Bwog doesn’t have the cash to “pimp your room,” and we certainly don’t want to raid it and then date you. So we bring you our semi-weekly feature, the “Cribs-esque” Room Hopping, continuing with…

For Priya (left) and Maddie (right) both C’09, walking past the trash bags collected from many meals at Hewitt, on the way to their dorm in the sticks on Claremont Avenue is worth it. “You feel like you can leave school and go home,” says Priya.

She’s probably right. Home of the “Third Cultural Alliance” special interest community, Suite 62 enjoys all of the fruits of the post pre-war apartment-style building: hardwood floors, a sizable kitchen, and soft pastel walls. In exchange for this prime housing, Columbia’s requires the house’s seven residents to
host one “cultural” event each month. Last month they held a salsa-dancing workshop, but this month “We’re going to have to stretch it for Christmas,” says Maddie. “It’s a gingerbread house-making event.”

The girls have also enhanced Claremont’s pre-war features with warm, comfy decorative furniture and lighting fixtures

Priya and her roommate Kate’s spacious double (left) is colorful, with saris and silk scarves acting as curtains and tapestries. The round red chair is a treasured item which they call “the womb.”

Maddie and Stephanie’s room (Stephanie’s bed, right) is also warm and filled with joyful things. Like the series of Edward Gorey illustrated poems posted on the wall: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs,” “B is for Basil,
assaulted by bears” etcetera… But it’s not all morbid. Stephanie’s little brother makes clever little sculptures out of modge-podged rolled up bits of masking tape (left).

The suite’s common kitchen area is covered in washable crayon. Check out the Warhol  soup-cans on the circuit-breaker box, and the characters from Clue drawn on the wall for a themed-Halloween party.

Have a tricked-out dorm, or wish to volunteer a friend/foe’s room? E-mail bwgossip@columbia.edu, and we’ll send a correspondent to scrutinize your living space for next week’s edition of room hopping!