Mini-reunion '09 at Weathervane Cafe

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in February, a few Pink House alums' paths crossed in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels were playing UVa, and Caroline Philson swung through from ATL to go to the game with Susan Comfort, in town from D.C. Meanwhile, another epic sports battle was about to go down, as Dana Lumsden drove up from Charlotte with his kids Alec and Kyle for the first annual Mardi Gras bowling invitational.


Kyle, Alec, Erik, Dana, C-line & Mani, 2-7-09

"We were sitting around having brunch at the Weathervane Cafe inside A Southern Season (the first time I've actually eaten at that overpriced joint since it moved to U-Mall a few years ago). Caroline's former roommate Donna Bell was there, too, along with her new baby who's a few months old. Turns out Donna is married to Jason James, who used to run the Carolina Critic. But he saw the light and converted to the Democratic Party at some point.

When I found all this out, I thought of piping up, "Be sure to tell Jason that the reason his office supplies kept disappearing was thanks to me." But I didn't. Mostly because Caroline had just told a story about watching me pee into the can-I-take-your-order speaker outside a Dunkin Donuts on our Fall Break '92 roadtrip because they wouldn't let me use their bathroom without buying something, and Mani wasn't feeling it.

Dana and his kids showed up, and were deciding on the perfect flavor of pancakes, when who walked in the place to eat with his girl but Lem! It was a trip. Everybody said what's up and exchanged love.

Re the weekend's bowling tournament, I'm proud to report that the Alec-Kyle-Erik team beat the Mani-Dana team by a resounding 149-141. Although there was a disputed six points that Mani insists Dana accidentally scored on one of my frames, which would have been enough to swing the outcome in reverse."

- e-mail to N'Gai

Chillin' in Chapel Hill

If I was Woody Woodpecker, I would say, "Guess who!" If I was Woodsy Owl, I would say, "Hoot Hoot!" But guess what? I'm not either of those two wacky birds. I'm just your buddy Erik, here chillin' in Chapel Hill, missing you and hoping everything's going well for ya in San Jose. I assume you found a good place to stay and you're not living on somebody's bathroom floor. Well, I guess you never know with miscreant members of that Golden Fleece organization.

...

How's work? Say hello to Susan for me the next time you see her. We talked for a while when I called looking for you in Washington. Tell her I recently caught a bad case of boogie fever, so I went out and bought eight bona fide disco CD's.

I too am working full time these days. I got a job at FGI, the market research firm/advertising agency on the corner of Franklin and Church Streets, where the Cradle used to be. They started me in the phone center, down in the basement, working inbound and outbound phones on a variety of different projects for $8/hr. Could be worse - at least I get overtime pay. These past two weeks I've worked 50-60 hours a week.

My furniture business was a gigantic success. Thank you again very much for your generous contribution to Erik's Used Junk Corporation, I mean, Salvage Engineering Firm.

I finally sold your table and chairs after storing them at a variety of different places around town, and showing them to numerous skeptical customers. ("You want how much for these? Someone paid how much for these new?") But I knew we had some quality stuff, so I held on to them. One of Derek Shadid's housemates ended up as the buyer, so he's the one who's now eating meals at your table. Good karma prevails.

Let's see, what else is happening. Chilly was described in the paper today as having made an "eloquent speech" urging the town council to rezone the University's Horace Williams Airport tract so that any major UNC development/construction there could only go ahead with input from the town. The final vote was 5-4 against rezoning, so I bet he was bummed. I will try and call him tomorrow.

Rashmi was visiting from N.Y. last weekend. On Friday, Jenny and I had dinner at Pyewacket with her, James, and Stuart Hathaway, who I remember somehow from the Campus Y. Dana got engaged to Erika. It happened about six weeks ago. N'Gai returned home safely from Japan, and Thailand, and wherever the hell else he's been for five months. He's in New York, but he's coming back to Chapel Hill in January and applying to UNC for graduate school in music. Guess he's been playing his flute quite a bit lately.

