Beautiful, Beautiful Boxes
After getting screwed over by a departing roommate their sophomore year, roommates Jennifer Wilson, Union, Mo., senior, and Lindsey Snyder, Odessa, Mo., senior, wanted lease security. They decided on Jefferson Commons, 2511 W. 31 St., because of its individual lease option and laundry list of amenities. Much like The Legends, fully furnished Jefferson Commons offers everything from free tanning to DVD rentals in a just-us-college-kids atmosphere. "Everything they do here is based on our needs and how to make our lives easier," Wilson says. Both Wilson and Snyder say the price — $370 a month, including utilities — was a plus. The complex's reputation was not. "Sometimes I find myself ashamed to say I live here," Wilson admits. "People think of it as this rich kids' out-of-control party place and I defend it saying, 'It really is cheap!'" Priced well with an exceptable appearance, Jefferson Commons rates above the ghetto's older houses to Wilson. A girl with acute insect hatred, she says older houses seem dirty and bug-infested, and just thinking of living in an older house gives her the willies.
Snyder says Jefferson Commons is right for her because she doesn't think of herself as a downtown type of person. "If someone told me they lived in an apartment on Massachusetts Street, I'd think hippie or free spirit," she says. Both girls say safety is another reason for living away from the ghetto. "I have friends that live on 14th and Tennessee and I'm always a bit freaked out to walk around there." Wilson says. "I just wouldn't want to live down there when I have all of this at my disposal. Here, everything's taken care of."
Shannon Gilbert also likes a well-maintained abode. The Overland Park senior moved to The Legends last summer after living three years at Sigma Chi fraternity, 1439 Tennessee St. He says the spacious building and personal bathroom won him and his three roommates over, and he doesn't mind compensating with $470 a month.
Photos: Jeff Brandsted
"If someone told me they lived in an apartment on Massachusetts Street, I'd think hippie or free spirit,"
Lindsey Snyder, Jefferson Commons resident
TOP: A typical house in the "student ghetto."
MIDDLE: A typical duplex in West Lawrence.
ABOVE: Ghetto living often comes at the cost of space. Residents say it's worth it to be part of a community.
LEFT: Apartments in West Lawrence have more space. Residents say they love the oppulence.
He's now lived in East and West Lawrence and says he hasn't noticed an image change between the two places. His only complaint is the distance he has to drive to the downtown bars. "There's definitely been times after the bars when I've just gotten in the car and would've failed a Breathalyzer," Gilbert says. "When I lived closer I'd just walk back to our house on Tennessee Street."
Ghetto Fabulous
At 1406 Tennessee St., in the heart of the student ghetto, Scott Johnson, Basehor senior, sits inside The Sunflower House Cooperative and says why true East Lawrence people can never become West Lawrence people. He gestures around the room. "This place has a damn vulture hanging off the ceiling and a pink concrete donkey in the lounge." The plastic vulture hangs from a ceiling fan and the foot-tall donkey, clad in a beaded princess tiara and pink buster, is the co-op's mascot, Comrade Burrito. "It's so rundown here, you put something a little weird up and it isn't bad. If you hung a vulture up in a West Lawrence apartment, it's interfere with the immaculateness," he says.
Johnson lives at The Sunflower House for the cheap rent — $300 a month including utilities and one meal a day Monday through Thursday — as well as for the close-to-campus location. When asked, he can't think of any friends who don't live in East Lawrence and says the place must draw the kind of people he likes. Johnson talks about the atmosphere of the ghetto, the difference in its character versus the rest of Lawrence, and uses a one-quart burnt metal pot as his example. The pot hangs from the front wall and holds the markers for the dry-erase board. "Three weeks ago someone put that up with a note that said, 'Whoever burned this pot - clean it off'. It's been hanging there ever since, and may be there forever. That's the kind of eclectic history you get in a place like this."
It's neighborhood community and character that keep Ariel Sherman, Hays junior, in the ghetto. Sherman is a know-your-neighbor gal, and off the top of her head counts 20 nearby friends. She says she'll never live in an apartment complex like Jefferson Commons because it's cookiecutter and more like off-campus dorms. Sherman, like West Lawrence students, says she has everything she needs in her one bedroom apartment on the bottom floor of a sagging house. There's spiders and cobwebs, ants in the kitchen, and her bedroom floor's foundation is raised three inches in the center — "It shifts my mattress and comforter off the bed every night," she says — yet she loves it, even when she's sick of it. Literally. "There's mold and I definitely think I've gotten sick from being here," she says wiping her hand down a wall. "But it doesn't bother me enough to not want to live in a place like this. It's cheap, it's me and that's good enough. I'm not that sick."
Story continued on next page