End of a WXYC Era: Thirty Years' Worth of Posters Gone

On this beautiful late spring evening, Ellie and Neill invited me to the opening of an exhibit at the old Chapel Hill Museum on Franklin Street that featured an installation they did in conjunction with their Abbey Court Community Project.

While hanging out there and enjoying the art, some dude came in all wild-eyed, and spread the word that the following Monday, thirty years' worth of posters that had graced the walls of WXYC were going to be torn down. In contrast to WXDU's studios at Duke, which for years have looked like a dingy dump with boring, barren decor, nearly every inch of the walls, windows, doors and even ceilings within WXYC's space in the Student Union were covered with posters, stickers, photos, clippings, and other memorabilia of the station's long history.

The story was apparently that the wing of the Union where the studios had been located since the early 80s was finally being renovated, and to bring it up to fire code all the posters and artifacts had to be removed.

I went home, grabbed my camera, and drove up to campus. Somebody let me into the Union, and then the station, where I hadn't set foot in nearly fifteen years.

Possibly the last time before that I was up there was when N'Gai and myself were guests on a show John Svara was doing circa '97 or '98, which we burst in on after hearing him on the radio and figuring it would be fun to stop by and say hi. He let us pick out tracks for the rest of the night, and it was a legendary broadcast. I should have imposed on Jay to let me crash his show a few times during the dozen plus years he was on air from the early 90s until 2005, but I never wanted to disrupt his sonic art. Jay recorded almost every one of his shows on hundreds of cassette tapes, and it would be great to hear them if he ever gets around to digitizing some.

XYC was a major influence on life at the Pink House, and not just because of the number of jocks who lived there. The dining room boombox was tuned to 89.3 FM day and night for years (when Jay wasn't playing tapes of his shows). I created all the mixtapes for our early parties at the station, crossed paths with Clint (and Ian!) for the first ever time at the 70's dance in 1991, and bonded with N'Gai when he sat in on my show a few times right after he and Dana hung out with Clint and me at the house over Thanksgiving that same year. We discovered Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion during one memorable show that also featured guest DJ Myron B. Pitts, and it remains my pick for XYC's coolest record in the library.

Anyway, the jocks on duty on this June '11 night were super chill.

They had no problem with me wandering around the station for the next few hours, documenting everything.

Other jocks came through to pay their own respects to the posters, including the dude who had tipped me to the situation, and some posed for pics meant to send the message that they would have to go through us in order to tear down all the artifacts! In reality, everyone knew it was the end of an era.

What was so hard to believe about that night was that everything at the station looked almost exactly like I remembered it when I was a DJ and sub circa '91-'93. Very little had changed. It made it all the more heartbreaking to realize after that weekend, it would never look that way again.

The Pink House Movie: due for wild success July 2005

RESUME

Ian Williams

Brooklyn, NY

EXPERIENCE:

Writer/Director, The Pink House, a college comedy. 1999-present. Oversaw a disastrous production that included insane actors, a broken hand, the hottest two days in North Carolina history, a typhoon that washed away the set, a lightning bolt that nearly killed the art crew, and a lead gaffer who had gone off rage medication and threatened to slug Tessa. Due for wild success July 2005.

As weird as the people I lived with in the house

Filmmaker Magazine, Spring 2002

IN FOCUS: Mary Glucksman profiles six new feature films in production.

By MARY GLUCKSMAN

THE PINK HOUSE

"Woody Allen does Animal House" is how co-directors Tessa Blake and Ian Williams describe The Pink House, their pungent comedy about five left-leaning college housemates and the conservative sorority next door. Containing a '20s-set prologue and 10 animated sequences, the film, says co-director and writer Williams, "is as intense, philosophical, independent and weird as the people I lived with in the house the film is based on."

Blake and Williams met as undergraduates at UNC's Chapel Hill campus. By the time they reconnected several years after graduation she had launched a film career with her documentary Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me, and he had parlayed his cultural studies screed, 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail, into Hollywood interest. Williams also worked as a trailer editor, cutting clips for films like Sleepy Hollow. "It was incredible preparation for directing," he says. "You distill a movie to its absolute vertebrae."

The live-action portion of The Pink House was shot in Chapel Hill last summer on 16mm (the prologue) and DV with the Sony DSR 500. With a rough cut nearly ready by February 2002, the directors focused on the animated sequences and a final chunk of financing. Pink House stars Heather Matarazzo as the evil sorority queen and Zack Ward (Titus), Matt Dawson (Climax), Omar Scroogins (Law and Order), model Natane Boudreau and Spanish ingenue Pilar Punzano as the housemates.

Behind the scenes on The Pink House movie set

It was August 1, 2001, and ten years to the day from when our original Pink House lease began. Jay called me because Ian had invited him and any other former housemates he could round up to drop by the set where they were making the Pink House movie. They were planning to film the movie's big party scene that day, and the idea was for real housemates to join all the other extras. I had read an early copy of the script, and of course was curious to see how the shoot was going.

