Senior Babylonia Aivaz was moving a television out of the Duke Coffeehouse two weeks ago when the load slipped, bashing her head and leaving her with a nasty black eye.
In classic Coffeehouse fashion-unconventional, unconcerned, unabashedly alternative-Booking Manager Jen Fuh, a junior, stepped in to save the day.
"We didn't have ice, so Jen took metal bolts from the refrigerator, put them in a Ziploc bag and held it against my eye," recalled Aivaz, who is the Coffeehouse's inventory and marketing manager.
"[The black eye] makes her look hardcore," said General Manager Andrea Marston, a senior.
After months of sweat, tears and, in Aivaz's case, burst blood vessels, the revamped Coffeehouse is ready for its close-up. But despite the swanky furniture, granite countertops and beige tiles, the threesome at the heart of the renovation project say the Coffeehouse hasn't lost the quirkiness that has made it a haven for the non-stereotypical Duke crowd since its inception.
"We didn't choose the beige tiles," Marston said, laughing. "I think people were worried that it would become like corporate Starbucks, which didn't happen."
Now, just days before Saturday's re-opening party, the triumvirate recall how it all began six months ago.
"We started thinking about it in April, then it started really happening in August," Marston said.
"Yeah, in April, it was just a brainchild, a fetus," Aivaz chimed in. She pointed at a mural of a distorted fetus on the back wall, one of the pre-existing murals now sharing wall space with six freshly painted works. "Hey, a fetus," she added.
The Duke University Union, which oversees the Coffeehouse, formed a committee that included Aivaz, Marston and Fuh to make plans for a renovation last spring, explained DUU President Chamindra Goonewardene, a senior. Goonewardene and DUU Executive Vice President Bryant Moquist, a senior, also served on the committee.
"It was something all of us were toying around with [when my term began]," Goonewardene said. "Then we started talking to administrators and we made it happen."
After they secured $53,000 from Executive Vice President Tallman Trask and funding for new furniture from the Union, the renovation began in earnest in August, Marston said.
Gone is the disused storage area that blocked the entryway. Gone is the dodgy egg-crate acoustic foam that used to rub off on drummers' backs during shows. Gone is the old counter, replaced with a granite one twice as long-and with considerably more space behind it-than the previous one.
"The counter is great," Aivaz gushed. "You don't understand the kind of space that we used to have, the freedom this will afford us, not having to go back to the storage room every two minutes."
Gone also is most, but not all, of the Coffeehouse's old furniture. The bright blue-green couch and its cigarette burns and the well-worn armchairs have given way to a behemoth of a red couch and a massive black suede bean-bag chair-but alongside them are some thrift-store finds that keep to the old Coffeehouse style, Marston noted.
"It's a fine balancing act" between maintaining the Coffeehouse's beloved alternative vibe and heightening its appeal to a broader Duke crowd, Goonewardene said.
"It's cool that it's a hangout space for a niche population, but anyone should feel free to hang out here," he said. "We can have the same vibe with more people now. It was a real collaborative effort, and I think it turned out well."
But can a hotspot for the many still be a haven for the few? As plans progressed, members of the committee clashed-where some wanted to see a sleek space that would appeal to the general student body, others still wanted to see spaceship murals.
The spaceship-and the fetus-are still there.
"People were saying, 'Von der Heyden, von der Heyden,' and as you can see that totally didn't happen," Marston said. "I've been in the middle of a lot of arguments, a lot of negotiations, and I think it's more our vision than theirs. In the end I think we came to a good compromise."
She said she hopes the revamped venue and re-opening party Saturday will attract a larger clientele than before, especially freshmen.
"More people will come to the shows now because they know it exists," Marston said.
Goonewardene agreed.
"There's no [other] real place for freshmen to hang out on East [Campus] and it's a really cool space," he said.
Should anyone doubt that the Coffeehouse can step up without selling out, the painting is on the wall to prove it: After soliciting designs through a campus-wide contest, the staff selected six artists to paint new murals for the Coffeehouse walls. From a "loctopus"-that is, a half-lion, half-octopus-to a disembodied face against a bright orange background to a green power fist, these murals sit side by side with the spaceships and fetuses from the good old days.
But even with a balance struck between old and new, Aivaz said she sometimes misses the old.
"I was probably the most reactionary of us," she said of the vision for the renovation. "I don't think I could sleep here any more. I used to sleep here sometimes."
Aivaz can rest easy knowing that despite the cosmetic changes, the Coffeehouse's vibe will be just as weird as ever.
"It's the same, just with cleaner surfaces," Marston said.
"Yeah," Aivaz said. "More hygiene, same spirit. That can be our motto."
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