Gorgeous magnolias, purple living room, and gooey mold on the ceiling

By Mel Keister (Lanham) ('93-'95)

Originally I lived in the Mona Lisa room with Sally. Then I lived in the little pink room upstairs, then moved across the hall into Erik's old room. The upstairs rooms were the BEST.

There was an older lady who lived next door. She was the house mother for one of the sororities. She was a sweetheart, and she also asked us girls about our lives. I don't know if she chatted with the guys much.

I was always cleaning that place - especially the dishes. And the downstairs bathroom would get this virulent-looking gooey mold on the ceiling, all brownish-black, that looked like it would drip on you.

Painting the living room purple was a bitch! Looked cool though. I'm sure whoever came after and repainted it was cursing my soul.

I had heard the place used to be a garden showplace (maybe someone else had heard it from a neighbor?), even having been photographed for a magazine. There wasn't much left of that, but in the spring, these odd-looking lilies would pop up in the far back yard, right in the middle of the grass. Like red alliums, but with no leaves - just a big ball of delicate flowers.


And there were these gorgeous magnolias, but they were being killed by the wisteria, so I got Steve to help me save the trees. He wasn't into it, so I promised we could dress up in ridiculous outfits first. Wish I still had that picture!

Oh, God! And those creepy spider crickets! They were always in the bathtub! Jay was so freaked out by them - I used to get the critters for him. It was so fun saving the day for Jay. He was always making those huge pots of spaghetti.

Pink House For Rent...Again!

In a twelve-year rewind, the Chi's have once more (at least temporarily) abandoned their ill-timed plan to sell the Pink House to a deep-pocketed single family, and instead put the place back up for rent.


It's been renovated again, and now features amenities like carpeting on the stairs and hardwood floors nearly everywhere else. When I visited recently, courtesy of the contractors who had just finished re-painting inside and out (covering the Mona Lisa with yet another coat of white), the place was sparkling. But there was clearly still work to be done, because the downstairs bathroom looked as grungy as ever. Leaning over the tub to take a picture, I half expected spider crickets to come swarming out of the air vent.

The current asking price on a Pink House rental? Thirty-two hun a month, or roughly twice what I remember our crew last paying when I moved out fifteen years ago. After figuring in inflation, that's nonetheless a steep rate for a five bedroom (or 4 1/2, taking Jay's room into account) student crash-pad. And since today's kids are less likely to want to share bathrooms than the Gen-X'ers who came before them, and even Chapel Hill's sorority girls who deal a little coke on the side have lately fallen on hard times, maybe it's no wonder the place is still available (as of 9/20/09) six weeks after I first saw the for rent sign.

UPDATE 10/25/09 – As Fall Break 2009 for UNC students drew to a close, I drove down North Street on my way to the Franklin Street post office. Lo and behold, no renters yet.

UPDATE 11/26/09 – The day before Thanksgiving, and I finally got the memo that Hell closed down nearly a year ago. While checking out the debris piled at the top of the outside stairs (including Hell's soft pretzel cabinet), evidence the space is still being excavated, I looked up through the chain link fence and saw a bicyclist zoom through the deserted parking lot of the Phi Mu sorority house. Curious, I noticed the rider was headed for the Pink House. Could it be rented? There did seem to be a couple of trucks parked in the back yard.

No, it was only the blogger next door on his way home. I introduced myself and explained I used to know the old couple who previously lived in his house. He was remarkably cool for being accosted at dusk outside his own crib by a quasi-cyber stalker, and said the place is still sans residents. And he thought Sylvia's initial rental asking price this go-round had actually been $3600, thirty-two was at a discount.

Rosemary Street will never be the same

During the first decade I spent in Chapel Hill, from 1989 through 1999, the landscape really didn't change all that much. Sure, residential and commercial ("mixed use") developments like Meadowmont and Southern Village got built on the outskirts of town, sapping energy from Franklin Street. And the intersection of Franklin and Columbia would never recover its former mojo after the hole-in-the-wall convenience store Top Of The Hill got replaced by the monstrous, character-less building that houses the restaurant/bar Top Of The Hill and formerly, First Union and Wachovia branches on the first floor. Where I memorably stood mesmerized in front of the bank's big screen TV on December 10, 2000, when the newsflash hit CNN that the Supreme Court had halted the Florida hand recount, two days before handing the stolen election to George W. Bush with their 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore.

