Your vote will make the difference

Hand-colored prior to election day by tireless Chilton campaign volunteer Caitlin Reed, sitting at a card table in the Pink House living room.

The kind of stuff our parents only dreamed of

Calendar, Daily Tar Heel, 10/10/91

Saturday, October 12. THE DADA VEDAS at The Pink House. Call 933-1002 for details.

Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin...

I don't remember a lot about the Pink House parties, just the anticipation and the feeling that I'd see everyone I liked. I do remember lying on the floor one time and watching the room spin after getting drunk and high and Erik standing over me saying, "Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin..." with youth-corrupting glee.


Pink House O.G.'s – our first party, October 1991. Photo courtesy of Jess Deltac.

I also remember you guys hawking t-shirts for a Pink House party.


Shirt designed by Jess Deltac.

I can't remember which one of course, but I was very impressed, at the time, about the fact that there could be a party big enough to have its own t-shirts.

I mean other than those horrid frat ones with the Old Well and Tar Heel footprints on the back. I think Finis had a vintage Tony Deifell Furious Party shirt that I coveted, though it was before my time, along with his limited edition Threshold t-shirt, the green one where the guy had earth eyes.


Photo courtesy of Mark Chilton.

- Caitlin Reed, 2009

(Note from 2014 - I've always wondered why I didn't go see Nirvana play at the Cradle in the fall of '91, seeing as how Nevermind was one of the CD's we wore out playing that semester on the Pink House boombox. Well, as it turns out, that now-legendary gig took place on Friday, October 4th, the night before we hosted our very first Pink House party, which was a joint celebration of Lydia's birthday and Dada Veda's first public performance. So obviously, we were all a little preoccupied that weekend.)

Do the Right Thing (i.e., the dishes!)

(Click for larger image)

It will be the shit!

How goes it, homey. Did you and yer Dad kick back and go out hunting for Boston babes on Thursday, or what? You would have enjoyed Babyhead, but this week's dance party promises to be three times as hype. Zoiks! Listen, enclosed is your copy of the lease. Give me a call when you get this, o.k.? Hopefully I'll talk wid you in the next couple of days, but you never know. This is Monday morning - I'm going to New Hampshire tonight and coming back tomorrow night. Then I'm planning to come up to Boston on Thursday morning – or maybe Wednesday night, to hang out with Erica. If you want to come to R.I. with me on Thursday then we'll hook up.

And what about the D-man? Is he back home yet, or what? Well, bitch, having just talked to you on the phone I guess I know the answers to all the above questions, but what the hell.

Man, this housing thing is gonna be so fly. Far fucking-out fly, that's how fly, plus def, dope and braggadocious. It will be the shit! Been talking with all the hippies I know up here who live in communal houses with friends at schools like Brown, Yale, Middlebury, etc., and asking them how they handle the food arrangements. How would you feel about everybody cooking a big vegetarian meal of their choice one day a week, with everybody taking turns going shopping once a week (on the day that no one cooks, maybe Sunday?) for the whole batch of ingredients each person would need to make their stuff? Just one possible way of doing it. Brothers gonna work it out!

For yer info: In Chapel Hill, I have a CD player, bookshelves, single loft, VCR, color TV, ugly striped couch, small table, computer with printer, and a comfortable desk chair. I will be bringing a desk and bureau with me from Rhode Island. The small table, couch, VCR and TV all will probably find homes elsewhere in the house - everything else I'm planning to put in the room.

Lollapalooza this Friday in Massachusetts and I'm most anticipatory. Do not feed the alligators, for they will bite you. Peace!

- letter to Clint

(Note from 2009 - Following our infamous cross-country road trip with Dana and Preston, Clint was teaching tennis that summer at Curry College, just outside of Boston. We got to hang out a little, since I was up in Rhode Island all summer, spending many of my weekends chasing a girl who lived in a run-down apartment building near Kenmore Square that had rooftop access and an amazing view of the city.

