Most of my friends don’t know where the Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall is.
“It’s the glass and brick building on 36th and Walnut,” I attempt to explain.
“Annenberg?”
“No. Right across from the Bookstore.”
“Oh, the new building. I’m so glad that stupid boardwalk is finally gone.”
And so on and so on. It’s really frustrating. Eventually, I give up: “It’s the building with the creepy hand gate.” And pretty much everyone knows where the creepy hand gate is.
As the second most used address saved into my Campusfood account (the Street office is first, duh), Addams means a lot to me. Fine Arts building by day, pseudo-dorm by night, it’s more of a micro community than a set of classrooms. People sleep, people chill, people agonize and people create. Classes are more like conversations and tests are intimate and always catered.
At night, once the doors are locked to those who don't take Fine Arts or Architecture classes, Addams puts the late-night Rosenparty to shame. As familiar faces trickle in for the night, the building comes alive. Oddly enough, it's kind of like your average campus bar — there are the regulars, the random freshman who slipped through and the has-beens who graduated a while ago but still hang around now and then...
Addams all-nighters, no matter the students' chosen media, share a common bond. We are each other's sounding boards, therapists, critics and teachers. For us, our major is a life style.
It's this lifestyle – and it's misunderstanding among the rest of campus – is the subject of this week's feature (pg. 10). And don't miss Food & Drink's food truck gauntlet (pg. 7), a Penn grad making her way in the fashion world (pg. 5) and a freshman who actually cares about Penn basketball (pg. 19).
Congratulations, we're back to normalcy.
'til next week,
SB