Especially since it was all happening at Clay Boyer's former pad on 15-501 South, the Starpoint house, which I remembered fondly as the spot where Melissa Swingle told me I had an "old soul" at a glam rock party sometime around 1998. The nice Christian girls then living at the real Pink House had refused to let them shoot inside the house, so Ian and company had to find a stand-in location for the interior scenes. I swung by the Teeter to buy a few bottles of Boone's Farm, without which no Pink House party would be complete, drove downtown to pick up Jay from 401 Pritchard, and we made our way out to the set.

The Pink House movie set, aka the Starpoint House, August 1-3, 2001.

Ian welcomed us with open arms, and immediately resumed his directorial duties, leaving us both with all-access ability to hang out as long as we wanted. Greg Humphreys and the rest of Hobex were there, including Kai, who would shortly leave the band, but had spent the past couple of years playing keyboards with them after his stint in Dag ended. Stephen Akin showed us some dailies. We met Zack Ward, who played Murray, the film's lead, based on a hybrid of Jay and Ian. He was very cool and down to earth. We met Rick, the art director who was also cast as the head neo-Nazi who N'Wal ends up dosing with acid. And other crew and cast members, including Omar, aka N'Wal, the doppelganger of N'Gai, and Pilar, the Spanish actress who played Zola, who I gathered was based on both Zia and Jiffer. Plus a ton of extras. Everybody was super friendly. And it was very exciting to see Ian and Tessa making a bona fide feature film, even more so since it was about the Pink House.

Jay had his own liquor of some kind, and we were sipping all afternoon. Which meant by the time the party scene was filmed, we were the only two souls who were actually a little buzzed, since everyone else had pink cups full of water.

Then, we came back either the next day or the day after that to chill some more. During the times we were there, Karen Hurka stopped by, and Lem, and Chip. I took a bunch of photos, exactly 130 of them, as it turned out later. Which I thought was a good omen. And then we went home and started looking forward to when the film would be completed, so Jay and I could be discovered by Hollywood poohbahs as the extras who shone brightly enough to be given their own talkshows, or something. Assuming our scenes didn't end up on the cutting room floor.

Welcome to "The Pink House"

"Alumnus Returns to Shoot Film," Daily Tar Heel, 7/26/01

By RUSS LANE

"The Pink House," an independent film shot in and inspired by Chapel Hill, is described as "Woody Allen does `Animal House.'" It defies all natural law.

And it doesn't stop there.

The film's writer-director, UNC alumnus Ian Williams, is a native Californian who lives in New York but still considers himself a Southerner after spending nearly a decade in Chapel Hill. In a similar manner, the film's crew is an odd yet fascinating clash of Los Angeles, New York and North Carolina cultures.

Most of the 40-member crew is affiliated with Chapel Hill or the University in some way -- think "The Six Degrees of Silent Sam," and you get the right idea. Two of the three producers are former Morehead Scholars. The first assistant director, whose father is a professor at the University, knows more about "Dawson's Creek" and "The Andy Griffith Show" than is safe. The production designer literally has no home, keeps his possessions in storage and travels from location to location like a gypsy.

Also thrown into the mix are nudity clauses, enough mobile phones to keep several telecommunications businessmen well-fed for eternity, healthy doses of Duke-bashing -- always good for a laugh -- and the never-ending battle to obtain financial backing ("We're stilling raising money actively. You can run that in bold print. We're very nice people and we'll do the best we can with your money").

Welcome to "The Pink House."

Or more specifically, welcome to the world of Ian Williams.

Although he graduated 11 years ago...

Legendary in Chapel Hill for generations of coed misadventures

"Matarazzo & Ward in the 'Pink'; 'Dollhouse' and 'Titus' Stars Square Off in Coed Comedy," Business Wire, 7/24/01

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--July 24, 2001

Actors Heather Matarazzo and Zack Ward began principal photography here Monday on the feature film "The Pink House." The college comedy is helmed by writer-director Ian Williams, and co-director/producer Tessa Blake.

Best known for her hilarious and poignant portrayal of supergeek Dawn Weiner in "Welcome to the Dollhouse," Heather Matarazzo stars as the evil sorority queen Charlotte. Her performance in Todd Solondz's 1995 black comedy garnered an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut. She can currently be seen in Disney's "Princess Diaries."

Ward stars as graduate student Murray, whose 48-hour, rushed Masters thesis on "The Ten Archetypes of Americans in their 20s" forms the backbone of the film's plot. The role represents a departure for the handsome actor, who can be seen weekly in Fox's hit sitcom "Titus" as dimwitted Dave, stepbrother of star Christopher Titus.

"We're thrilled to have Heather and Zack on the project," said producer Penny Franks. "Casting these two roles was key, and both just nailed it from the first reading. Who knew a Canadian guy and a New Yorker would be such natural Southerners?"

Franks, an LA-based commercial producer, returns to film work for the first time since actor-director Geoffrey Nauffts's award-winning "Baby Steps," a short costarring Kathy Bates.

