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

Saturday, March 25, 1995

The Hippies Who Lived in the Driveway

Allen: Mel met these two hippies at a Grateful Dead show in Charlotte in the spring of '95 and told them they could park their van in the driveway overnight. Well, the van broke down there, and they lived in the driveway for the next two months.

Jay: They nearly drove Scott crazy. He was bitching about it every day.

Allen: They both slept in the van, but showered and shit in the downstairs bathroom.

Jay: And they weren't even very nice to us, seeing as how they were mooching off our facilities.

Allen: Their van was parked right between the side porch and the garage, so it was always in the way. You had to walk around it just to get into the back door. Finally, they painted the sign for the Gates of Beauty body shop in Carrboro. And it was the shittiest sign ever. On one side, there was a crashed car, and on the other, a rebuilt front end. It looked terrible. But that sign was perched on top of their building up until like, just five years ago. And the job got them just enough cash to fix their van and move out of the Pink House driveway for good.

- as told by Allen & Jay, 4/11/09