Runnin' Crew:
A series of Thanksgiving and winter break photos
of
common weekend activities around the K-wood for people like my friends.

Kentwood is a nice place, but what is there to do around town?  Not a whole lot.  Most people probably end up driving to downtown Grand Rapids, because that's where all the trendy clubs, lounges, and bars are.  But sometimes it's just not very convenient to drive north to Grand Rapids to check out bars or clubs... especially since only my friend Kevyn is old enough to enjoy alcohol, and thusly the only person likely to be admitted.  So... what exactly is there to do in Kentwood over break?
 
 

Thanksgiving break was a nice four-day weekend for us college kids... well, it was a four-day weekend for everybody, since it's allways on a Thursday.  That's plenty of time for the university to shut down the residence halls, and plenty of time for most students to head back home and sleep.  It's time for stores to have Thanksgiving weekend sales, and for some people, it's time to put of the Christmas tree after eating turkey until they can't move.

But nightlife is different.  It's hard to find things to do in Kentwood, anyway, so a lot of the time, when something works people do that until they feel bold enough to try something new.  For example, Kevyn, Brian, and I have been haunting Cappuccino Jo's for many weekends.  It's become a kind of staging area for ideas of all sorts, and it's not a bad place to hang out, either.  Most of the time, we play cards or chess, and sometimes we draw, or sometimes we just talk.  Kevyn orders the Boxcar Willie latte most of the time, Brian has been ording black coffee recently, and I've been trying to find other things I haven't ordered there yet.

Above, the front of Cappuccino Jo's at night, and below, Kevyn ordering a caffinated beverage.

Above and below: playing cards at Cappuccino Jo's.

Going to Denny's is also a good way to kill time, but not a good way to order a cheap meal.  Prices at Denny's are higher at night, and rightly so.  Who really wants to server bored high school kids, drunk guys, and other night-owls until the early morning?  Even if the atmosphere can't compare to that one "night owls" painting by the artist who's name slips my mind, it does have a kind of diner-like ambiance.  All sorts of people come in periodically, many times people arrive in waves.  To save money, there were several occasions in which we ordered nothing more than toast and black coffee.  I'm sure that pleased the servers to no end...

Denny's is a nice place to go to hang out late at night.  Well, it's either Denny's or Meijer's for us under-21-year-olds.  Kevyn may be 23, but he still hangs out with guys like us who can't legally purchase or posess alcohol.  I suppose that drinking loses its "danger" appeal because once you're 21 you can buy it yourself and don't have to smuggle it everywhere.

Thanksgiving break was a nice four-day weekend, but on Sunday it was back up to school, back to the grind, until winter break.
 

Ah, winter break... or semester break... or Christmas break.  What you call it all depends on, well, how you'd like to call it.  But for college students at CMU it's a nice long 3 1/2 (about) weeks of non-school, of sleeping in or working, of watching cartoons or meeting old friends.  Winter break is also a time to find something to do, because with all that free time, you'll have to do something at night, right?  In the above photo, Kevyn and Brian are standing out in Kevyn's driveway in a very contrived kind of way.  I mean, who would decide to go stand in a driveway in the middle of a winter night while the lake-effect snow is falling all around?  Well... I suppose if their photographer friend wanted to take some pictures in the bitter cold because he has black-and-white film to use up and he wants to mess around with his flash in the snow... that would be the reason.

In any case, winter break was pretty much more of the same, except with snow on the ground.

Kevyn's sister, Kari, and Brian (my brother) go get some snacks at the Jones' place.  Mmm... snacks.  And below, the aftermath of a Denny's coffee raid.

As I said, for the most part, winter break was more of the same.  Some notable exceptions: a visit to Craig's Cruisers (one of the last arcades in the area... sadly, overpriced and with few very good games); snow antics (it snowed nonstop for nearly a week... well, I'm going to say a week because it snowed so much I don't remember.  Needless to say, there was knee-deep snow everywhere, and one night we decided to be little kids again and play in it.); and a trip to the B.O.B. downtown late in break to go see a jazz combo (which turned out to be too mellow to stay awake to).

As for me, well, I did also get to hang out with Lauren and her friend Erin (if that's how to spell her name).  We midnight "glow bowling" from 12 to 2:30 in the morning.  I picked a 15 ball and tried to whip it down the lane... and I never broke 100.  I also hung out with Jasmine, played some chess, watched some movies, and talked for a while until about 1 in the morning.  She's got a nice glass chess set that, sadly, I will probably win very few games on because I'm not a spectacular chess player.

And after all that, guess what: back to school.  There are some times that I wonder if it's really worth it, but I suppose that if I don't think about it, it'll go by in an instant.  In any case, the spring semester has started, and it's back to school: homework, reading, hauling ass across campus, dealing with a roommate I don't understand, meeting deadlines for my photo class, and more wondering if I'm actually cut out for all of this college stuff.