post- 04/18/24 [SW]

postSpringWeekend 2024

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

I recently texted my friend about my deep yearning to travel to The Ice Cream Barn. Her response: “YOU SHOULD GO WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?!” It’s a fantastic question for which I really struggled to conjure an excuse. I do have a car on campus, and I do love ice cream, and I am not really sure what else I need to add to the equation to get to my desired answer. Still, I’m paralyzed by this overwhelming sense of April dread. It’s only in this fleeting moment between the dead of winter and the lackadaisical summer haze that I’m filled with equal feelings of wanting to do absolutely nothing and also wanting to do everything under the sun.

On Monday, I gave into the pull of the Main Green and split my attention between football, Canva, and chitter-chatter with my closest friends and all the adjacent folks that crossed our path. This central hub of campus has cast some kind of magic spell that’s keeping me around, existing within the Brown ecosystem, and loving every second of it. In a few days, if this spell has not reached you yet, I invite you to let it overtake you and guide you on adventures around the niches of campus that you haven’t visited in a while. After you’ve finished your exploration, come to the Main Green and celebrate the festivities. And if you need a little help to get in the spirit, post- has got you covered.

We’re coming to you this week with an extra special edition, full of memories, games, and anticipation for the weekend. As you are curating your concert fits, check out Tabitha, Klara, and Alissa’s piece about the beauty and community of sharing clothes, a wonderful alternative if you haven’t had the chance to go shopping yet. To get you excited for the main event, we have Kathy’s reflection on Weston Estate and the funny moments when music meets you at just the right time. And what’s Spring Weekend without the times shared between your friends? Check out Elijah’s poem on the party before the Party!

In moments of respite between all the excitement, we’ve also got some great games for you to puzzle over with your community. Coming in live for the first time, post- is debuting our first Connections board. Share it far and wide and see if you can figure out the links between the words. As a challenge for the brave amongst you, we are also sharing a Spring Weekend Bingo Board full of fun, harrowing, and inevitable events for you to check off the weekend list.

Finally, as the weekend winds down and you grow wistful about the ticking clock, we share with you some memories from post- past with a previous Spring Weekend experience and a classic Top 10. To top it all off you’ll learn to make all spring weekends special in Kimberly’s piece detailing a spring weekend now past that she shared puzzling with her friends.

With my final editor’s note of the semester, I want to leave a few notes of thanks. Thank you to all the wonderful writers and incredible illustrators who have contributed this semester to make this magazine everything it is. Thank you to all our editors, head illustrators, and social media and layout teams for keeping us afloat week in and week out. A special thank you to all of the managing editors for helping make this special edition a reality with your wonderful pieces! And an extra to all our superb seniors on the editorial team for all the laughs and love you have given us: Eleanor, Jack, Addie, Kelsey, and Kimberly (our beloved post- ghost), good luck in your next chapter and keep a copy of post- with you wherever you go! Finally, one last thank you, for a text I received in response to my weak excuse not to go The Ice Cream Barn: “no is not an answer, we have too little time at brown.”

Let the weekend suck you in and enjoy the time we’ve got left before we wrap up the semester. And if you find a minute to step away from it all, hope you share that time with a copy of post-.

Springing into the weekend,

notes on collisions

I first heard “Pears” by Weston Estate the summer between senior year of high school and freshman year of college. No longer compelled to fill my schedule with volunteer shifts at the hospital or community college classes to pad my college applications, each day blended hazily into the next. This abundance of free time was initially liberating, but—me being obsessed with schedules and lists and all things structured—this lull in activity soon led to introspection that I was not equipped to handle at the time. Every book I’d read, every movie I’d seen, and every podcast I’d listened to depicted college as the place for reinvention and self-discovery. While I didn’t want to build my entire personality and lived experiences from scratch, I did worry that I would not be a perfect fit with the peers I would meet come September.

In that liminal space between who I believed myself to be and who I desperately wanted to become, I turned to music for comfort. Since I had long been listening to the same artists and rotation of albums, I hoped expanding my music taste would be a catalyst for other changes in my life. So, I traded in my Apple Music subscription for a Spotify one and proceeded to make playlists like my life depended on it. I assigned myself artists and albums to listen to as if they were homework assignments. I religiously listened to suggested songs from my Discover Weekly playlist. I wanted to curate playlists for every possible mood and experience I could think of, from rainy days, to flights, to childhood nostalgia.

