The basement of the West End. Photo via Wikimedia

Sometimes, fresh-people, in a seminar, or at a party, someone will reference something that used to exist and doesn’t anymore, and you will have to nod your head or laugh knowingly. Ah yes, Morningside is like, so gentrified, you will say.

We asked alumni of The Blue and White and Bwog for places, events, and trends that once were and are no longer. Here’s your leg up.

  • When at least some people on campus wore fleeces and baggy-ish jeans
  • JJ’s at 4 AM (now open until 2 AM, was a bar when your dad went here)
  • McIntosh Hall and the old WBAR studio in it
  • Flashing, not swiping, your CUID to get into Butler
  • A respectable 1020 (was once an upperclassmen bar before the West End became Havana, now your first NSOP stop)
  • Shit in the McBain showers
  • Arson in the McBain shaft
  • Using AIM
  • AmCaf
  • The Village Pourhouse used to be Mona, a bar that was better than the Village Pourhouse. Before Mona, there was SoHa. Girls used to dance on the bar. “There would be massive drunken dancing,” one alum whispered over GChat, “and then you’d just start making out with random decent-looking girls.”
  • CoBag (Columbia Bagels, open 24/7. Bwog editors coined the ‘Morningside Heights Happy Meal’: a 40 and bagel at 3 AM)
  • “I once saw a rat in Ferris”
  • The West End basement when Lil’ Jon was popular (fabled Columbia hangout of everyone, ever, including Obama and Jack Kerouac, with fantastic burgers and lots of beer pong)
  • Creepy Wein doors that had horizontal slats at the top (for oxygen, we believe)
  • The yearly letter Foner would write to Spec explaining that he is not a Gyllenhaal
  • The old Westside
  • Good Spec reporting (MEALAC!)
  • Vampire Weekend performing at ADP and St. A’s
  • CUCommunity (offered a share in Facebook, but they turned it down. Bummer!)
  • Manhattanville protests
  • 40’s on 40 without the playpen and drink tickets