But if you drove downtown circa 1999, things would have looked remarkably similar to how they had ten years before. And this was true of my favorite Chapel Hill avenue Rosemary Street even more so than Franklin. Rosemary's human-scale, low-key, underdeveloped charm was marred only by a multi-story student apartment complex called The Warehouse that sprung up in the late 90s courtesy of guess who, everyone's least favorite next-door neighbor, Larry Short.

As the next decade got underway, things started changing for the worse. Construction started in late 2003 on the towering condo complex that was built where the Lost City used to stand, across from Henry's / Fuse and the Skylight Exchange / Nightlight. Once it was done, the rush was on to build more. Plans were laid for Greenbridge and another Larry Short path to riches, Shortbread Apartments, half of it to be built on the land where the original Breadman's stood before moving across the street in the early 90s.

When Greenbridge finally broke ground in 2008, and construction picked up steam in 2009, it was clear the Rosemary Street landscape would never look the same. I had been out of town for a few weeks that summer and this was probably my first glimpse of the accelerating construction. The rising, hulking structure looked so out of place to me that I had to document the moment.

Rosemary Street on August 11, 2009.

Later, Greenbridge would be plagued by financial troubles, and actually went into foreclusure. Partially because of timing, since the project was completed right before the bottom dropped out of the real estate market thanks to the dawn of the Great Recession. But also because its developers never gave enough thought to the question of whether they might have difficulty attracting rich buyers to live in luxury condos built at the entranceway to Northside. The area that's one of Chapel Hill's only historically black neighborhoods, and still home to lots of working class families, fixed-income elderly residents, and plain ol' poor folks.

(Editor's note from 2013 - Even today, as the development remains half empty, plenty of Greenbridge apologists exist, but the fact is that it was out of character for its surroundings, and a blight on the Rosemary Street landscape. Chapel Hill is steadily being ruined by developers, and Greenbridge was a major signpost along the way.)

R.I.P. Laverne (1994-2009)

I adopted Laverne on May 14, 1994. She was about four months old. Although I adored her, I shouldn't have gotten her while I was living at the house, since none of our housemates were into the idea (plus Sylvia's whole "no pets" rule!).

One time, she got onto the roof. Terrifying experience! I think a couple of us came back from the video store, and that slum-lord guy across the street was outside saying there's a dog on the roof. I had just moved into the pink room upstairs with the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, and didn't know about the loose screen window that could be flipped open. Laverne had been waiting for me in the room.

Anywho, she went out the window, where the roof was over the porch, but then made her way to the very slanted part of the attic area. She was trying to grip the roof, but you could hear her nails scraping the roof tile as she slipped. So of course, I ran up the stairs, popped out on the roof and climbed over to her. Pretty tricky carrying a dog off a roof!

We euthanized Laverne in May because she was having kidney failure. Broke my heart. It was almost 15 years to the day of her adoption.

- Mel Keister (Lanham), 9/18/09

Jay Murray returns for Gerald's 40th B-day

In April, Gerald Bundy turned 40, and Jay made the scene, taking a train up from Davidson to do it. Gerald hung out with Jay a lot at the Pink House and found him a room at 401 Pritchard when everyone got kicked out in '97.

On Friday night, we grabbed some grub at Milltown in Carrboro, then crossed the road to meet up with former housemate Karen Hurka (summer '93) at a free record release party at the Cradle for the latest LP from her husband Ryan's band the Kingsbury Manx. This show sparked even more Pink House memories when we all ran into Grant Tennille and Matt Hedt.

The next day, enroute to Gerald's in Durham we picked up Barbara and Jeff, and did a drive-by on Sam's Quik Shop. I had invited Lydia to come along, but she couldn't make it. Also at the party was Allen Sellars, Chez Pink resident during 1995. Before that, Allen also lived at 401 Pritchard. Many Pink House and 401 stories were told, including the tale of the two hippies who lived in the Pink House driveway. Gerald fed us oysters, wine, and gourmet root beer.