It was through that process of constant discovery that I, on an early morning drive to the beach with my dad, first heard “Pears.” I hate to use the word serendipitous lightly, but that’s truly what it felt like to find it upon shu ing my suggested songs. Windows down, salty breeze flowing in, and the July sun overhead, the mellowness of the first few guitar chords perfectly captured the scene around us. I knew I had struck gold when my dad—a man who prefers music from his youth so strongly that I’ve curated a playlist titled “father approved” for when we’re together—turned the radio up and bobbed his head along. It didn’t matter that I didn’t personally relate to the lyrics, nor that my dad didn’t understand them. I thought of Collision Theory in chemistry, where molecules need to collide with su cient energy and at a specific orientation in order to produce an e ective collision. The song met us at that precise space, resonating with our ephemeral selves in that exact moment. And I’ve often found that the best music does just that. It surprises us and flips a certain switch in our brains that we can’t quite pinpoint. Whether it’s the poetic nature of the lyrics, the richness of the melodies, the textures in the production quality, or simply the context in which we hear it, the best songs transform us ever so slightly upon every listen. Looking back on that memory now, I am grateful for who I was that summer. I still collide with her every now and then—when I read in the morning light, in my footprints in the

Weekends (that aren’t Spring Weekend)

by Elijah Puente

how many shots can we fit in twenty minutes

i’m not feeling it. potent poison pesters too long on my heart go down please there’s plenty of time to learn the lyrics we’ll soon sing sloppy we know one song. feeling friendly flirty fearless have we met before what’s your name?

slurred speech giddy gait cannot wait your fit ate we are late!

first love

by Siena Capone

My first Spring Weekend, we all dressed… ambitiously, to say the least. Not enough clothes for the still-chilly April weather, but hoping desperately that dancing would make up the difference. The event had a near-mythical significance on campus, and since my favorite artist was performing, I piled my hopes high, anticipating the date that we would all gather on the Main Green and open our hearts to Mitski opening hers. The day of, the crush of the crowd was terrifying, but I felt the lightest I’d felt in ages—not even the tallest man could smother my joy while watching Mitski on stage. Because it really was all it had been cracked up to be. I’ll always remember, in the days after, how two muddy pairs of shoes sat

1. The Weeknd

2. Fyre Festival 2017

3. Vampire Weekend

4. Three-day weekends

5. Halloweekend

6. Weekend at Bernie’s

7. That weekend you spent in Las Vegas

8. Rebecca Black’s weekend

9. Your carefree childhood weekends of pure adolescent poppycock

10. “Friday, Saturday, Saturday to Sunday” - will.i.am., c. 2009

Joe Maffa

spring weekend connections

by Klara Davidson-Schmich

the sisterhood of the traveling pants

by Klara Davidson-Schmich, Tabitha Lynn & Alissa Simon

Illustrated by Hannah Zhang

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 answer key: showcase spotlight weston vampire authentic fourth platform genuine legit long feature real hallofamily valid spring

Our sophomore year, we lived in a Grad Center suite right next to the tower’s entryway. Nestled between the entryway and our suite, there was a shelf labeled with a paper sign marked “TRADING POST.” For the first few weeks, the shelf was dotted with old biochem textbooks and broken hangers, discarded with little regard for what would happen to them after. None of us can quite remember when it changed—when, by some mystery girl’s hand, the textbooks became going-out tops, and the hangers were replaced by leather jackets. Magic crept into the trading post, and when it did, it became the first thing any of us looked for when getting home. Over the next year, we frequented the trading post almost religiously; we awaited the days when one of us would come home to a trash bag full of seemingly brand-new clothes, eager to try them on with each other and decide what we would leave behind for other lucky residents and what would make its way into our budding communal wardrobe. The following is a list of some of our favorite finds, in no particular order:

1. Red leather jacket. A cool night in Lisbon, a bookstore bar—white baby tee and low-rise jeans. Then, changing hands days later, a passion fruit mimosa and a long walk home.

2. Celestial mesh top. Spring Weekend—a blue rain poncho paired with orange sunnies. Remi Wolf, Ethel Cain, JID.

3. Blue lace corset top. Purchased at the Fashion @ Brown Spring Fair with only days to spare before Spring Weekend. See-through, baby blue, guarded from the weekend’s fateful rain by a massive leather jacket.

4. Pearl button Reformation top. A birthday party, too many drinks, a stroll along Benefit Street, arm-in-arm.

5. Tie front black mesh top. Perhaps too sheer to be worn in the daytime—but so cute it hardly mattered. One year later, worn in a group Halloween costume, knee-high boots a size too big—digital photos capturing every moment.

6. Lace-up black corset. In a Governor St. basement, the Valentine’s Day concert amidst a sea of pink and eyeliner winged to the sky. Later, transformed by a black blazer and a stack of flashing rings.

The end of the spring semester came in a rush of magnolia blossoms and final papers and clothes strewn across the carpet as we sorted through our shared treasures. There was a strange, gentle sadness we felt every time we passed the trading post that May, keenly aware of the days whittling down until the spell would be broken. And still, we mediated which top would live where over the summer, knowing it didn’t really matter since everything would come home in the fall. In that sense, it was easy to leave the trading post behind.

