See how your classmates live as Bwog resurrects an old favorite feature: Room Hopping. If you (or a friend) has a beautiful, well-decorated, tricked-out, gaudy, or otherwise exceptional room or suite, send word Bwog's way and we'll send a camera crew and reporter. What's the point, after all, of living the high life if no one knows about it?

Gabi D'Addario and Tessa Rapaczynski, both CC'10, have been friends since kindergarten. Before the start of high school, the two went to French summer camp in Switzerland. The "camp" was a decrepit house owned by a man the girls knew only as "Monsieur." The campers had to brush their teeth three times a day, and when their rooms were messy they were sent on "punishment walks" up a nearby mountain. In the rain. Tessa's room was often messy.

One bright spot was the camp's foosball table. Gabi and Tessa became quite good at the game, and, when Gabi found an abandoned table on the streets of New York some years later, she saved it from the dumpster. It now sits in the middle of the McBain double she shares with Tessa. Floormates came in and played...at first.

Bwog announces the return of Thursday Room Hopping -- now on a new day!

Jessica's room in Claremont is probably the best place on campus to sit pretzel-style on the ground with some milk and cookies for a read-aloud.

The artistic senior spent the week of down-time before school began bringing the outdoors inside of her spacious single.

Clouds float and birds soar on her light green walls.

A tree, lovingly cut out of cardboard, sheds some of its leaves as if a squirrel had just disrupted some branches.

"New York can feel like a harsh, overcivilized place," she said. "I wanted to make it feel like I could have a picnic in my room."

The room has a beach-house feel to it -- Claremont's signature wood floors, the art on the walls, the beige throw-rug, the white canopy over her soft white bed. Books sit not on a shelf, but in a wicker basket on the floor, and a mug hangs delicately by its handle from a hook on the wall.

She has adorned her walls with art -- even the light switch has something to say.

-SEV

Room Hopping has been on hiatus--until today. Emi Noguchi and Noam Prywes bring you another little residential corner of paradise.

For 18-year old Chelsea Ward, C '09, "where are you from?" is an extremely complicated question. She hails from Savannah, Georgia; Hilton Head, South Carolina; Rochester, New York; and Buckinghamshire, England. Add to that the two months she spent in Japan last summer.

Memorabilia from Chelsea's world travels abound in her cozy Hartley single: photos of her various host families and friends in Japan to complement posters from her visit to the Prado, next to the picture of her name written in Arabic that she got on a two-week backpacking trip to Spain.

The "quasi-Asian section" (She's an EALAC major, already in her thesis seminar) is tranquil, replete with glowing paper lanterns and calligraphy samples a woman gave to her before she knew any Chinese. She also has a startling number of books. "When I came to college I had to edit all the books I had at home," says Ward. "I had probably 300 books after the first narrowing down."

Then there's that glorious view of the quad from her two large windows. When asked about the binoculars on the sill, Chelsea explains, "Those come in handy when watching demonstrations. No one's used them to peek in any windows..." She trails off.

The room's most striking item is framed by the windows, a painting ("Hang on, it's skewed,") by a high school friend based on Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!.

A Hartley passerby's favorite feature, however, would have to be the white board at the door. The regularly updated poll, situated in a much-trafficked hallway, offers questions ranging from the spiritual- "If you meet the Buddha, should you kill him?"- to the highly annotated Valentine's special, "When did you lose your virginity?" Bwog discreetly left its two cents and bounced.

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...

You can graduate without walking into some places on campus even once. For most CU students, the Bayit is one of those places. Not for Bwog. Ben G'07 took Bwog on a tour of the six-story house on 112th street the other day, making sure to stop at its huge walk-in freezer (right).

What is the Bayit? "A welcoming home for Jewish students from every walk of life," Ben says. "We keep a Kosher kitchen and observe the Sabbath, but only in common areas."

Jewish students living in all of the Columbia schools (including grad schools) take turns cooking in Ben's words, "balanced meals" several days a week, hang out watching movies off the Bayit Netflix account in their big-screen-TV-room, hold open-mic events, and host BBQs on the roof during the summers. Residents get all this for $900 a month -- and free laundry.

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."

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...

Gabi, Moe, Celia, Sara (left to right) and Tom (not pictured), some adventurous and artsy juniors and seniors, set out from their EC exclusion suite on a mission. They had a blue Craigslist couch (right) to retrieve from its owner on 86th Street, and they weren't going to let anything -- not Housing and Dining's rules about renting bins for only two hours, nor the steep slope of the Upper West Side -- get in their way.

The couch was essential. It would become a member of the EC1406 family, and would be affectionately referred to as "Peeb'r."

Why Peeb'r?

On the day they got the couch, Gabi says, "alot of PBR was consumed."

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 the semi-weekly feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

It may be a brownstone on 114th street, but don't walk into the sorority EAT (Sigma Delta Tau) expecting Animal-House-caliber mayhem. Don't expect to hear the high pitched cooing of girls in pajamas having pillow fights. And certainly don't expect to smell that effluvia of sweat, beer, and vomit that always says "Go Greek!"

"It smells very much unlike the frats, which smell like death when you walk in," said Rachael, one of the lucky fourteen residents of EAT's brownstone. "We're a clean bunch."

Rachael (above, right) and her roommate Maxie, both C'09, say they are so glad to live in a clean-smelling (boy, does it smell clean!), wood-panelled, wood-floored brownstone, complete with a large and comfy living room, big screen TV, full kitchens, dining rooms and fireplaces. The house also has its very own laundry room, but Bwog was forbidden to enter it, since it is used as the 61-member sorority's "Chapter Room." "Only sisters are allowed in," Rachael says.