Thinking my frantic spring quest to find off-campus housing for the fall had come up short, I was ecstatic when Sylvia Chi called me in mid-July to let me know the Pink House was ours if I could wrangle up enough roommates to fill it. She had previously told me that at least two other groups of prospective tenants were ahead of us on the waiting list, and either they both flaked out or she decided we were the most responsible crew of the bunch. Little did Sylvia know.

Clint, myself, and Raj had already agreed to live together, and commitments from Lydia, Jess and Shyam materialized after a marathon round of interstate phone calls to every head I could think of who didn't already have their housing plans nailed down. All the pieces fell into place, and Raj and Lydia were the first ones to move in on August 1st.)

How the children of the 70's brought back Disco

"Disco Mania: Bee Gees And Leisure Suits Live," New York Times, 5/6/91

Campus Life: North Carolina

By KYLE YORK SPENCER

Photo: Students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have become fascinated with the look and mood of the 1970's by reviving its clothes, music and slang. Students attended a recent party at a local club where they danced to disco music and, some, wore bell-bottoms. (Duane Hall for The New York Times). Courtesy of Elizabeth Dryman Deifell.

When Dayna Baird, a senior English major at the University of North Carolina, packed her polyester bell-bottoms and sent them home, she had not yet received her invitation to the 1970's disco night at the local dance club here. But when the invitation arrived, she immediately called her parents in Dublin, Ohio, to send back the pants.

Ms. Baird is an avid disco dancer who knows the name of the Brady Bunch's singing group and who owns a leisure suit. She is not an oddity here. She is one of hundreds of students who have caught on to a 1970's craze.

Many attribute its popularity to the first annual 70's dance held in the student union on Feb. 9. About 500 students turned out to model leisure suits, show off disco steps and demonstrate their knowledge of '70's trivia. Since then, the music of K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Abba and assorted other '70's bands can often be heard at fraternity parties, local clubs' parties, and sometimes even the cafeteria.

'Can't Get Enough of It'

"I don't think it's really big," Ms. Baird said. "But the people who love it really love it."

The resurgence of clothes, music and slang from the 1970's may not be big, but local shopkeepers and disc jockeys say it is affecting their business. At Time After Time, a vintage clothing shop in Chapel Hill, bell-bottoms and acetate shirts are making a comeback, said a clerk, Kelvin Nivens.

At WXYC, the campus radio station, a disk jockey, Erik Ose, a sophomore history major from Providence, R.I., said, "When we play a 70's song, something say from the Bee Gees or Earth, Wind and Fire, the switchboards light up. People can't get enough of it.

At the Skylight Exchange, one of Chapel Hill's cafe-bookstores, 70's music blares in the background, and employees are frequently caught touching up on old dance steps.

To hear aficionados tell it, being a '70's fan is not always easy. "Sometimes I think I'm so weird," Ms. Baird said. "I don't know why I'm so into this."

Katie Milbrooks, night manager of the Skylight Exchange, said she recently sold a "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack to a customer who insisted on a bag because he didn't want to be seen carrying a disco album.

Mr. Ose suggested that the 70's music and fashion revival represents a kind of rebelliousness. "Disco was shunned for so long, it was made out to be the evil entity," he said. "Since its inception, it's never been so cool to like disco. As time passes, people will realize this."

For many fans, the 70's look and talk still is not cool, which is what makes it hot. "It's so cheesy that it's cool; it's so bad that it's great," said Stacy Philpott, a junior psychology major from Asheboro, N.C.

Polyester Clings Together

"Everyone looked so disgusting then," said Susan Hunter, whose house is full of 70's paraphernalia. The Chapel Hill resident, who graduated last spring with degrees in French comparative literature, calls the era "hideous" but "dynamite."

Mr. Philpott admitted that to avoid ridicule, most 70's fans do not flaunt their leisure suits on a daily basis. "They dress up when they get together -- but never alone," he said.

Recently, Mr. Philpott and Ms. Hunter had an opportunity to do just that when they were hosts to a Karen Carpenter theme party honoring Ms. Carpenter, the singer who died in 1983.

