Columbia is for people who are in love! Bride and groom just kissed outside the Chapel as a bunch of 14-year-olds on skateboards whizzed passed. This is the center of the world!

Wedding-kids hanging out

A few points of note from today’s lovely Labor Day.

Bwog spent $7 on a bagel and orange juice at Nussbaum this morning, and remembered how our money goes so quickly here. Dinner at Mel’s Burger Bar is 10% off tonight and tomorrow with a Columbia/Barnard ID. We also hear that Hewitt isn’t swiping IDs till tomorrow morning, so there should be a free dinner there, too.

And overheard on 115th and Broadway, a very young man wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt: “I’m going to McDonald’s and I’M NOT WAITING!”

And one first-year to another: “So, like, Mao, right? How do you pronounce his name?”

If you’re buying books today, pause. The bookstore is offering a new Textbook Rental Program. You can rent textbooks for half their original price, and keep them until 10 days after finals. You can mark them up and highlight them, too. Look for books with a “Rent Me!” sticker.

And, sweet heavens, someone is already playing Claire de Lune in Lerner.

Enterprising tipster Conor Skelding noticed these sweet words in the sky over Morningside Drive this morning:

IT IS COLUMBIA. Roar, Lion, roar!

Today on Daily Intel, we learned that there is a new website that makes the last 3,981 wedding announcements in the Times and made them into a database. Columbia has been mentioned 615 times. Browse and see if your TA married your other TA! Harvard had only 466 and Yale- Yale!- only 278! MIT is mentioned 663 times (shhh).

That means that a huge chunk of the important/rich/highly-aggressive people who get their wedding announcements in the Sunday Times are your fellow Columbians. Perhaps we spoke too soon against Floorcest.

Update: A commenter points out that “Columbia” also overlaps with British Columbia, and probably some other things mentioned in wedding announcements that aren’t actually about Columbia the school. Bwog remains certain that we beat Harvard, however.

Trawling the weddings section of The New York Times, Bwog found out that Columbia’s very own Farah Griffin was married last Saturday.  She teaches English, comparative literature, and African-American studies.  She also directs the Institute for Research in African American Studies here and has written several books about jazz musicians.

The lucky man is Prof. Obery M. Hendricks Jr., who teaches “biblical interpretation” at the New York Theological Seminary (“in New York,” the Times notes).

Congratulations from Bwog!

If this Craigslisting is to be believed, it appears as though Cafe Fresh on 121st and Amsterdam — the School of Social Work hangout known for its beautiful location and slow-as-molasses service — could be up for sale.

UPDATE, 12:26pm: A call to Cafe Fresh reveals that it is not, in fact, selling itself. So the ad is either a prank, or there’s another corner cafe that started 2.5 years ago selling coffee and American fare on Amsterdam avenue in the 120s.

The post says the place makes $550,000-$600,000 per year, but no word on how much they’re asking. Hey, now seems like a good time to get into the restaurant business!

Also while knocking around on everyone’s favorite internet marketplace, we found a benevolent reverend studying at Columbia advertising his (or her) marriage officiation services for FREE. So get off your ass and pop the question already; this offer may not be around forever