"The Pink House" is the tale of five misfit graduate students sharing a house in Chapel Hill while attending the fictional Carolina Baptist College. The University of North Carolina stands in for the college, and a real life pink Victorian, legendary in Chapel Hill for generations of coed misadventures, doubles for its fictitious counterpart.

The Filmmakers

There is more than a hint of autobiography in Ian Williams's creation of Murray. Williams lived in the real Pink House during his undergrad days in Chapel Hill, and went on to co-author the seminal bestseller on Generation X, "13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail" (Random House, 1993).

Since that time, Williams has written cover stories for Washington Post Magazine and his work has been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, and Atlantic Monthly. He has appeared on "Oprah" and been interviewed by CNN. He previously directed the short "The Rescue of Autumn," a featured selection at Atombomb.com.

Producer and co-director Tessa Blake is no stranger to filmmaking. She directed the festival favorite "Five Wives, Three Secretaries and Me," which was selected for the 2000 Outstanding Contemporary Documentary series by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. The comic documentary, distributed theatrically by Castle Hill, is a bittersweet portrait of her Houston millionaire father and his many Texas Exes. Last year, Blake shot the award-winning short "Project ALS," which profiles the efforts of three sisters racing against time to save one of them from the ravages of Lou Gehrig's disease.

Executive Producer Gill Holland's many credits include Morgan J. Freeman's 1997 Sundance triple winner "Hurricane Streets," the 1999 American Film Institute award winner "Bobby G. Can't Swim," and Tim Kirkman's comic open letter to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, "Dear Jesse." Prior to forming his own production company, cineBLAST!, he worked for October Films, The Independent Feature Project and the French Film Office. He is an adjunct professor at the prestigious New York University Graduate Film School, an Indie Spirit Award nominee, and has served as a juror at film festivals from Sundance to Scandinavia. Like Tessa Blake, Holland was a recipient of the prestigious Morehead Scholarship to the University of North Carolina.

The 'Carolina Connection'

Williams, Blake and Holland met when all were students at UNC in the late 1980s. The Carolina connection is evident throughout the "Pink House" crew sheet. Holland's fellow Executive Producer, Patrick Long, is also an alumnus, as are crewmembers from cinematographer to music supervisor (the film features local favorite band the Squirrel Nut Zippers).

Ian Williams and Tessa Blake also share the distinction of having worked on the University's student-produced soap opera, "General College." The show was at that time syndicated on cable systems across the country by the now-defunct National College Television network. Blake appeared opposite then-unknowns Billy Crudup and Dan Cortese on the serial, while Williams hammered out plots behind the scenes. The two tapped several other alumni of the campy serial to fill the "Pink House" cast and crew.

Among the "Pink House" actors who call Carolina alma mater is Fred Weller, who plays arrogant Student Body President Pritchard. He recently portrayed singer-songwriter Brian Wilson in ABC's movie-of-the-week "The Beach Boys: An American Family." Previous credits include the feature film "Stonewall," the television series "Missing Persons," and the Broadway revival of Lillian Hellman's "Little Foxes" with Stockard Channing.

Even Canadian Zack Ward can play Six Degrees of Carolina. Last year, he played the Legendary Red Dog in Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous." His costar was none other than Carolina's own Billy Crudup, who used to costar with Tessa in General College

"The Pink House" continues principal photography through August 11. It will be edited for a Spring, 2002 festival tour, and a subsequent theatrical release the following Fall.

What an incredible set-up for a screen play

"College Life At UNC Goes Hollywood," WRAL, 7/23/01

CHAPEL HILL — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is headed for the big screen.

Filming started Monday on the independent film, "The Pink House." Writer Ian Williams created the script as a tribute to the house he lived in while a student at UNC.

"I was living at the actual Pink House, and there was a party planned for that night at the house that we did not plan, so we were trying desperately to stop the party from happening," Williams says. "That same day, none of my roommates paid the rent, so I remember thinking, 'What an incredible set-up for a screen play.'"

The "Animal House"-type comedy is scheduled to be finished in March.

Sad to see the Pink House go, but everything has its cycle

What's the deal with the (718) area code? Are you living in Brooklyn now? And which other Pink House alums are up in New York?

I really only saw Jess for about 10 minutes, but the paintings she showed me some photos of looked really good, like she's definitely matured as an artist. She said she had stuff up in several galleries.

...

Business at the store is definitely picking up, but I won't be satisfied until it's booming. We just hit 500 video memberships this week. More of our tapes are renting on a regular basis. We finally got our adult section out on the shelf. We're trying to get a Lost City catalog produced so we can drum up some mail order business.

And the underground lounge we're running (the 333 Lounge) is going strong. This past Saturday we had 75 heads roll through from 11 pm - 4 am (actually this particular event was still kicking at 5 am) who paid to get in ($3 each). That was the highest amount we've done at the door yet. It would be really cool if you end up coming down this fall on a weekend when we're running one, so you can check out the rebirth of Club Zen before we get shut down by the Chapel Hill fuzz on some wack pretense.

Ok, enough about the nuts and bolts of my shady plans to become a wealthy high-roller and destroy the entire foundations of capitalism from within.