Some fans say that by latching on to the 70's, they are coping with the past and coming to terms with their childhood. Ms. Baird said it reminded her of elementary school, when she practiced dance steps in the basement with girlfriends.

Mr. Philpott said his fascination with the 70's represents a return to lost innocence. He said that when he was young he listened to the Village People and was unaffected by the Watergate scandal.

Ms. Hunter explains the resurgence quite simply. "We are children of the 70's," she said.

The Making of the African Queen

"Play presents a view of homosexuality," Daily Tar Heel, 4/12/91

By MARA LEE
Staff Writer

Don't be fooled. "The Making of the African Queen," showing in the Union Cabaret Friday and Saturday, is not a documentary about Katharine Hepburn.

Senior Paul Dawson wrote, directed, and stars in this one-man show to give a personal account of "one gay's journey into light." "It's about growing up in a very repressive atmosphere coming to terms with homosexuality in Helmsville," he said. The play uses monologues, modern dance, classical music, pop music, and even disco to express Dawson's thoughts.

Killian Manning choreographed the show. "I had a lot of thoughts going through my head," Manning said. "I realized I had spent a lot of time looking for scripts these thoughts might apply to. I just bought a journal and started writing them down I just took it everywhere I went. "About a month and a half later, I decided this was my show."

Dawson said he had deliberately chosen to present "African Queen" in the Union. "I wanted this play to be in the Student Union rather than in the drama building because it deals so directly with the University in many cases. The audience is so important. Hopefully this play will be seen by some of the people that really need to see it and not (be) preaching to the converted."

Angela Crisp, producer of the play and representative of the Theater Arts Committee, said, "We support students to come up with incredible, creative pieces like this. We felt it was a subject that needed to be talked about." Clint Curtis, one of the dancers, said he had chosen to work on the show for several reasons. "I wanted to be a little more open-minded about the subject. I think in the beginning that was the biggest thing I had to set aside, being in this gay and lesbian piece not worrying if people thought I was homosexual. It really didn't matter."

The play speaks to several audiences, Dawson said. "Among other things, it will offer an identity for a group of people who don't often see things portrayed that they can relate to. And of course, I'm being vague and I don't need to. I'm speaking of gays. "It's a challenge to your tolerance. I hope it leads us to look at the tolerance we have and why we have certain fears and hatred, because sometimes I don't think we know."

Curtis said, "It's a very personal play just because it has a lot to do with this life we've all been closed off to." Crisp said the script was much more than just an informative piece. "Some monologues are very humorous. Some are bitter. Some are heartbreaking. It's powerful, startling, shocking, intense and ultimately positive. There are so many feelings running throughout He does this incredible Katharine Hepburn imitation." Dawson said, "I think it's a type of play that I've not seen around here. It draws on popular music, modern dance, a one-man show. "It's a very frank play, and this is a subject that is rarely expressed frankly. And that kind of visibility is what we need now."

"The Making of the African Queen; Or, One Gay's Journey Into Light" will be playing at 8 pm. April 12 and 13 in the Union Cabaret. Admission is free. A discussion will follow. It is sponsored by TAC of the Union Activities Board and the Carolina Gay and Lesbian Association.

(Note from 2014: This one-man show was a tour-de-force, mixing personal memoir with modern dance, and reaching a particularly emotional climax when Sylvester's You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) came booming at top volume through the Cabaret's sound system.

Besides being the most heartfelt testimony I've ever witnessed of what it meant to grow up black and gay in Jesse Halms' North Carolina, this night made me want to throw a disco party there, a dream we later realized in early 1997 with Pez on the wheels of steel. Why the Student Union eventually chose to destroy the Cabaret in the name of "renovations" is a shame and tragedy, because it was an amazing, versatile performance space.

Fifteen years later, Paul Dawson went on to appear in John Cameron Mitchell's infamous 2006 film Shortbus. As the above article makes clear, Clint was one of the dancers, Killian Manning did the choreography, and Angela Crisp produced the play. As I remember, I had a little thing for Angela around this time. Paul Ferguson was both assistant director and a script consultant.)