"Jay and I missed getting to hang with you at the birthday party the other weekend. He had a tough night's sleep on our lumpy futon couch, but was good to go after shaving his head on the porch. Here's a photo, the other people are Jay's friend Gerald, Barbara, who used to live at 401 Pritchard Ave with Jay, and her husband, Jeff."

- e-mail to Lydia

While in town, Jay also owned up to various Pink House housemate misdemeanors.

J: I remember once I was making out with my girlfriend at the time Julia, and somehow we ended up fooling around in Steve’s room. Then Steve suddenly came in and cut the lights on, and we were like, oops! Busted! I also remember when Steve took my fan. I came back home one day, and my fan was gone, and I was like, what happened to my fan? And it quickly mushroomed into a conversation about how I wasn't doing enough around the house.

E: This was your fan?

J: It was supposedly a house fan.

E: And there was a confrontation between you and Steve?

J: Yeah, but you were there, backing him up.

E: That was cold.

J: I wasn't the perfect housemate. A couple times, I mooched some of Sally's food, and when she found it missing, she immediately blamed you. And I was okay with that.

E: Fifteen years later, the truth all comes out in the wash.

North Street is burning!

More from the guy next door. There was a FIRE on their lawn one recent spring afternoon, and if not for the intervention of one of Chapel Hill's trusty Carolina blue fire trucks, the Pink House could have burned down. So nearly seventeen years later, Raj's bad fire feeling came to pass. And on the star-crossed date of Friday the 13th, no less.

"Flames!? On the front bank, 50 feet away and moving towards our house?! Ah!!! I shoved an empty bucket underneath the bathtub spigot. As it filled I could hear the fire truck approaching. I ran outside and dumped the water on flames closest to the house..."

- Further Musings, "Fire!"

Here's a whole bunch of his posts about life on North Street.

The view from next door...

Next door lived a very nice old couple (the Sommerfelds), whose bedroom faced my upstairs room. I was constantly afraid the techno, disco, jazz, hip hop, house, funk, and all the rest of the records I played until late hours of the night were going to give them seizures. This wasn't the little blue house where Phi Mu's sorority mother lived, but the white house on the opposite side. The Sommerfelds kept a beautiful backyard garden. Like ours, it stretched all the way back to the chain link fence that separated North Street properties from Rosemary Street parking lots.

The Sommerfelds both passed away several years ago, and now there's a young married couple who live in their house. He and his wife are huge gardeners, so they've kept the backyard garden thriving. And the guy, when he's not attending grad school at UNC, keeps a blog. Since June of 2008 he's watched the Pink House sit vacant, grumbled at Sylvia's failure to maintain the place, and occasionally written about it.

Like in this post:

"This afternoon, under the warm sunlight of these first days of another Chapel Hill spring, I cut behind the empty pink house next door on my way home..."

- Further Musings, "The Beauty of Spring"

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

Remembering the Pink House, 15 Years Later

2009 marks fifteen years since I graduated from Carolina and moved out of the Pink House, the legendary off-campus crash pad located at 130 North Street in Chapel Hill. To celebrate the occasion, I'm digging up some Pink House photos and stories from the early 90s, the last time control of the house was wrested away from civilians and turned over to the bohemians.

Pink House dinner at El Rodeo, 1993. Firas, N'Gai, Erik, Jay, Scott, Kyle, Caroline, Lydia, and friends.

I lived in the Pink House for three years, from the summer of 1991 through the summer of 1994. By the time I left, most of our original crew had graduated, except for Jay Murray, who took over as Pink House den mother. We passed the torch onto a new group of nonconformists, who went on to have three more years of their own adventures. Some former denizens from the early 90s even moved back into the house, most notably N'Gai Wright.

More freewheeling parties were thrown, with DJ Pez continuing his residency behind the turntables. Although most events were not quite as off the chain as the ones we got away with during our era, before the neighbors got completely fed up with Pink House Jams. The house even inspired a feature-length movie, named, aptly, The Pink House, written by Ian Williams, who lived there during 1995-97 and has done his best to chronicle everything he remembers of those years in occasional posts on his own blog, XTCian.