What I need to do is send you a copy of this article that Ian Williams wrote as his "farewell column" for the Independent, where he was writing a bi-monthly column that was pretty good. It was all about his finally leaving Chapel Hill, and about the Pink House simultaneously reverting to a renovated rental property suitable for lease to sorority chicks. Seems the Pink House was the very first place Ian went to an off-campus party when he arrived in town as a freshman back in 1985, so it held a special place in his heart that made it all the more fitting for it to end up as the last place he'd live before finally leaving town. You'll like this article, I'm sure.

...

I told you that N'Gai moved in with me, right? Oh my god, I just remembered him telling me that he now works with Shyam Patel, who just got a job doing graphic design alongside him at the Chapel Hill Newspaper. Crazy. I haven't talked with Shyam in like eight months, but I guess he's still in town. Incidentally, Jay had the Pink House's final number switched over to his new house, on the corner of Pritchard and Carr streets (his friend Gerald's place).

...

Yeah, it was sad to see the Pink House go, but everything has its cycle. Denizens like the ones we knew will move in again sometime in the future. Anyway, it was time I stopped feeling like I could flow through the Pink House every time I was downtown or bored and wanting to get into some trouble. Not that I've really been doing that sort of thing lately, mind you.

The only really fucked up things about the house's demise is that (a) they ripped out every shred of vegetation in the entire back yard, all the way back to the chain link fence, and put down gravel so the new dumbasses wouldn't have to park their freaking cars on the street, god forbid, and (b) some miscreant painters that Jim Lilley (Sylvia's current property manager) hired to do touch-up work and paint the ceilings goddamn painted over the Mona Lisa.

We initially figured it was the crew of spaced out UNC students and their girlfriends who Jim Lilley brought in to paint the majority of the house, inside and out, and who were in there painting for two weeks, taking breaks every day to smoke bowls on the roof outside your old room. Then one of them came through the Lost City the other week and when I asked him why they'd done it and under whose orders it was done, he acted totally freaked out, and swore up and down that they hadn't done it, that Jim specifically told them not to paint over it, since it was one of only two murals by the artist left inside houses in Chapel Hill, and it must have been the other painters who came in after them.

This tragic occurrence serves as the focal point for Ian's article, where he concludes it was such a typical thing to have happened - in Chapel Hill, anything (or anyone) that stays around too long gets painted over.

When are you coming down in the fall? If you want to crash, you're welcome to sleep on our futon. Let us know...

- e-mail to Lydia

Leaving Mona Lisa

Independent Weekly, 8/20/97

by IAN WILLIAMS ('95-'97)

So I'm moving away from Chapel Hill. This surprises me as much as it does my friends; I've been saying the same thing about moving out of North Carolina since about 1989, and never actually bothered to do anything about it. Now everything I own is in a truck bound for Los Angeles, and I have one more day to contemplate my existence in a town that has been my biggest scourge as well as my salvation, a place I've loathed as much as loved.

Whenever you move away from a place, you develop these bookending thoughts that take you back to the first day you came. I've been thinking a lot lately about the moment I first pulled into Chapel Hill with my dad - I was a 17-year old spaz, so addled from five loveless years at a military-style prep school that I looked upon the flower gardens in front of the Morehead Planetarium with the kind of glee that newborn sea turtles must feel when they make it to the ocean unscathed.

"It's just as I imagined it would be," I beamed to my dad, who was still married to my mom at the time. That changed pretty quickly, as did the restaurants we tried that first night (Magdalena's and that gelato place). In fact, nothing in my life was ever the same after Aug. 20, 1985; when he let me out in front of Hinton James dormitory, still wearing my prep-school black corduroys in the 95-degree heat, the worst parts of my childhood died off and flaked away.

The first party I ever went to was at this place called the Pink House, then inhabited by a rowdy bunch of senior history majors who threw get-togethers where like-minded female English majors would sit around, sip wine and dance to the Smiths. I went into the front room of the house and was instantly struck by a gorgeous, humongous mural of the Mona Lisa painted on the wall, an ancient remnant of some long-gone art student's passion.

The Pink House Mona Lisa, icon of Chapel Hill PHOTOS BY IAN WILLIAMS

When I asked the occupant about the painting, he stopped filling his bong long enough to look at it mystically, saying it had been there as long as he'd been in school. I gazed at Mona's curious smile uneasily, feeling as though I were lost in the intoxicating haze of an ancient Freemason ritual. There was an unspoken brotherhood in this town that I had yet to figure out.

The actual act of going to college seems like a distant idea to me now - probably because I didn't do much of it. I recall spending most of my afternoons outlining columns for the Daily Tar Heel, languishing in the Pit while chatting up cute in-staters from religion class, going out at night and talking with strangers thirsty for experience. I can't even remember graduating. It was just another Sunday, and I wasn't leaving anyway. There seemed to be more unfinished business, as if Chapel Hill had a joke for me it still wasn't telling.