Surrender scoundrel!

Daily Tar Heel, 4/4/91

Jess Deltac, a sophomore from Charlotte, playfully bashes Clint Curtis, a freshman from Iowa City, Iowa, with a Chinese yo-yo. waving a white flag. The students were encountered in the Pit Wednesday.

First Annual WXYC 70's Dance

The first annual 70's dance (was) held in the student union on Feb. 9. About 500 students turned out to model leisure suits, show off disco steps and demonstrate their knowledge of '70's trivia.

- "Disco Mania: Bee Gees And Leisure Suits Live," New York Times, 5/6/91

We've Got The Power To Rock This Funke' Joint!

Flyer designed by Malcolm Aaron.

Club Zen

Club Zen was the joint. Featuring early morning sets by legendary DJ's like Darin Johnson. Of my two favorite memories of the place, both from around the spring of '91, one was seeing a performance there of an incredible play produced by Quince Marcum about AIDS. The other was taking over the dancefloor one afternoon for a retro 70s photo shoot that accompanied an article Kyle York Spencer wrote as a campus stringer for the New York Times about the rebirth of disco. The powers that be shut down Club Zen once the dance night crowds eventually got too black, too gay, too integrated, and overall, too funky.

On Sunday nights, local bands would play.

"(Monica Swisher, former Local 506 co-owner) later worked at Club Zen in Chapel Hill (above Ye Olde Waffle House), a dance club that featured local bands every Sunday night. "All the people from Pepper's Pizza, everyone would come up," she remembers, as bands like Superchunk, Teasing the Korean and others played some of their very first shows."

- End of an Era? by ANGIE CARLSON, Indy Weekly, 8/22/01

I never attended this particular gig, but the poster hung on my walls at the Pink House (and probably the MOVE office) for years. In this photo, circa Spring '93, it's visible near the upper left corner.

Threshold launches SEAC as a national movement

Twenty years after we both spent countless hours helping to organize Threshold in our first semester at UNC, C-line and I sat down to reminisce and remember about SEAC's early days. We thought about touching down at the Forest Theatre, where Threshold concluded in an emotional ceremony on Sunday, October 29, 1989. But it was otherwise occupied by the Paperhand Puppet Intervention, performing one of their annual late summer shows. So we traveled a few hundred yards down the road, and ended up at the curved stone bench behind Gimghoul Castle that overlooks the far edge of Battle Park.



At the first SEAC organizing meeting of the fall semester '89 (in Hamilton 100), Jimmy Langman convinced us all that Threshold was going to spark a national movement, and Ericka Kurz gave a fiery, impassioned speech wearing a cool black leather jacket. Besides Jimmy and Ericka, SEAC O.G.'s who were running the show included Alec Guettal, Blan Holman, and Don Whittier. They were all juniors, seniors, even recent grads, but nobody past their early twenties. Still, as C-line put it, "They seemed so old. And we said, tell us what you need us to do!"



The nuts and bolts work of actually organizing a nationwide conference in the pre-internet era was a little less romantic. Working alongside dedicated souls like Lisa Abbott, Chris van Daalen, Celeste Joye, Yu-Yee Wu, Raj Krishnasami, Mark Chilton, Quaker Kappel, Ruby Sinreich, Dave Ball, and a bunch of other SEAC'ers, we prepared mass mailings, entered hundreds of pre-registered attendees' names into ancient Mac computers, lined up crash pad arrangements with hundreds of UNC students, and using a primitive device known as the landline telephone, called up folks who wanted more info to convince them to make the trek to Chapel Hill. And my favorite part, sitting around in endless meeting circles on the second floor of the Campus Y, arguing over one minor detail or another until the WHOLE GROUP reached a consensus.


Threshold ad from Oct. '89 issue of Music Monitor.

