It’s Friday night, and you and your buddies are jamming at the concert in Gardner when 1 a.m. rolls around. You don’t feel like hitting the hay quite yet, so what do you do? Several would retreat to 1220 6th Avenue, better known as Fairgrounds.

“People … kind of venture over here on their own after Gardner, whether or not we say anything,” said Maddy Pesch ’16, one of the residents.

“I don’t advertise it, but Yik Yak [does],” said Ben Vaughn ’15, another housemate.

The other residents of Fairgrounds, a house traditionally rented by swim team members, are Thomas Robinson ’16, Ben Weideman ’15 and Collin Kramer ’15.

An unexpected highlight of being the center of the weekend hubbub occurs on the mornings after nighttime festivities.

“Sometimes cleaning up can be fun because you find random stuff,” Robinson said.

For this reason, they’ve created a Lost and Found basket filled with an assortment of odd items.

Despite its reputation for parties, the house serves as more than simply a good spot to hit up on weekends.

“We had a grill outside for the first-years at the beginning of the year,” Pesch said.

The residents of Fairgrounds have also hosted mixers with other sports teams.

“We like spending time with other people and getting outside our core of the swim team,” Vaughn said. “But we also like other people in this college.”

Maintaining standards for hosting events with as much regularity as Fairgrounds does offer its fair share of challenges.

“This house has gotten just progressively dirty over the past years,” Pesch said. “We had to go in and scrub all the carpets down and get some buckets of dirty water.”

Besides sharing this struggle, the residents also try to engage in other house bonding activities.

“Sometimes on Sundays we’ll coordinate and have kind of a family dinner type thing,” Vaughn said.

“Sunday dinner, naked photo shoot for Fetish – that was an activity,” Kramer said. “We like sharing ideas.”

Fairgrounds may represent different things for people from all walks of campus, but as for the current residents, it’s certainly more than a Saturday night haunt.

“I like just kind of having my own space that doesn’t feel like it’s just an extension of the campus,” Pesch said. “Even when you’re in the dorms, you still feel like you’re on campus, but here it’s like a different place to go to.”

To all who may ever visit, or even live here in the future, the words of Kramer serve as important advice to all: “The best bathroom is in the basement.”