The town began to take on the feel of a commune. I would find myself consoling people I barely knew in the bread aisle at Harris Teeter, giving drunk half-friends rides to Time Out at 4 in the morning. My CD collection was decimated by each party. One time, a woman I was dating in 1995 gave me a tape of early '80s music as a present, and it turned out to be the eighth generation of a tape I'd made for someone else in 1991.

People would ask me why I'd stayed so long after college, and I'd tell them I didn't need to leave; everyone else leaves instead. Living in Chapel Hill means inheriting a vastly different town every September, and it isn't just the storefronts that change. Generations of friends come and go, and worse - entire kinds of people change their ethos. I've seen the college kids go from being spontaneous pleasure-seekers to sallow automatons. When I was a freshman, there were kegs in the dorms; if anyone had heard you say that there would be a day when no alcohol of any kind would be allowed at UNC's parties, they would have laughed you out of the quad. Nowadays, freshman think it's exciting when their Teague dorm room has internet jacks.

College administrators, addled by litigation issues and their own sense of johnny-come-lately morality, have inflicted this New Era of Boredom behind the smokescreen of a "war on the anti-intellectual atmosphere," and it's a shame. I realize it's hard to whine about this stuff without sounding like a frothing, alcoholic, bitter hippie - but if these sophomores aren't given the chance to down a few tequila shots and howl at the moon, I'm going to really hate their poetry.

I was lucky; I got in just under the wire. I lived in two of Chapel Hill's pastel-colored party communes - one of them being the Purple House on McCauley Street. Before it was renovated a few years ago, the Purple House was a notorious shithole where anything was possible. Once, during the "bang, bang on the door baby" part of the B-52s' "Love Shack," my roommate Salem put his head through all the windows of the upstairs, in time with the beat. I think he spoke for us all that night.

Being in your mid-to-late 20s is a hard proposition for a Chapel Hill male. You had better cure cancer or develop an AIDS vaccine, because even sainthood won't stop the base conclusion that everyone will draw: You are here to have sex with the freshmen. I spent so long dodging claims that I was a lecherous Lothario that I gradually retreated into a dark depression. My passions were fine - I managed to put out a couple of books during this time - but I was still a total mess, and wanted desperately to move away.

That's when the other pastel-colored party house, the Pink House, had an opening. I moved right in. The Pink House was a place where everyone had a story; indeed, I think most people believe it existed only in an alcoholic dream. We had bacchanalia there that kept the Chapel Hill Police Department from running under-budget. In February, when there was an open-mic and break-dancing contest right on the counter where I made tuna sandwiches, I finally felt like I was an integral part of this town. The brotherhood, for what it's worth.

A few months into my Pink House journey, I got to move into the front room. And there she was, in all her radiant, gigantic glory - the Mona Lisa.

She was a bit worse for wear, with the occasional paint streaks here and there from those who had accidentally nicked her head when they painted the rest of the room. But she was still breathtaking. When you drove away from North Street, you could see her eyes follow you all the way to Airport Road. Such a fragile being, this layer of paint in a heavily populated house fraught with late-night fistfights and impromptu indoor hockey. So much could have happened to her, but didn't. She was the icon of Chapel Hill for me. I lived with her for two years, writing these Indy articles and other works while she stared.

Finally I turned 30, and knew I couldn't stay in Chapel Hill anymore. Besides, the Pink House was to be renovated for the new occupants (we were kicked out for being slobs) and my brother had found this great house in Hollywood. Packing all my things into a Ryder truck, I moved out and camped in Carrboro until I got my last paycheck. But before I left, I made the landlord and painters promise - as the last resident had done to me, and and so on back through the years - that the Mona Lisa should be left untouched. They looked at her in awe, and agreed.

Yesterday I realized that there was one thing left in the Pink House that I needed to rescue, so I went back into the skeletal remains of the building. I snatched the object and was walking away, when I decided to take one last look into the room I'd first walked into 12 years before. And she was gone, leaving just a wall with freshly coated paint, white globules still dripping to the floor. Even worse, someone had dropped a ladder into her, creating a gaping hole where her mesmerizing smile once was. My heart stopped beating for a second or two.

I'm not sure what poetic conclusion I can draw from all this; all I know is that I felt so incredibly sad. I did my best to foster the brotherhood of Chapel Hill, but this is a town that paints over anyone who tries too hard to stick around. Now I can go too.

Consequences of the Pink House implosion

So hope everything in your life is on a positive track. I was thinking about you this week for several reasons. One, as of August 1st, "our" chapter in the history of the Pink House will have closed. Those knuckleheads couldn't keep the place in good enough shape to get the lease renewed for next year, so it's c-ya. Sylvia Chi is going to have the house renovated (good luck) and then try to rent it out to a single family. You know Larry Short is about to cum all over his pants with joy.

Anyway, this development has several consequences. First off, N'Gai, who moved back into the Pink House last summer, and was living in your old room (you knew that, I think), is moving in with me at my swanky suburban pad.

Jenny, of course, is moving to Greensboro where she'll be working at a job with a corporate law firm. I think Jenny and I are both kind of like, well, let's see what happens with the relationship after we put some space between us.

