Chapter 35:

 

WHAT'S THE RENT?

​The infamous Horseshoe on East Cleveland, in September 2006I’d say moving off-campus for your junior and / or senior years is the norm, especially if you attended UD post mid '90s. Reason I cite that as a turning point, is that with the Main Street and UD campus building boom during the past ten to twenty years, there has been parallel construction of newer off-campus housing…many more choices, much more availability. Thusly, things have changed, in terms of students not staying on-campus as long as they used to. I’ll break this down into three categories:

 

Apartments. When I was at UD, the popular ones (i.e., where you lived, drank, and were merry) were Towne Court (now Studio Green), Park Place, Foxcroft, Ivy Hall, Paper Mill (now the Apartments at Pinebrook), and the then newly built School Lane. Wall-to-wall college kids in all of these, for the most part. By the time I was long gone, hot spots became University Courtyard, and all the other Shangri-La complexes you newer kids have had the luxury of living in.

 

I just want to throw one thing in about Paper Mill: I went to a party there early on in my freshman year. Of course, had no clue where I was. Two things I’ll never forget about this party; 1) The stairwell smelled like puke. Bad. If puke could puke, that’s what it would smell like. I think I was there with Chubbs, and one of the guys who lived there told us that some other dude had ralphed down the stairs the night before, and, 2) I drank Beast. Out of a plastic water bottle that had one of those big straws shooting out of the top. Have no idea why.

 

“College” Houses. I put college in “quotes,” because I consider these houses to be inhabitable by no one other than college students. They’re the houses you look at and say, “Now THAT’s a college house!” Usually prompted by just looking at what’s on the front porch; busted furniture, beer cans, etc. In this category I’d put a lot of the houses on Madison (was college kids in my day), North Chapel, South Chapel, South College (the end closer to the bridge), East Cleveland, and some of the Greek houses around campus.

 

Commonly, college houses adopt nicknames, derived from either the actual shape of the house, or who is living there at the time. UD is no exception; “The Horseshoe,” “The Hockey House,” etc. The chapter after this one is dedicated to one such house, and then there’s others in the “Fests” section of this site!

 

“Real” Houses. By this I mean houses that are occupied by UD kids, but can pass as a house where a family might live. Four of my chick friends lived in a nice house on Ritter Lane, for example.

 

And then friends of friends had a pretty decent house on Courtney Street. I have no idea how they landed that place. In the basement they had a full ping-pong table for Beirut (yes, many of you call it “Beer Pong”). This I think was the first time I had seen a table designated for full-time Beirut usage, and man, they used the fuck out of it. I remember watching the ping-pong ball rolling around on the dirty-ass floor (after every bad toss), only for the dirt to then transfer into the nasty beer. Which the guys would still pound down, no problem. Well, actually, sometimes a problem. The rule in that house was if you had to puke from playing Beirut, you'd have to run upstairs, run outside and hurl while “spinning” -- so you'd ultimately be standing in a circle of your own barf. Nice.

 

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Now, before we get to some of your UD off-campus anecdotes, just two more quick ones from me.

 

Take a Seat: Couch Hotel

 

I’d say my second home from Fall '93 to Spring '95 was Ivy Hall, Apartment A1. Now, I’ve heard in recent years that Ivy Hall has become, “where sophomores live,” but it used to be way popular to live there, right through graduation. I was at UD towards the end of the Ivy Hall “picket fence” era. Only some of you know what I’m talking about, and that’s fine. But ALL of you know, that the Ivy Hall courtyard was nuts on Friday and Saturday nights.

 

Anyway, four of my good friends from my Sypherd days moved into A1, Fall of '93. Whoops, make that five friends: this was the semester of the infamous 392 / 394 South College fire, that left nine college kids homeless…including our friend Kurt! Yep, he had to crash in A1 for a while, until he eventually moved into an apartment on the other end of Ivy Hall (closest to the bridge)!

 

Where’s the furniture in the story above? Actually, there is none. Just thought it was funny that a year later, during the Summer of '94, the Ivy guys were nice enough to let a bunch of us store our couches there for June-July-August. So, not only did they have their own two or three couches in there, but maybe three or four others. The place looked like a showroom…of crap.

 

Boobs, Butts & Beyond: Blind Spot

 

Spring '95. Our last semester. 36 Choate Street, great house, where five of our chick friends lived, whom we knew since Dickinson. Warm evening, us boys hanging out at the girls house. Chillin' out on the front porch, I think it was before we all went out for the night. AB’s girlfriend (now wife) lived in the only downstairs bedroom, which faces the street. Meaning, yes, the front porch is right outside the window...

 

...so, I was sitting on a lawn chair or whatever they had out on the front porch, which positioned my eye-level perfectly with a slight gap in the bedroom’s horizontal blinds (which were closed)...

 

...AB’s girlfriend was changing inside, and I swear to you, by chance I just happened to look to my left, as her boobs were bare, right in my line-of-sight, through the gap in the blinds. Lee Harvey Oswald wished he had anything close to this clear of a shot. Lame story? Not if you actually saw the boobs. Tremendous.