Freestyling in the kitchen at Pink House party, mid-90s.

Unfortunately, six years of tomfoolery and hedonism took their toll on the poorly maintained Pink House infrastructure, and the place predictably deteriorated. The absentee landlady had a Hong Kong lifestyle to maintain, and kicked everyone out in the summer of 1997 so she could renovate the place and rent it out to kids with more of Daddy’s money to burn than slackers in our circle could ever hope to scrape together. They paved the beautiful, overgrown backyard, and as a final insult, painted over the Mona Lisa mural in the downstairs front bedroom that Clint and I shared during our first year in the house (Ian wrote a great column for the Independent Weekly in 1997 about what a tragedy the loss of that mural was).

For several years afterward, in a stunning twist of fate, born-again Christians and traveling Mormon missionaries took up residence. But I recently stumbled across an on-line stash of Pink House pics dating from the spring of 2005, showing drunken party antics in the spirit of yesteryear. It warmed my heart, even though the house had come full circle and was full of sorority girls again.

The property was put up for sale in the summer of 2008 for a cool $625,000. I haven't driven down North Street in a while, so don't know whether it's still on the market or not. But even if evil next-door neighbor and local developer Larry Short was to buy it for a teardown and put up a McMansion, the friendships that were formed there (and the spiritual lessons learned during all-night "rap" sessions) will live on forever.

Pink House reunion dinner at Mariakakis, 1995. Scott, Zak, Jay, Jenny, Erik, Mel, and Lydia.

A Farewell to Hell

It's been so long since I went bar-crawling there that it took me nearly a year to realize Hell shut its doors for good in early December, 2008. Or maybe I stopped caring once Mark & Bronwyn sold the place in late 2007, deciding ten years was long enough to own a Chapel Hill watering hole.


Hell circa 2006. Photo by Patrick Talbert.

Before it was Hell, a short-lived rock club called Smokin' Joe's occupied the space, and before that it was Troll's, a typical frat bar. Hell opened the same month that the Lost City did, in April of 1997. So even before I made my first descent down those long concrete stairs, I felt a kinship with the place.

Plus, it was almost literally next door to the Pink House, in the basement of the multilevel building at 157 E. Rosemary St. with Bub's on the top floor. Hell was owned by a guy I'd known for a few years, Mark Dorosin, the local civil rights lawyer and Carrboro Board of Aldermen member, and his wife Bronwyn Merritt, who from 2000-02 ran a great little eponymous art gallery in Carrboro located in the tiny rectangular space at the corner of Main and Lloyd Streets.

Throughout the late 90s and early 00s, the spot was a mandatory stop on the Chapel Hill nightlife circuit, and THE place to go anytime for pool games, air hockey matches, and classic arcade throwdowns. I hung out there a lot, most memorably with '98-'99 crew members like Trish and Scott, then later with Jay, Lauren, Ellie, and the rest of the 401 Pritchard crowd. It's possible the last time I ever saw infamous grifters Chalky and The Wood was when one of them borrowed $8 from me to buy drinks there. Tim Ross helmed a long-running series of Chapel Hill's best dance parties of the past decade at Hell, dubbed Disco Inferno.


Disco Inferno, Oct 2006. Photo by Tim Ross.

Many a pickup scheme was hatched on Hell's inviting couches, hanging out by the amazingly well-stocked jukebox, or navigating the squalid, too-close-for-comfort men's and ladies' rooms. And I loved the place in no small part because Pink House party regular Malcolm Aaron and 401 Pritchard scenester Eddie Sanchez had permanent gigs as the doorman and bartender, respectively.


Eddie, Melissa, Malcolm and friend at 401 Pritchard Ave., Feb. 23, 2002.