Spring Weekend is sneaking up again, and there are new clothes in the bucket. Though we gave up the trading post along with our residency in Grad D, the spirit of the communal closet remains, filled now with the hard-earned fruits of hours spent digging through yard sale bins and swiping through Savers racks. Though the magic of the trading post was too good to last, there’s something special about building up our communal closet, to search for things that will be shared and worn and tried on with a million di erent outfits.

There is so much joy to be had in getting ready with your friends, in finding the perfect top to go with your favorite borrowed jeans, in taking the perfect picture for you all to gush over later.

What better time to try this out than Spring Weekend? Ask your friend to borrow that gorg top she wore out last week, and o er one of your own in exchange.

Purpose is hard to come by in the winter. But in the spring? And on the weekend? It's easy to find purpose on spring weekends. From here on out, the G-Cal populates itself. This weekend, it is Yves Tumor, and last weekend, it was Brown Puzzlehunt. Serendipity had brought newfound acquaintances from the Sex Power God party to the 2nd Annual Puzzlehunt, expanding our team from 6 to 15. It seems the saying about Brown is true: Thrill-seeking daredevils come for the mankinis but stay for the Blue’s Clues cameo.

At noon on Saturday, we waited out technical di culties by snacking and meeting the friends of friends. In our home base on the second floor of Salomon, it was clear that having a good time was on the forefront of everyone’s minds. Many had put aside their DL assignments, taxes, illness, and in my case, writing this vignette, to be fully present in that little bubble of child-like wonder, suspended in time.

hunting for clues,theeschewing blues

by Kimberly Liu Illustrated by Kimberly Liu

With the puzzles varying in type and di culty—the easiest of which was to read (and reread) a 5,000 word story (no less than 14 times) to retrace a murderer’s steps, and the hardest of which was to not eat the orange Starburst tantalizingly placed in a Ziploc bag labeled “DO NOT EAT”—the team organically devolved into subgroups as people took the lead in di erent puzzles that captured their personalities and expertise. For me, a good three hours was spent on solving the murder of a chess-automaton builder through backwards deduction in the aforementioned 5,000 word story. The God of the Labryinth (purposely misspelled), was written entirely from scratch by a Puzzlehunt writer, and is a brilliant reference to one of Borges’ stories in Ficciones on the life of the fictitious Herbert Quain. The prompt hints that the easy solution provided in the story is purposefully misleading, and a careful reexamination allows readers to crack the hidden code and deduce for ourselves the true murderer. Next to me, my teammates poured their hearts into uncovering the secret message within TikTok cat videos.

In the short lulls between puzzles, I couldn’t help but look around the room and have my suspicion confirmed: Nothing feels better than hard work rewarded by accomplishment, with friends old and new, in a sun-soaked space touched by distant jazz music from a festival on the Main Green. The hum of the room that afternoon was punctuated by elated exclamations of triumph and the sudden declaration that one was in dire need of a bathroom break but just couldn’t break away from the task on hand.

It was well past dinner time when we realized we were famished. The sun had long since set and a purifying fluorescence lit the room. For someone who couldn’t shake the yoke of inauspicious stars that placed her in Orgo in senior spring, I wondered how it was possible I didn’t need more than just a bathroom break in eight hours, but require a solid two hour nap, multiple recesses for snacks, and a few YouTube videos to watch lectures back to back.

Now I won’t point fingers at who came up with the idea to pull an all-nighter, but at 8:00 a.m. when we emerged from the back ramp of Salomon onto the sun-bathed Ruth Simmons quad after being locked-in for 20 consecutive hours, we exited as winners. We saw Brown anew in the crisp morning light. Warm wind rained little pink petals down on us as we set o for Louis. The little bubble was about to be popped, but before it did it had delivered us squarely into spring. We admired the flowers on our little walk to breakfast, remarking repeatedly that these beautiful blossoms surely weren’t here the day before.

bingo board

Sing in the rain

Wear official Spring Weekend Merch

Run into your opp on the Green Darty

Go to Jo's

Read post- in between sets

Pervasive smell of weed

Sing all the words to a song

Squat over a portapotty toilet seat

Aggressively pre-game the concert

Take a photo with a performer

Celebrate the Saturday holiday

Watch Gigs on the Green

Get to the barricades Do a cartwheel on the green

Jump in a bouncy castle

Go to Spring Weekend

Sing the wrong words to a song

Shout aimlessly for your friend who can't hear you

Hide something in your clothes

Get into a shoving match with the crowd

Get free food

Get sick

Drink straight from a water bottle filler

Add a song to your playlist right after hearing it