Mel and Martha's pleasant living

Mel left the Pink House in '95, right as she and Martha graduated from UNC-CH and the Plastic House was shutting down.

The two of them (plus Laverne) joined forces in a little brick apartment complex off Pleasant Drive in Carrboro, which was always a fun place to visit.

Mel and Martha kept a steady stream of yummy snacks on tap, cool movies available to watch, and interesting games to play. That apartment was full of laughter and good times.

While plotting her next career move, Mel served a stint delivering pizzas around Chapel Hill and Carrboro. It was around the same time that N'Gai returned to town, bounced from Cole Street to the Dungeon, and starting throwing an early morning paper route in addition to his work laying out the Chapel Hill News. So 1995 was a year that Pink House alums took it to the streets, except for Jay, whose giant white Beast of a truck died and began a permanent residency blocking the Pink House driveway. Taking up where the hippies left off.

The Dungeon

The Cole Street crew changed residences in 1995. They went even deeper into the historic Pine Knolls neighborhood, down the street from Doug Clark's eye-catching house that the Hot Nuts built, ending up at a duplex apartment at 135-A Johnson Street. It was instantly dubbed the Dungeon.

Owned by recently-gone-bankrupt local slumlord (or "real estate baron," as he preferred to be called) George Tate, the Dungeon was an unforgettable spot. Not very big, but home to outsized egos, and a never-ending supply of plots and schemes. Roy Ayers' "Running Away" was the unofficial theme song. Plans and strategies to change the world were abundant. Grassroots business ventures were hatched, and you never knew if whatever you did (or with who) might end up on video. But times were tight, the heat didn't work very well, and the winter of '95 was a cold one.

The Dungeon phone has been long distance disabled to prevent the kind of outrageous unknown phone charges that were plaguing them, what with random motherfuckers rolling through at all times. - Letter to Dana, 4/10/95

Life in the Dungeon finally drove N'Gai to the ultimate act of desperation – moving back into the Pink House in mid-1996.