Until then, I'm ready to be a bachelor again. N'Gai, already being a bachelor, is more than psyched to start things swinging. Nightlife is picking up in town lately, too, especially because I'm throwing lounge nights once a week at the record & video store that Lem and I opened in April. It's like the second coming of Club Zen, and we're in charge! Word.

Did I tell you about having opened a store, Lost City Music & Video? Lem and I are partners, and Uzi is sort of our third partner because he's selling records there. You knew Uzi, right? The phone number there is (919) 933-LOST. We rent weird videos, sell underground hip-hop, house & techno vinyl & CD's, carry funky clothes, accessories and underground comic books, and display art.

It's great, because it's not only the funkiest, coolest looking place in town during the daytime (I'm serious, we're totally rocking it!), but the space is flexible enough to completely convert into a laid back, chill little dimly lit lounge where we have live hip-hop MC's and underground electronic and house DJ's come to perform until 3 or 4 in the morning, on alternating Thursdays and Saturdays. We charge a $3 cover, and lately turnout has been a solid 60-75 heads, which is about all the place can frigging hold!

O.k., more consequences of the Pink House implosion. Jay Murray is being forced to move out. He's hating it. He is moving in with a friend of his named Gerald, who lives in some undisclosed location "off Airport Road."

Ian Williams is finally leaving Chapel Hill! Talk about the end of an era. I guess he finally got tired of trying to live the undergraduate social life while working at being a serious writer. He is a good writer, and I genuinely like him as a person. He's just very cynical and needs to find a more positive vibe. He's moving to San Fran, where I'm sure he'll find a thirty-something bohemian social scene that he'll feel right at home in and be much happier. As long as he can also find some guys to play basketball with him.

I went over there the other day looking for N'Gai, and lo and behold, not only was nobody home who lived there, but who was standing in the hallway gabbing on the phone? Jess Deltac. She was just passing through town and stopped in to see who was around. She showed me her portfolio, and it was clear that she's been hard at work on some amazing art. I was like, whoa! Talk about a six year time warp. That's how long it's been, can you believe it? It was exactly six years ago this week that you guys must have gotten back to Chapel Hill and moved into the place. Wow.

- e-mail to Lydia

It's been a time warp

You know about my latest project, right? I think it was under development the last time we spoke. Lem, Uzi and myself opened up a music and video store. It's called Lost City Music & Video - I'm usually on duty from 12-5 most Mondays through Fridays. We've been open for business since April 14, and things are going good! Which hopefully means we'll blow up when school gets back into session, 'cuz right now this town is el-dead-o.

Other news: Our mutual friend Mr. N'Gai Wright is moving into the Tree House with me come August 1. Until now, N'Gai's been living in your old room, which is currently painted in weird shades of yellow and red.

The Pink House kids have lost their lease for next year! Everyone's getting evicted! Talk about the end of an era. Oh well, you wouldn't believe what a shithole the place has deteriorated into. But it's been so strange - Kyle Spencer moved to Raleigh when she got a job with the News and Observer, and she's been at every party they've had there this past spring. With her, Jay, N'Gai, and myself in the same room at a party, surrounded by characters like Ian Williams, Scott Bullock, Lindsay Bowen, and Greg Humphreys, it's been a fucking time warp.

- e-mail to Lydia

Pink House fete

ch-scene listserv, 11-9-96

· To: ch-scene@listserv.oit.unc.edu
· Subject: Pink House fete
· From: ecstasy@calzone.oit.unc.edu (Ian Williams)
· Date: 9 Nov 1996 13:14:39 -0500

Truncated version - there is a dance jam/party at the Pink House tonight (Saturday night). Come with minds way open.

-i

--
Ian Williams, from the Pink House on a misty November eve, Chapel Hill, NC

You might be a scenester if...

alt.music.chapel-hill, 7/13/95

From: ale@backporch.pdial.interpath.net (Alec Vance)
Newsgroups: alt.music.chapel-hill
Subject: you know you're a scenester if... (was RE: Territorial Pissings)
Date: 13 Jul 1995 21:54:40 -0000
Organization: Chapel Hill Music Lovers>

At 9.38am 7/13/95 -0400, Butman, Holly wrote:
>
>BTW, do you even know what a scenester is?

No, he probably doesn't, and please don't blame him for it. Most of us have heard the word "scenester" being bandied about here and there, sometimes as praise, sometimes as an insult, but very few would be able to answer Holly's question coherently. I myself was asked this question some months ago, and its complexity so challenged my lexicological functions that I decided I would tackle what Webster let slide by him and into the end-zone of elusive definitions. "What is a slacker?"--that was an easy one; we had Doug Coupland, Rick Linklater, and Ian Williams to write the book. But "what is a scenester?" is a question that may remain forever elusive. I for one, had never heard of one until I moved here, so I don't know if it's a local thing or a national thing. However, when it's used on alt.music.chapel-hill, it carries very specific, local connotations that an outsider might not catch at first. So here goes my attempt at narrowing the field, if not pinning down the underlying motivations and character of the beast. (This will be especially helpful if you yourself are not sure if you are a "scenester" or not, and it is causing you considerable mental anguish.)

