Living the night life

Girls excitedly scream as they crowd Kirkwood Avenue, searching for friends and a suitable ID. Down the street, a fight erupts between eager basketball fans as they wait impatiently outside their favorite sports bar to be let in for the big game. Left and right, people dressed in their weekend-best flood out of cabs, ready for a night out on the town. For some, this is simply a night out, but for others, it's home.\nWhile living above the bars might conjure nightmares of loud and sleepless nights for some, it's a dream for those who live in the neighborhood. In fact, the only problem is there isn't enough real estate to go around. \n"Obviously it's great living here because we're so close to all the bars," said Andrew Diaz, a fifth-year senior who lives above Uncle Fester's. "We can come home at 3:30 (in the morning) or whenever and not have to worry about a sober ride, and it's walking distance from all the places we go out to, not just those on Kirkwood." \nBut being a hop, skip and a jump from Bloomington night life isn't the only perk to living above the bars. \n"We decided to live close to the bars because we knew we'd be going there a lot, but that's not the only reason," said senior Vinny Maknoor, Diaz's roommate. "We're so close to campus, I can walk to all my classes or if I want to take the bus, it's only a minute walk to the stop at the Sample Gates. The apartment itself is nice, too."\nDespite its prime location, residents report the cost is within reason and doesn't deviate from standard rental rates that students around town pay. Though prices vary with different landlords and apartments, most range between $400 and $500 per month per person, residents said. Although the cost is surprisingly average, the opportunity to sign a lease proves to be the greatest challenge. \n"You pretty much have to lease these apartments two years in advance," said Greg Harmon, a property manager of RealCo II, which owns apartments near Nick's English Hut. "They are pretty big and clearly a lot of people like the area."\nFor the lucky ones who do get a room in the coveted apartments, loud noise is a reality they've come to expect. Surprisingly, however, it doesn't seem to bother them. \n"The ceiling over the main stage at Fester's is my bedroom floor," said junior Tara Kluth, who's one of Diaz and Maknoor's neighbors. "It gets loud, especially on hip-hop night, but we love it. I mean you can't really expect to get a paper done on a Thursday night, so we work around that."\nDiaz said that although their apartment's floor also shares ceiling space with the bars, the commotion hasn't posed a real problem yet, aside from drunken people ringing his doorbell every night.\n"Sometimes on Wednesdays you can hear the bass, but it's not all week long, and Thursday through Saturday we're out doing stuff," he said. "If you have a fan in your room you can't really hear anything."\nHowever, there might be more to the residents' tolerance than they let on.\n"You have to have a sort of party personality if you want to live here, and I think everyone that does has that," Maknoor said. "If you weren't 21, it wouldn't make much sense to live here."\nAlthough one might think students who live a rusty staircase away from Bloomington's nightlife would be regulars, Diaz maintains that living near the bars doesn't connote living at them. \n"First semester we went out a lot, but we've sort of slowed down a bit because we went out so much," he aid. "My roommate and I got a job as a bouncer at Jake's, so that's where we spend some of our weekends now. It's kind of weird to be the people watching the drunk people at the bars instead of being one of them." \nKluth and her roommate have lived in the apartment for two years, but says they don't frequent the bars often.\n"If there's a good band playing downstairs we'll go, but other than that we don't go out a lot," she said. "We did the whole bar thing when we were younger but we're not that into it anymore, we mostly go out of town on the weekends to visit friends or see shows. But we still love living here because it's close to campus."\nBeyond the general rowdiness and fights that Maknoor and his roommates said they have witnessed countless times from the comfort of their living room, they said there haven't been as many strange occurrences as one might expect. \n"One weird thing we ran into living here was last year here a homeless guy lived in the hallway to our apartment for a while," he said. "He wasn't here when we moved in, but there were these boxes around and you could definitely tell someone had been living in here. Being downtown you run into your fair share of odd characters and such, but it's not a big deal."\nNot surprisingly, having a window overlooking the back of the bars ensures them to see some pretty interesting things. On nights when Kluth and her roommate don't want to go out to find good times, looking out the window will suffice. \n"In the back alley you always see people peeing -- we've seen numerous penises -- and people crying, people getting arrested, just typical stuff you'd expect from drunk people," Kluth said. "We love to people-watch here … no one knows you're back here but we've seen some good stuff. Living here's made for some good entertainment"