Mona Lisa's Ghost

In June of 2008, current owner Bernard Chi, son of our original landlady Sylvia Chi, put the Pink House up for sale. It had withstood eleven more years of rentals since being renovated in 1997. The asking price was $625,000, reduced to $612,500 by the fall after no takers materialized. With the local real estate market finally feeling the trickle-down effects from the national recession, it was a tough time to be marketing a rundown, modestly-sized former rental property that had been well lived in by students for most of its 70 year existence (the house was built in 1936).

Visiting the property on a recent afternoon, days after the first snowfall in Chapel Hill in four years, I found the Pink House empty, with a real estate agent's lockbox on the door, but no for sale sign out front. I was struck by how little some things had changed, at least on the outside. From the ancient porch light fixture, to the stonework still crumbling in the exact same places it was when I moved out in 1994, to the battered mailbox with one hook still broken from a long-ago Pink House party.

It was like stepping back in time, except that I have occasionally been by the place over the years. The last time was probably in 2004 or so, when I met some of the nice Christian girls living there and they proudly showed me the hideous mural of the Old Well they’d painted on the living room wall.

Although the back parking lot is currently still rented out to students, and it was the dead of winter, I thought I saw signs of growth stirring, as if the back yard was struggling to reclaim its former state of nature. And maybe it was the afternoon sun reflecting off the window pane, or just wishful thinking, but I swear that once I looked hard enough, I could still see the Mona Lisa in the front room...

smiling beneath all that white paint.

R.I.P. Joe Herzenberg (1941-2007)

Joe was one of our neighbors and could often be spotted walking down North Street. He lived around the corner from us at 6 Cobb Terrace, on a cool little street just a stone's throw away from downtown but set back from the world in a hidden corner of Chapel Hill. On Monday nights when Town Council meetings were held, he passed by like clockwork to walk the short distance to Town Hall and back home.


Joe on North Street in front of the Pink House, Spring 1992.

He was also one of my political mentors. During the fall of '91, the first semester I lived in the Pink House, I saw Joe a lot during the course of Mark Chilton's campaign for Town Council, and his own successful Council re-election.

Throughout the early nineties, Joe would occasionally stop by to shoot the breeze if we were hanging out on a porch. He sent us some of his famous postcards when he was out of town on his travels. He even came to a couple of early Pink House parties, before the days when they blew up beyond control.

In late October of 2007, Joe died of complications from diabetes in Chapel Hill. He was 66 and greatly missed by his family and friends.

For more about Joe's life and times, visit JoeHerzenberg.org.

R.I.P. Chris Pedigo (1971-2006)

Chris was a regular visitor at the Pink House, and one of my good friends at UNC. He was hilarious, generous, kind-hearted, and a co-conspirator in many capers.

For several years Chris lived in the gorgeous, decaying mansion known as the Russian House. He spoke Russian, French, and was fluent in a couple other languages. In the spring of '92, I was his campaign manager when Chris ran for Senior Class Vice President on a ticket with Caroline Philson in the top spot. We lost, but it was a very fun campaign, and the Caroline and Chris team had the coolest posters of any candidates for student office that I saw in my entire time at Carolina.


In the summer of '92, our paths memorably crossed for several weeks in Paris, when my brother and I took a trip over there and hung out with Chapel Hill ex-pats like Pedigo, his friend Aaron Gannon, globe trotting journalist and Pink House roomie Kyle York Spencer, and future Pink House couch surfer John Hamilton Palmer.

Chris was gay, but closeted in college, even after he contracted HIV in Paris and returned to Chapel Hill. Living with HIV was hard for Chris in the early 90s. A full decade after the epidemic burst into the public eye, progress on developing life-saving drugs remained painfully slow. It was a direct result of right-wing politicians like Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) underfunding the nation's public health response, under the criminally homophobic, warped belief that AIDS victims deserved to die.


Chris enrolled in numerous experimental trials of AIDS drugs at Duke University, which kept him alive until more effective treatments came onto the market a few years later. As time went on, Chris’ medical condition left him facing increasingly perilous financial straits. But he kept his sense of humor and refused to give up. Sadly, I lost touch with Chris after he moved to Florida in the late 90s, where he lived and worked in West Palm Beach.