The conference succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Over 1,700 folks showed up from around the country, representing 43 states and 225 schools. It was the largest gathering of student activists since the heyday of SDS in the late 60s. And it launched SEAC as a national student and youth-led environmental movement.

On a personal level, my involvement with SEAC convinced me I wanted to be an organizer, and laid the foundation for all my political work that's followed. I became good friends with C-line, and our adventures have continued ever since. I worked on my first winning political campaign thanks to SEAC, when we helped elect Mark Chilton to the Chapel Hill Town Council two years later. And if I hadn't bonded with fellow SEAC'er Raj K., we wouldn't have agreed to live together (along with Clint Curtis) in the spring of '91, which started our search for off-campus housing that eventually led to the Pink House.

Back in the Spring of '89

I'm home for a week's vacation in RI. Taking things slow and easy. Right. Anyway, so my folks have me on trash detail, going through piles and secret stashes of all kinds of long-forgotten shit that's accumulated as a result of my adventures and travels. Naturally, there's lots of treasures and funky stuff. So I come across the 57th pile, and check it, turns out to be DTH's and other campus publications that I hoarded when first coming down to check UNC out back in the spring of '89.


What's going on in that world? It's a wild one, with places like Fowler's, Colonel Chutney's, and the Carolina Theatre on Franklin Street still in full effect.


The Cradle has just re-opened its doors in February in its "new" location across from Hardee's. SEAC members are staging a protest against dolphin-killing tuna expeditions, with Don Whittier at the helm. Brien Lewis has just defeated Trey Loughran in an SBP runoff election. Outgoing BSM leader Kenneth Perry is shaking things up by saying some pissed off things that white Carolina students don't want to hear.


This woman named Kasey Jones is producing controversial lab! theater plays. Some cat named Ian Williams is writing funny columns for the DTH. Dave Suroweicki is the DTH assistant photo editor coming on strong. Ed Davis, or Ruffin Poole, or whoever the fuck that kid was, is cutting up as editor of the Phoenix. Speaking of Davises, there's this media whore named Gene who seems to get his ass quoted in every freaking DTH article published.


And there's even a radical new voice on the scene, some kid named Dana Lumsden (and yes, he is a male) writing guest columns about how George Bush needs to stop helping his friends profit off the arms trade while he's hypocritically leading a hyped up War on Drugs.

- e-mail to Dana, 7/23/98

George Bush should kill less wildlife and save more human life

"The word on the street is disrespect," Daily Tar Heel, 3/1/89

By DANA LUMSDEN

It used to be that people could insult each other, even have fistfights, without a weapon of some sort being produced. As access to the very weapons that the president promotes increases the amount of thought urban teenagers spend before pulling the trigger decreases. Some of you may ask what the president's hunting hobby has to do with the amount of gun deaths. Believe it or not, the president is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association, an organization that not only promotes the freedom of Americans to hunt but opposes any restrictions on guns. Eager on the campaign trail to prove his opponent's guilt-bv-association as a "card carrying member of the ACLU," George should be held accountable for his membership in the not quite one man one vote NRA.

The president is fond of talking, and specifically, "talking tough" on drugs. He supports using the military to stem the drug traffic and a mandatory death penalty for "drug kingpins." If there were tougher gun control laws, the police wouldn't be outgunned (most police departments don’t have Israeli assault rifles or Chinese AK-47s) and we wouldn't have to use the military.

This new image, the image of the masculine president, is not really George's at all. (Does George have an image that is uniquely his? Rhetorical question.) Reagan started this image eight years ago when he decided it was essential that the American presidency appear masculine. Although there were reports of Reagan's sleeping through Cabinet meetings, we knew he was alert on the hunt. Besieged by accusations of wimpiness, George started early in the campaign creating the image of "Sport Poppy." As far as the American public was concerned, "Sport Poppy" was raised up among guns and fishing. We were led to believe that gun handling was an everyday thing at Andover and Yale.

