbs or somebody. I think he actually said he was looking forward to seeing you over Thanksgiving.

- Letter to Dana 11/20/92

Pink House East Coast Road Trip, Fall 1992

C: You remember stopping at the Dunkin Donuts on our way home?
E: No, not really.
C: They were giving you a hard time about using the bathroom without buying anything. And you really had to go.
E: But somebody else was buying stuff, right?
C: Sure, but you weren’t. So when we finished up and went outside, you walked around to the drive-in window, and we were all like, what is he doing now? Then you peed in the speaker.
E: No way. Seriously?
C: I was there!

- Caroline & Erik, 2009