Death Notices - News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) 1/2/07, B6

Christopher James Pedigo
MARCH 9, 1971 - DECEMBER 29, 2006

Christopher James Pedigo, 35, passed on Friday, December 29, 2006.

He is survived by his loving mother; Elizabeth Ann Pedigo; father, James; younger brother Taylor; and friends.

Despite the many obstacles set before him due to a long battle with compounding physical ailments; armed with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge he achieved various levels of advanced education and was fluent in several foreign languages, along with being an accomplished pianist, for all of which we are very proud.

Chris, your enthusiastic conversation and bright eyed smile will be missed, yet will remain in our hearts forever.

On the way to the Pink Party at the Pink House

"Lettuce: The Anti-Drug," Adam's Blog, Right?, 9/26/06

By ADAM WRIGHT

Recently, slightly intoxicated and dressed in pastels, I found myself off to the Pink Party at the Pink House. (Which, FYI, is the same house where I park my car, and also the same house where Ben Folds used to live, putting me one degree closer to the singer. But I'm already one degree away from Ben, considering the fact that I already met Darren Jessee, so I guess that just gives me two, distinct degrees of separation of Ben, or maybe it just forms one, communal "Blow Ya' Mind, Fuckas" degree of separation, but none of this is really important to the story at hand.)

My friends and I hopped on the P2P to make our way to the night's festivities, only to find a man in the back of the bus cradling a head of lettuce. I thought maybe it was the vodka talking, but after much confirmation from my fellow passengers, I concluded that there really was a man in front of me cradling a head of lettuce, preparing me for what is surely to be one of the oddest exchanges of dialogue I will ever have the opportunity to witness between two people.

P2P Driver: "Sir, please bring the lettuce to the front of the bus."

Lettuce Kid: "Dude, it's just lettuce."

P2P Driver: "Sir, bring the lettuce to the front, now. I will not continue driving until you hand over the lettuce." (P2P Driver stops the bus)

Lettuce Kid: "What?"

P2P Driver: "SIR! LETTUCE! FRONT! NOW! I don't think your fellow passengers will appreciate you holding them up!" (P2P Driver stands up, walks to Lettuce Kid, takes lettuce)

Lettuce Kid: "Sorry."

P2P Driver: "Thank you." (P2P Driver returns to the front, jamming the head of lettuce between his seat and the wall of the bus)

Then a semi-riot broke out from a group of frat guys in favor of lettuce freedom, but the P2P Driver just sat in silence and listened to his Fergie and pretended not to hear them.

The undercover cops didn't even wear pink!

Scene report from the Pink Party, Fall '06, almost exactly fifteen years after we moved in and threw OUR first Pink House party. The more things change... I love how these girls told the Chapel Hill fuzz which end was up re why kids scattered when the blue lights arrived - "you see a cop and you duck...you just don't want to be around cops." Priceless!

From The Pink House of Chapel Hill:

"Our first Pink House party was fabulous. It was a pink theme, and I am happy to report that a lot of people followed the rules. It is Chapel Hill, after all, so it shouldn't have been too hard. The girls and I spent all Friday late afternoon decorating. Seriously, we went all out. We doused our house with pink streamers and balloons. We strung up white lights in the backyard and in the shed. Put pretty pink table cloths over the beer pong table and the flip cup table.

Our house was so cute. We made pink pj, got a keg, got some pink wine and made pink jello shots. About 150-200 people showed up. We all dressed really cute in pink (pictures coming soon), and everything was going perfect.

Then the Chapel Hill police show up. They check mine and the girls' IDs, then tell us that there had been a noise complaint about our party and that we shouldn't have underage drinkers there. I responded that most of our invitees were 21 or over, but the cops retorted that our guests must be underage since 3/4 of them left.

I told them that's just instinct. You see a cop and you duck. regardless of whether you're doing something wrong or illegal. You just don't want to be around cops.

Well, I was a little skeptical that there was really a noise complaint. We live right beside a fraternity that keeps me up every night with their music. We live behind three very large bars, and there are students up and down our streets. I highly doubt that anyone complained. The cops stayed across the street for a while, and some undercover cops had even been chilling at our party for some time. They even cited two of our underage guests in our backyard!