As George promotes this new image, there is another sort of hunting going on in America's big cities and suburbs. People are killing each other. Most of these urban crimes are not the result of drugs (newspeople are fond of blaming drugs for every death among minorities) but rather of "dissin'" or "disrespect." In Boston, for instance, a student at MIT was shot two times at a party. When asked the motive, the assailant replied, "He was dissin' my girlfriend."

Certain changes come with a new presidency. Most of these changes are to be expected. Usually they consist of various ceremonies, the swearing in of new Cabinet officials, some scandal, ridicule and a lot of promises. Lately, though, presidents have left much more of a personal image on the tapestry of American life. Some presidents try to define themselves during the first month. Jimmy Carter, who was buried in the "energy crisis" and "the oil decade," chose to turn off all the lights. Ronald Reagan peddled his gung-ho image and the importance of being earnest; now we must assess George.

I call the president George not for lack of respect but because I believe he wouldn't have it any other way. Charming, funny, smart (Phi Beta Kappa from Yale ain't bad), he's everybody's Uncle George. Lately though, George has taken to huntin', and it is the rage of his new cabinet. Suddenly all Washington's power brokers are putting on their gear, packing toilet paper and heading for the woods in pursuit of wild game. Secretary of State James Baker owns his own turkey hunting land in Texas, where he invites all his political buddies and even an occasional reporter to partake in such macho activities as shooting at birds. Studying top-secret documents, making analogies between turkey hunting and Washington politics, he's James Baker, high-level Cabinet member, millionaire, scholar and good ole' boy. George should spend less time killing wildlife and more time saving human life.

Dana Clinton Lumsden is a freshman political science / journalism major from Boston, Mass., and yes, he is a guy.

I never hear any protest of the situation in America

"Activists can find problems at home, too," Daily Tar Heel, 1/20/89

By DANA LUMSDEN, Staff Writer

I ran into a couple of those "trendinis-tas," liberals, campus radicals, socially conscious Americans, or troublemakers (it depends on whom you ask) yesterday. They appeared to be good college students (they were clean, dressed and sober). I just couldn't understand how they could be the subjects of so much debate and the focus of so much attention. How could anyone dislike people who seem to be so altruistic and motivated to expose and eradicate the injustices of the world?

I began to think, though, about some of the causes that these people seemed to hold so dear that they would risk being expelled. Some were concerned about animal rights, others were concerned about people incarcerated in Third World prisons, South Africa and the destruction of the environment. It would be wrong for me to classify or rank these causes in order of importance because all of these problems are meaningful. Who's to say the situation in South Africa is more significant than the situation in El Salvador?

But I never hear of any protest of the situation in America, the situation in America's big cities, the situation in Chapel Hill, the situation here at UNC. These farsighted students are convinced that America remedied all her wrongs during the "turbulent sixties" and have set their sights on bigger and better causes. Like modern day Macbeths, they are so ambitious and self-righteous that they cannot see what is plainly before their eyes.

While they protest the terrible apartheid in South Africa, their eyes block out the "apartheid" in America, Western Europe and Australia. The majority of America's cities are segregated, except for an occasional gray area where blacks and whites live together. For the most part, blacks cannot even walk in certain places without being harassed by the police if not by the area's residents.

The enrollment of black men is decreasing in our colleges. If America's educational institutions were as aggressive in recruiting and nurturing promising black scholars as they are in recruiting promising black athletes, this would be no problem. Here in Chapel Hill, blacks supply most of the jobs that require manual labor. An overwhelming majority of the black students at UNC live on South Campus (mostly by choice) while the University hedges on whether to expand a Black Cultural Center (a mainstay on most campuses) the size of a snack food place.

A good method of gauging the attitude of a democratic country is to see how it votes. Politicians of the day have found a new error-proof way of winning an election: racial politics. Who can forget the infamous Willie Horton ads, and the frequent allusion to "American values" (translate: the values of the white middle class) by the Bush campaign. Big-city elections are polarized by the subject of race. Even as people protest about the subhuman conditions of prisons in certain South American countries, American offenders predominantly minorities are crowded into already over-populated prisons.