YOU MIGHT BE A SCENESTER IF....

You are a waitress at the Flying Burrito.
You dated a waitress at the Flying Burrito.
You can identify members of Zen Frisbee by their first names.
You've ever smoked a spliff, argued to the point of complete exhaustion, or both (concurrently), with Dave Jiminez.
You cried when the Hardback closed.
You laughed maliciously when the Hardback closed.
You are a DJ at WXYC.
You keep track of who Mac McCaughan is going out with.
You've ever given local hero Mark Sloop a ride home from a party.
Two words: Camels & Olympia.
You can tell when someone is on heroin.
You know the last names of more than one person named "Ron."
You know the name of at least one owner of Local 506.
You know the difference between Cliff's Meat Market and Hank's Meat Market.
You can name three or more bands that Groves drums for.
More than one-third of your wardrobe comes from thrift shops, dumpsters, or your grandfather's attic.
You have been in Chapel Hill for at least 5 years
You have not left Chapel Hill/Durham in at least 2 years.
You are accompanied by a peculiar odor (males only).
You've ever had a crush on Frank Heath (females only).
You ignore and forget the names of people you've met 10 times until you're sure that they're cool enough to know.
You ignore and forget the names of people you've met 10 times until you're sure that you're sober enough to make a good guess.
You not only know local bartenders by name, but you can get a drink after closing hours.
You tell new acquaintances of the opposite sex that "you paint".
Most of your small talk involves local bands, cigarettes and beer.

THINGS THAT YOU MIGHT THINK MAKE YOU A SCENESTER (BUT DO NOT NECESSARILY)....

You have long hair or "beat" facial hair
You are in Pine State
You are a DJ at WXDU
You live in Durham
Refer to "the scene" incessantly, as if it were something tangible and organic.
You know the difference between the musical (as opposed to the graffiti) styles of Dada Veda and DSF Earth Corps
You know something about politics, philosophy or literature
You like Superchunk or the Archers of Loaf to the point of obsession

THINGS THAT EXCLUDE YOU FROM BEING A SCENESTER

You wear sandals.
You live in Raleigh.

Feel free to add to/correct this vital information in the public interest... maybe we could include it in the forever-forthcoming FAQ!

Self-deprecation is a poor substitute for humility.
And I'm a lousy, egotistical, self-righteous,
egg-sucking son-of-a-bitch.
-------------------------------------------------------------
alec vance ale@backporch.pdial.interpath.net carrboro, nc

The most glorious location in all of Chapel Hill

alt.music.chapel-hill, 9/12/94

From: spe...@isisa.oit.unc.edu (TIMBER WOLF)
Newsgroups: alt.music.chapel-hill
Subject: Do you want to live?
Date: 12 Sep 1994 23:48:58 -0000
Organization: Chapel Hill Music Lovers

OK...

Forget what you've heard about the Pink House being exclusive,
Forget what you've heard about the Pink House lifestyle being too fast,
Forget what you've heard about Timberwolf's manners,
Forget what you've heard about Timberwolf's obsessions,
Forget what you've heard about the ghost of the Pink House.

YOU can live at the most glorious location in all of Chapel Hill,
with a birds eye view of the Phi Mu house,
and a 2 minute stroll to the quad,
and you get to ROOM with the TIMBERWOLF!!!!!

i'm dead serious.

email me for more details.

-----------
Timber Wolf
spe...@email.unc.edu

"I'll make a fist and put that fist right in yr. eye" J.O.

From: ecs...@email.unc.edu (Ian Williams)
Newsgroups: alt.music.chapel-hill
Subject: Re: Do you want to live?
Date: 13 Sep 1994 08:25:57 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In article ,
TIMBER WOLF wrote:

>Forget what you've heard about the Pink House being exclusive,
>Forget what you've heard about the Pink House lifestyle being too fast,
>YOU can live at the most glorious location in all of Chapel Hill,

I think it's common knowledge that the Purple House was, at its height,
the most glorious location in all of Chapel Hill. At least fairly common
knowledge. Plus, those guys never do their dishes.

--
Ian Williams, back in slow, sweaty, sleepy and sexy Chapel Hill, NC!
"Ohhhhh, we're half-way there...
Oh...whoa... we're livin' on a prayer"
-"Livin' on a Prayer," Bon Jovi

Lindsay and Dana's Get out of the Country Party

Tokyo beckons, and new paths to explore

Have you left New York yet? I hope this gets to you before the weekend. Exactly one week to go before my last day of classes at Carolina. Wow. The concept is deep.

So your time in the city has come to an end. Tokyo beckons, and new paths to explore. Instinctive travels are just around the corner, after a short trip to Indiana, I guess. For me, it's best anyway that you couldn't come down. Distractions are already ubiquitous, constantly watching for moments when I let down my guard. Lem, on the other hand, definitely wanted to see you. Oh well, sooner or later the crew will reconvene, perhaps learning to play their individual instruments in the meanwhile. The clarinet will be located after May 15th.