I walked across the street to ask the cops if our party's noise was up to par since they cleared out 3/4 of our guests and since we turned down the music. It was only 1:30 am. Then, we got to talking about how and why they busted our party. Apparently, one of them told me, there was a "911 call" about the Pink House party. The cop even used the lingo, "the Pink House."

That makes me think that they were just on the prowl for parties that night. That, and the fact that today's police log shows the police activity from Friday night and it seems like every party in Chapel Hill was busted. One observation: when there's a noise complaint called in by a neighbor, I highly doubt the Chapel Hill police scurry up all the undercover officers they can and come chill at a party. Seriously. And the undercover cops didn't even wear pink!

From today's police log: society victim of loud music/party/other noise, at 130 north street, chapel hill, nc, between 00:18, 09/16/2006 and 00:18, 09/16/2006. reported: 09/16/2006."

- "cops don't like pink" by Shanny (aka Shannan Bowen)

Regardless of the facts, I still suspect Larry Short made the 911 call. Thanks to Shannan for the photos and on-scene reporting, and co-hosting (along with her 2006-07 roomies) such a worthy addition to the house's long line of legendary parties!

A sort of charisma only a Pink House would have

After Sylvia had a string of good luck with docile tenants like the Mormon missionaries and nice Christian gals (late 90s – early 00s), the place got passed on to a gaggle of sorority girls who re-inaugurated the Pink House party tradition during their residence from Fall '04 – Spring '05. The next year, a bunch of guys with a "weird stinch" moved in, thereby reviving the slob tradition. They, in turn, handed the house over to a group of girls who decided on the place partially because of its infamy. In their year there, they tangled with the police while throwing parties, and otherwise did the most to carry on the Pink House legacy of any post-'97 crew. How do we know all this? Well, I found some deleted blog entries dated Fall '06, which brought the house's recent history to light.

Shanny (the author, a DTH staffer at the time) deserves props for being the first resident to start a blog solely devoted to the Pink House. Even though she later deleted the whole thing. Luckily, the internet has a long memory.

From The Pink House of Chapel Hill:

"The Pink House was built a long, long time ago and has served as a home to many groups of UNC students and those who just never wanted to leave Chapel Hill. Groups have associated their college years with this house, and the current residents have not forgotten the legacy of this place.

I have to admit, I actually had never been to the Pink House and had hardly heard about it before we moved in here. Around February, Jess, Maile, Lindsay, Tara and I were looking for a house to move into together for the next school year. So Jess saw a picture of the Pink House hanging on the office door of Dunlap Lilley Rentals. We contact Mr. Jim Lilley and ask him if it's available. "I don't know," he responded. "Go ask the guys living there."

So, we knock on the door and ask the dudes to show us around. It's a typical college pad, complete with beer cans and a weird stinch (they were guys). They told us the fireplace didn't work, the plumbing and the floor in the downstairs bathroom were really bad, the repairs weren't getting done, and the energy bills and rent were really high. But then they told us that the place was famous. It had a sort of charisma that only a Pink House would have. It was old, and many people have lived there and many memories were made there. Ben Folds lived there. There was a movie made about the place, we were told. Wow. I think that - and the fact that it was pink and big - had us sold.

We moved into the Pink House this summer. Well, we moved our belongings into the house this summer and subletted while we were all away at internships and other summer places. Now, we're all back together. School has started, we've already lost two football games, I have a paper due in a week that I have no idea about, we've called our landlord to fix repairs more than 10 times, and we are finally throwing our first Pink House party!"

- "the pink ... what?", by Shanny (aka Shannan Bowen)

End of an Era: Jay Murray leaves Chapel Hill

From 1997-2005, Jay kept the spirit of the Pink House alive at his next communal house, 401 Pritchard Ave. While finishing his PhD studies, he and his fellow roomies gave a broader life education in how to have fun to the next generation of UNC's unwashed and unruly college-age youth.

In August, 2005, a few months after graduating, Jay painted his room white, packed up a U-Haul, and left town for a teaching gig in NYC. Chapel Hill hasn't been the same since.