As we honor one of the nation's greatest leaders and celebrate Black History Month, there will be a whole lot of soul-searching specials on the civil rights movement reminding us to "Keep the Dream Alive" and our "Eyes on the Prize." As we look at the past and dream about the future, we often forget to make the present better for ourselves. The "socially conscious," who are fond of throwing stones, at Nicaragua and South Africa, should be reminded that America is but a glass house.

Dana Clinton Lumsden is a freshman journalism / political science major from Boston, Mass.

There are a lot of reasons not to live in a house like this one

"Off-campus housing has its ups and downs," Daily Tar Heel, 8/1/85

By PEGGIE PORTER

Last year a majority of students lived off campus. With University housing increasingly tight, people opted for their own rooms in apartments instead of sharing dorm rooms with two or even three other people. Some students were closed out of the lottery. Off campus, there are several places Jane Student can hang her day pack. She can live in her sorority house if she is in a sorority and there is room for her at the house. She can convince her parents to buy her a condo. She can get an apartment in Carrboro and watch trucks go by her window. Or, if Jane Student is very, very lucky, she may land a spot in one of Chapel Hill's group houses.

These houses are tucked behind other houses or right on the street. They are in "Student Neighborhoods" or they are on quiet back roads. McCauley Street has quite a few of them. Some of these student houses run on the boarding house system. Each resident rents her own room which she locks with a padlock as she leaves. Rules on kitchens and bathrooms vary. Other houses run on what used to be called a semi-communal system. That doesn't mean residents run around naked eating tofu all the time, although we know the type. Living there means you call your fellow residents "housemates" and fix dinner together occasionally.

Some of these houses have been around for a long, long time. Like the pink house. The pink house is an especially dilapidated, two story wood house. Its peeling paint is you guessed it a faded and extremely tacky pink. It has a nice side porch and an extraordinary back yard, which has been its salvation in these bug-infested, moldy warm months. The back yard is furnished with old school bus seats and a swing. There's a good chance you have been to at least one party at the pink house. Maybe everyone was dressed in vintage formats, maybe there was a slide show. You may have stood around the keg in the backyard and wondered how we stand living in a house where the back door is always open. Or why there is a large houselike sculpture in the front yard with two plaster figures climbing on it (because it's art).

The pink house has been a student house for an undetermined number of years. Law students, art majors, photographers, piano players have lived there. In the winter they huddled around the fireplace, holding books but not reading. In spring they ate lunch around the outside table, drinking warm Goebels. There are a lot of reasons not to live in a house like this one. Residents are constantly answering the phone, for one thing. And God forbid you should be in a hurry and forget to take a message, because that will be the one message your housemate has been waiting for since Christmas. Dirty dishes are a problem, especially the nights you want to make lasagna for your boyfriend.

But the advantages usually outweigh the disadvantages. There is usually someone around the house to waste time with in the afternoon. There is always someone who can be coerced into playing cards late at night. You never have to buy pine cleaner or dill weed because there is lots of that stuff left over from the years and years of people never quite moving out.

Moving out has been sad and difficult. We've sold and given away a lot of the junk we liked to have around but can't take with us. We're going to rent an industrial strength vacuum cleaner, and when we're done you won't recognize the carpet. We've told former residents who are still in town to come over and say their goodbyes. We've even taken most of the art out of the yard.

And we hope that the spirit of the pink house will live on.

Peggie Porter is a senior from Charlotte and Kaleidoscope editor of the Tar Heel

(Editor's note: Talk about a crucial piece of Chez Pink history! Published shortly before Ian Williams first stepped foot on campus in the fall of '85 and stumbled onto his first off-campus party there, it documents the era immediately prior to when the house was inhabited by, in Ian's words, "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." And it proves once and for all that we were not the first residents to realize the Pink House was something special.)

Best yard sale in the world

Classified ads, Daily Tar Heel, 7/25/85

Best yard sale in the world. The Pink House 130 North St. Saturday 27th.

Couches, chairs, beds, books, toys, art, stuff you want!!