Here I am rushing this letter off because I wanted to give you a copy of my grant proposal. It outlines the sort of non-profit structure I'll create this summer. Got to have something to fundraise around. I'm applying for funds from both the Mary Babcock and Z. Smith Reynolds foundations, and looking for more dollars everywhere.

Both Charles McNair and Denise Matthewson are working for Community Self-Help in Durham. CSH fixed up that building in very styley fashion. I told you about going to the From The Hip opening. It was kind of sad, but still cool. This little community of twenty-something do-gooders has really developed over there. By the way, I think Ian Williams wrote a cover article in The Washington Monthly this week. Rush out and buy a copy. There's this one particularly positive woman in the office next to Chuck involved with some new group called S.E.E.D.S., some business about planting urban gardens, and she is so fine! She was giving me the eye the whole time.

Two a.m. is chillin' on the clock, and I'm surrounded by half a dozen supreme buzzkilling assignments to create for school. I'm so focused I've even given up music lately. But free deliveries of beautiful jazz CD's arrive weekly from BMG and Columbia House. Mostly addressed to motherfuckers I didn't even know lived in the Pink House. It's probably those damn raccoons.

Enjoy Tokyo, take care, and give a positive shout to my main man Daisuke. Send me a postcard with your new address when you get situated.

- Letter to N'Gai in NYC

From The Hip exhibition Sneak Preview

Purple House's Centenary Semi-Formal

Heaven and Hell at the Purple House

Last weekend was Halloween. The night before, my housemates and I went to a party at the Purple House, which is where Tony was supposed to DJ that time y'all were going to come down. The party had a swinging theme - Heaven or Hell. See, the Purple House is a very big house. Every room was open to the crazed, costumed hordes who came swarming through. The rooms were all decorated in different ways, colored lights everywhere, black lights, strobes, debris on the stairs, floors, all over. And everyone, it seemed, was wearing these really elaborate costumes. One guy was William Shakespeare. Then there were some zombie tourists. Another miscreant had an Ernest mask that covered his face, and made him look like a ghoul. He was up in people's faces all night long, fucking with them.


One of the guys who lives in the Purple House is a friend of mine named Ian Williams, who worked on a book project with my housemate N'Gai this summer. Ian also was a contributor to this book 13th Gen, which you may remember me showing you at some point, a book all about kids in our generation. Anyway, Ian was dressed as a blue angel. He was the party host in charge of Heaven, this room where he was mixing up clear blue drinks all night long. Also in this room was something thoroughly bugged, which you have to try and find up north.

It was this christmas tree light device called "Magic Christmas" - a specially designed string of christmas lights. They were arranged in a spiral, all strung up on the ceiling. Using this little hand-held device that you squeeze in and out, sort of like a little joke water-squirting device, you can control the speed and frequency of the patterns that these "Magic Christmas" lights flash in. It was too much. Oh, and at the very center of the house was this little scroungy bathroom, lit up with the only red light in the place. So you could say this bathroom was the epicenter of hell as it existed that night at the Purple House.

- Letter to Jared, 11/7/93

From the Hip

XTCian, 8/4/02

by IAN WILLIAMS ('95-'97)

(During) my vegetarian years, roughly 1991-93...I was besotted with the resurgence of community service amongst us Generation Xers, and got fat eating nothing but french fries. Part of that time I was dating Susan Comfort, and with that came no meat, relentless recycling, and repeated, horrified re-readings of Diet for a New America. I even wrote a couple of environmentally-themed songs at that time that were terrible. I mean, what the hell was I thinking???

One of the good things to come from those dioxin-free days was my involvement in a project called From the Hip, which was our little way of trying to convince the world that the members of Generation X weren't all Frito-munchin' scalawags with brainfuls of "Gilligan's Island" trivia. The project, of course, was doomed from the beginning.

We were never sure what kind of project it would be (a book? a video?) and though 280 young photographers scoured the country looking for "at-risk youths making a difference," only about three of them could take decent pictures. Most of our schemes in the summer of 1993 ended in humiliation at the hands of book agents and corporate sponsors, but none of that mattered to me: I was having too good a time.

It was then I got to know some fabulous people: Stasia Droze, who has since been like family; Lawrence Lucier, who became my confidante at CitySearch in 1996 and then my East Village roommate in 2000; even N'Gai Wright, who later became the character N'Wal in a little movie I'm working on called The Pink House. Our leader Tony Deifell, was an old Chi Psi buddy who always had a plan I learned a lot from his dogged determination, especially when we went to Washington D.C. to crack a few skulls.

Our project was a failure, as were most public service anthems dedicated to our generation (does anybody reading this remember Lead or Leave? At least those Third Millennium cats are still around). But like any project full of bright, intense young thinkers, we all have tons to say to each other even a decade later. That, and I really miss the "let's get together and put on a show" way of looking at one's career; we really did just rent an office in downtown Durham and hope for the best. These days, there's so much formality and structure that accompanies all our decisions - back then, if you had gas in the car, a paid phone bill and a place to get bourbon & cokes after work, anything seemed cool enough to try for a summer.