No More Bull

Bullwinkles is closed and I won't cry. I lived next door to the Bull at 1340 Tennessee with four roommates for a year beginning in the fall of 1984. Nobody at our house dug the Bull. We walked up to the Hawk on Ohio Street to whet our college whistles. Bullwinkles attracted the fraternity/sorority crowd and we were GDIs (Note: The Hawk seems to be a frat bar now). We saw a lot of topsiders. The smell of Polo cologne wafted down Tennessee street. Cars in the scant curbside parking area sported Reagan-Bush '84 bumper stickers. Sorority girls played Don Mclean's American Pie on the jukebox and sang along all semester. American Pie echoed out the Bull's front door for a hundred nights. We witnessed young men urinating in the alley between our house and the bar as we watched Miami Vice on the Admiral in our living room.

The good thing about living next to the Bull were the unsanctioned carry-out longnecks. It's against Kansas law to take open beer outside a bar unless you're in an enclosed beer garden, but we filled a Dillon's shopping cart full of empty Budweiser longnecks on our back porch by April. My roommate Kurt returned them to the bar, much to the owner's delight. We warmed up to Bullwinkles a bit after that, but it was the end of the school year and I didn't return to the Bull.

The current landlord also owns my old house at 1340 Tennessee. A few years ago someone erected a wood fence between the house and the bar. No more alley urinators. Perhaps a young go-getter will buy both properties and the muli-unit apartment house behind the bar (all three are available for $849,000) and tear down the trio to build a laundromat. I'll bet somebody opens a new 3.2 beer bar in the old Bullwinkle's building and calls it Rocky's or Jay Ward's Last Chance. Maybe then I'll stop by for a longneck to go.

Ode to the Oread

The Oread (say or-ee-add) is an older Lawrence, Kansas neighborhood with student housing and apartments, interspersed with single family dwellings and rehabbed and refurbished 100 year-old houses. Built on the hill (Mount Oread) leading up to the KU campus, its location and cozy ambiance make it a coveted choice for students who want to be within walking distance of school and downtown.

That's one take on the Oread. The Oread has also been called the student slums of Lawrence. Not every house is a landmark. Parking is tight. Many rentals do not meet building and safety codes. Last week a student walked off the unrailed balcony at 1045 Tennessee and went to the hospital. Drafty rooms and old furnaces made for cold winter nights. Students used space heaters and extension cords to keep warm. In January 2002, malfunctioning electric equipment started a fire at 1216 Ohio. (That's the house where the L.A. Ramblers played their first gig in 1985). Encroaching development removed some of the houses and replaced them with beehive apartments, parking lots, or university buildings.

I miss the Oread. I lived at 1340 Tennessee my sophomore year and 930 Ohio my junior year. I liked being in the action. You were never far from anything: a bar, a house party, the library. I didn't mind the traffic, or the freaks, or the public urination. To me, living in the Oread was a rite of passage. I survived the initiation of college life. I served a year in the high-rise dorm-i-tude of Oliver Hall and I was ready to move to an off-campus bachelor pad to be part of the scene. During one of our open house parties, the Tan Man showed up in full T.M. regalia, a brown leather jacket with no shirt and blue shorts. We had arrived!

Vintage detached garages housed long forgotten shade tree projects. Outdoor folk art, brick streets and third story pigeon roosts were often found in the same block. There were houses with french doors and upstair fireplaces and capped gas jets. Loud music echoed through the neighborhood. Beer bottles and old furniture were smashed, ignored and taken away. Big porches were shaded by big trees. At 1340 Tennessee, our kitchen featured the same model stove featured prominently in David Lynch's cult classic, "Eraserhead".

I loved it but I moved away after my junior year. A fellow Oread-dweller and I took an apartment southwest of 23rd and Iowa for a year. The Gazebo apartments were new and they had no character, no atmosphere. It was a combination of the atmosphere of the Oread and my station in life. I was the care-free college man and slave to the social scene. I lived as a new bohemian (or so I fancied) and took a few credit hours up on the hill to perpetuate the college experience. The Oread was sunday mornin' comin' down any day of the week. The Oread is dead. Long live the Oread.

Keep up with Oread News from the Lawrence Journal World or return to the Oread for a sleep-over.