For ten years, from 1985 to 1995, I lived at 717 14th Ave SE in Minneapolis. It was quite a house, mostly because of the people who were hanging out around there (some of whom are listed in Steph's Mini-Apolis). This is an attempt (almost certainly a feeble one) to capture some of those memories. At the moment, I'm still working on organizing all the memories. Next step is filling in the details. If you watch this page regularly, you might be able to see a bit of how I go about turning memories into web-pages.
If you hung out at our parties there and have incriminating photos, interesting memories, or other bits I should add to that page, by all means, send 'em in. As you can see, this is still a little content-light.
The cast:
- Downstairs residents:
- Tom and Doug - Bob's roommates before I moved in. I knew them both as the people who'd laid the foundation.
- Bob - The anchor at 717 for the first part of my tenure.
- Karl - The farmer / physics student who donated the big piece of rusty metal that was our blackboard.
- Joe - A short-timer. Joe was there during some of the highlights of the Society of Physics Students period and replaced Karl.
- Cris - the first time he lived in the little room that became the library (1988)
- Brian the Red - I went to high school with Brian,and when Joe left, Brian moved in. While he wasn't the best roommate, it was because of him that we got a dishwasher. When he moved out, we decided to turn his old room into a library rather than find another roommate.
- Don was a MECCie who moved in to take Bob's place when Bob left for grad school at UCLA. He went directly from delivering pizza for Domino's to working for Microsoft and getting millions in stock options.
- Jason and Laurie shared the big front room after Don left. Jason's the one who got me started brewing beer.
- Cris had previously lived upstairs, and moved in to the front room. He built a big-ass loft in his room (it held two queen size futons).
- Doug - The person who tore down Cris' loft. Doug continued to live at 717 with his girlfriend (now wife) for a while after I moved off to California and back.
- Upstairs:
- Cris
- Sue
- Dave the Witch
- Brian
- random events, in roughly chronological order
- Friday BYOM, Saturday poker
- building the patio
- garden - peppers, onions, garlic, cumin
- a new driveway
- beer fridge!
- Tim tripping and breaking his nose. On the ceiling. (1989)
- Brian almost getting hit by lightning
- getting high on varnish fumes
- more random events, in no particular order
- Having people attempt to pull food off the grill with their fingers, leading to repeated utterances of the mantra
fire hot
. - Dave L. coming down from the garage roof and impaling himself on a picket from the fence. Ouch!
- Warrior doing condom tricks. Did you know you can put a couple litres of beer into a condom? And if you do, you can tie it to your belt and it'll almost reach the floor?
- The VW hubcap ashtrays. And a hard drive ash tray too. (10Mb 5-1/4 inch full-height drive)
- Watching the Kentucky Derby and having mint juleps in the back yard.
- Steph's high school friend @ bbq, he goes bonkers and tries to climb a poor tiny tree in the front.
- At least a few "hey, you're all tripping!" moments. Gotta hate showing up late.
- A lot of Floyd. A lot of Dead. Last known wall of "Tapes" (cassette).
- Steph pinned to the floor by very very many afghans (we wanted to make sure she didn't get cold).
- The day Dave went crazy and spruced up the place, purchasing a lovely oriental rug.
- Trip toys in the library.
- "Helping" Cris & Sue move. Or, rather, helping Sue move while Cris sat on the couch.
- Installing stereo into Tim's Firechicken—drinking Mom's beet wine.
- Brilliant idea of Onion Beer. (Hey, the garlic beer was good!)
- How odd the shiny new breadmaker looked in an otherwise 1934 era kitchen.
- Post-Dave party by Doug. Many monkeys. Many Aquavit.
- Always having someplace to go on a Friday night—Priceless.
- Having people attempt to pull food off the grill with their fingers, leading to repeated utterances of the mantra