Pedigo is doing well, as far as I can tell. He's enjoying the comfort of living in this new luxurious home in Durham where he's staying, right overlooking Duke Park. But he's all psyched up about applying to work for Morgan Stanley or some other mega-company and going to live in Boston. He called me the other night, so I really should call him back. That's the downside to working overtime - it's Wednesday, and it's the first night this week I've been able to sit down and call people on the phone, or write long overdue letters like this one.

...

I miss you and hope everything is turning out positive for you on the West Coast. Write back whenever you can - keeping up correspondence with a slack motherfucker like me should be a breeze.

- Letter to C-line

The Bad Girls are coming...to the Bamboo House

Bamboo House Chapter 2: Electric Potential

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.

Possible names for '96 anti-Helms voter registration coalition

(Editor's note from 2013 - recently on Facebook, Susan Comfort noted that Mark Chilton and myself were schooled by our time in SEAC (Students Engaged in Acronym Construction) to think up catchy names for some of our future political projects - for example, Musicians Organized for Voter Education (MOVE). She was right, and to prove it here's the list I came up with while trying to brainstorm what to call a sister organization to MOVE that could register more voters when Jesse Helms was next up for re-election, in 1996).

Democrats Organized for Voter Education (DOVE)

Stop Helms - Organize Voter Education (SHOVE)

Liberals Organized for Voter Education against Helms (LOVE a Helms)

Student Coalition for Voter Registration

Democratic Youth in Action

People for a Progressive North Carolina

Coalition for a Progressive North Carolina

Progressive United North Carolina (PUNC)

Congressional Club - Not!

Progressive Congressional Club

Revolutionary Citizens Coalition

Young People's Liberation Army

Voter Education Revolves around Youth (VERY) Project

Radical Revolutionary Liberation Power Movement

Coalition Against More Power to Helms (CAMP)-NC

Progressives Organize - We'll Educate Rednecks (POWER)

Just Educate Some Students Everyday (JESSE)

Frolic with friends at the Bamboo House

The Bamboo House, the Purple House, and the Russian House

The Pink House tried to give back to the community by running exchange programs with a few other group houses in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. We hung out at their cribs, they hung out at ours.


Flyer for party at Bamboo House, 1993

Two of our faves included the Bamboo House, aka 108 Kenan Street, where Susan Comfort, Sarah Davis, and other SEAC veterans lived (and Caroline Hall used to, and Caroline Philson lived for a semester, with Deidre Campbell and her then-boyfriend Chuck up in the attic, who would later hook up the anti-Jesse Helms cause with TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of free copies while working the 3rd shift at a local copy shop), and the Purple House at 220 McCauley, home to Ian Williams, Clay Boyer, Matt McMichaels, and Lindsay Bowen.




Invite for Purple House Halloween Crawl, 1992

And then there was 120 Mallette Street, where Tony Deifell set a standard for off-campus house parties that we later tried to live up to at the Pink House, by hosting such events as The Furious Party. It was the first off-campus bash I went to at UNC when I got to campus as a freshman in the fall of ’89, a party so historic it had its own t-shirts.

Later, Tony’s younger brother Dave took over management of the spot, and it survived throughout the mid-00's as a refuge for anarchists and beatniks. When local DJ and then-manager of Internationalist Books Darren Hunicutt lived there, touring noise bands from around the country made the basement space at 120 Mallette a regular stop on the underground house party circuit.

Also 505 N. Greensboro St. in Carrboro; the house on McCauley where Caroline Philson lived; 210 Ransom Street, where Lydia Craft moved when she left the Pink House; and the amazing Russian House, where Chris Pedigo held court in a spooky, decaying, UNC-owned mansion surrounded by woods on a hill overlooking the Dean Dome.


Erik, Chris Pedigo and Pam Hartley at Russian House, 1992

In 2003 or 2004, UNC finally developed the tract where the Russian House stands, also known as the Baity House. The surrounding woods were replaced with a new married student housing complex, Baity Hill. The Russian House was preserved, and became the complex's office and community center. If those walls could talk!


The Russian House circa 2007.