1005 High Street is actually two apartments. But that didn’t really work for Caitlin Vaughan ’10, Eleanor Nelson ’10, Neal Wepking ’10, Karl Kremling ’10 or Dean Porter ’10. So they broke down the door—an undertaking the landlord may or may not know about.
“Dean’s dad came and helped us,” said Vaughan. Now, the residents of 1005 access the upper story by walking through Wepking’s bedroom. En route to this roundabout staircase, there’s a retro poster of a bikini-clad Marilyn Monroe pumping iron.
The walls of 1005 were already decorated when the current residents moved in, but most of it was sent to the trash. “We tore down everything else besides it, but we left [Marilyn] because we liked it,” Porter said. They also inherited an old Toshiba laptop, a photo-printer, two cases of home-brewed beer and a little sheep-smoked feta cheese in the fridge.
They spent the summer working their way through the home brews, but unfortunately, didn’t get the chance with the cheese. Porter tried a bit of it upon moving in, but was disappointed to find their landlord had cleaned the fridge the next day.
At 1005, it is all about the food. “We try to eat dinner together five days a week…that’s a big part of our house,” Vaughan said. Each member of the house cooks dinner once a week, largely with local vegetables.
“We have a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] so we try to use our CSA as much as possible,” said Vaughan. They might be getting some local meat soon as well. “We’re thinking about getting a whole lamb… from a local farm,” Porter said. At $1.40 a pound, for 100 pounds of lamb, it’s an investment, but the four meat-eating housemates think it will be worth it.
Fortunately, they have the room to store an entire lamb—the newly renovated 1005 comes with two kitchens. Two kitchens for five housemates is none too many, since, as stated before, it really is all about the food here. When asked what they do, their response was anonymous. “We eat,” Porter said. “We eat,” Nelson said. “We eat,” Vaughan said.