With such a nice house, the temptation to entertain and throw parties is great. But state brothel laws prohibit them from doing so. At least the law in New York defining women living together with alcohol as a brothel is not as prohibitive as brothel laws in in Winston-Salem, where Rachael says, "six women with their feet off the ground is considered a brothel."

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Kendall, C'08 rejoices in the "glue dot" (box at right). She has used this modest adhesive from Kate's Paperie to collage the walls of her sizable Wallach single with photographs, magazine pictures, maps, and original artwork.

"I hate white walls," she said. "You know that first night you spend in the room..." She shuddered.

The room wasn't intentionally divided into zones, but every area of the room has a different scheme. Magazine models make a ceiling border, she has a zone for ticket stubs, snowy scenes of her native Colorado, and a photo shrine to her friends.

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Kyle (right) and Jesse C'09 say they are glad to be out of the "beehive" that was John Jay.

"My room was like a shit-hole last year," says Kyle. "I decided to clean up my act this year."

Clean their Nussbaum double is. And perhaps one of the most tranquil, artistic, and creative spaces on campus.

"We have no flatscreen TV to show you," Jesse says, "but we have paintbrushes."

Art on every wall (much of it graffiti) reflects their politics as "thinking human beings as opposed to not thinking," Jesse says.

They've even painted their refrigerator.

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Bwog visitors to the John Jay single currently occupied by Sue C'10 counted thirteen handbags -- ten in the shrine to accessories behind her door, and another three in her closet.

"There are more under the bed," she admits.

Handbags are not the only fetish objects in the room. There are eleven pairs of sunglasses, and countless necklaces arranged on manniquin necks she purchased dirt cheap in China. "I love shopping," she says. The prospect of getting dressed before her shrine gives her "a reason to get up in the morning."

The self-professed shop-a-holic from Michigan began planning her college dorm room when she was still in high school, starting with the purchase of a sunny bed-spread last December. The orange of the bedspread serves as the unifying accent color for the magazine photo-shoot caliber room.

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

The five gentlemen who've colonized one EC high rise say the weighty name of their living quarters, "The Savage Pony," originated in something deeper than themselves.

"It's a biblical, mythical, pagan god dating back to the 14th Century," says Jason C'09. "It's about sex. But its also robust and raw, thus the yellow walls."

The inhabitants of the Savage Pony, Jason (hat), Iscoe C'09 (big hair), Rob C'08 (long hair), Lars C'07 and Alex C'07 (not pictured) know their tower in the sky (with sweeping city skyline views) is something that needs defending from the teeming masses.

So they brandish their light sabers, plant disturbing mannequins in conspicuous places, mount a deer head named "Buck" in the hallway, and to preserve their fearsome aspects and manly agility, play MarioKart for several hours each day -- projecting the game onto an entire wall of the suite.

"Set it up!" says Iscoe, "Lets put on some fuckin' MarioKart!"

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Ellen and Ashley C '09 admit their newly painted jungle green Ruggles double has brought them closer together in a special way.

"We sleep like a married couple that doesn't have sex," Ellen says. She may be referring to the side-by-side set-up of their twin beds, but the two have certainly reached new levels of intimacy, even attaining that oft-celebrated sentence-finishing stage of friendship:

Ellen: We have breakfast together on the terrace. Ashley got a Waffle iron.
Ashley: I got a waffle iron...
Ellen: We watch UPN 9 together.

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping... continuing with some lucky Barnard seniors....

After years in cramped doubles, Lala, Masha, Frances, and Samantha got their golden ticket to a place sweeter than Willy Wonka's-- the housing gods smiled upon them and delivered to them lottery number three.

What does number three get you? Well, french doors, balconies, river views, wood moldings, a roomy dining room / kitchen / livingroom, and a real bathtub to start.

"This is our humble abode," says Lala. "we're not pretty humble about it, admittedly."

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 the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping... continuing with Bwog's new afroed acquaintance...

Ed Trefts, C'08, has few items in his tight Shapiro single. The room is an excercise in minimalism, but he'll tell you this wasn't an intentional design statement. "Its just how it turned out, and how I sort of am," he said.

His room contains naught but bed, books (mostly of the retired CC variety), sustenence (in the form of a box of Cheerio's and some potato bread), and a big blue ball. Oh, and the pump for said big blue ball:

"My dad sort of wants to bond over exercise, so he got me this ball and he insists I take it wherever I go," Treft says, just a bit irritated.

"My room's pretty spare and [the ball's] a cool thing to have. You can sit on it. So that's cool," he says.

No matter if your quarters are nestled deep within the shaft of McBain, or if your pad flies high in the penthouses of EC or Sulz, your bedroom and its contents are sacred. Every technological gizmo, throw pillow, and Scarface poster has been plugged in, consciously tossed, or hung meticulously, with merciless self-disclosure and the core elements of feng-shui in mind.

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 a new feature, the "Cribs-esque" semi-weekly Thursday Room Hopping, starting with...

Cory and Sean (left to right), a tag-team pair of first-year track and cross-country stars, respectively, delighted in taking Bwog on a tour of their 214 square-foot LLC paradise -- complete with subwoofer speaker system, 32-inch high definition flatscreen TV ("That's money!" says Sean), and wireless router.

"The women flock to 8A11 like the sparrows of Capistrano," Sean notes.

"Yeah, they say, 'Oh, your room is so pimp!'" adds Cory, in falsetto.