New York’s Hottest Club is…

An appreciation post for the soundtrack at the best dining hall on campus.

We’ve all been there. Squashed in between angsty adolescents, skin on skin, mouths rife with hunger and thirst. It’s hot, and you can vaguely smell ranch dressing and mandarin oranges. Gasolina by Daddy Yankee is playing loudly, its fervent bass shaking your insides. Are you at a frat on a Friday night? No. It’s 11:43 AM a Tuesday at Ferris Booth Commons.

Let’s say it: the Ferris Booth soundtrack is just one banger after another, and Bwog is here to show it some love. It’s no secret that Ferris Booth serves the best food on campus. We come for the Very Berry Salad, the warm biscuits, and the Italian wedding soups. But we’re also here for the ambience. We’re here to drop that ass in front of the cheesecake display case.

Here at Columbia, we’re beholden to various soundscapes in campus hotspots: Hewitt’s Natasha Bedingfield-esque easy listening playlist, fraught whispered conversations and accidental phone vibrations in Butler study rooms, and sad people music at Snock and Postcrypt. But it’s about time we admit that the one we just can’t get enough of is Ferris’s mix of salsa, merengue, and early 2000s reggaeton. We spend our classes learning about the verses of Homer, but we come to Ferris to learn about the verses to Ricky Martin B-sides.

We want to know who compiled this playlist. Could it be Alex, the legendary Barnard Public Safety shuttle driver who moonlights as a DJ downtown? (True story). Or is it Fausta herself? No matter what, there’s nothing else we want to hear as we wait for my corn on the cob. So Fausta, for all of us with #FerrisForever, please leak the most bumping playlist in Columbia history.

Photo via Columbia University