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, November 9, 1996

Fuck Jesse Helms!

Sounds like things in your life are upward bound, which is cool. How'd you get to meet Diana Ross, and why are you speaking in eighty languages a day?

...

All I can say about the outcome of the elections in North Carolina is Fuck Jesse Helms! That bastard managed to locate 1.3 million dumbasses who were willing to vote for him. How does he do it?

Anyhow. At least if Jesse dies within the next six years then Gov. Hunt can appoint Harvey to his seat. After all, he is 75 years old. Actually, I'm even happier about the fact that now I can fundraise against Helms for at least another 6 years. Whether I'll be down here that long is another question.

Oh, and we did manage to beat two backwards-ass Republican Congressmen, former Rep.'s Fred Heineman and David Funderburk, who represented the two districts covering Orange, Durham, Wake, Chatham, and a bunch of surrounding counties.

Overall, we registered more than 10,000 young voters through MOVE, plus distributed 20,000 additional voter registration forms and 50,000 voter guides around the state.

There's a Pink House party tonight, and I think Lem's going to be DJ'ing. You should see his little girl Donya, she is so adorable. She's almost two years old now, I think.

Speaking of mutual friends, I also talked to Derek Shadid the other day, he called me up earlier this week to offer his condolences about the election. I'm definitely going to make a road trip out to Oklahoma City to see him around January or February.

When I went up to DC for the AIDS quilt recently, I stayed with Caroline Philson, who just started this year at Howard Law. It was good to see her, except that she's living in a really fucked up part of town, and there were four gunshots across the street from us while I was there.

- e-mail to Lydia