It’s just after 2 a.m., but the front door to Columbae isn’t locked. In the student-run cooperative house on the Lower Row, the first-floor lounge—with its battered couches and armchairs—is empty. So is the kitchen. But the smell of hot, fresh bread in the oven is unmistakable.
After a minute or two, Katherine Roubos bounds down the stairs toward the kitchen. Tonight, Roubos is baking bread. Tomorrow, another resident takes a turn. As far as Roubos knows, Columbae residents have been baking bread every night around midnight since the 1960s.
Roubos, a sophomore, got a late start tonight. She takes nine football-sized loaves of honey wheat from the oven. Except there’s no honey in the bread, Roubos explains, because honey isn’t vegan. She substitutes brown sugar or molasses to accommodate Columbae’s four vegan residents. Loaves from the back of the oven are a bit dark-edged. “Our ovens are old and they direct the heat to these little hot spots,” Roubos says.
Steam rises from each piece as Roubos slices the first loaf. The crust is perfectly crispy, the inside soft and sweet, if a bit dry. Jess Steinberg, a junior who recently returned from studying in Paris, brings some French brie to the kitchen. Smeared generously on a hunk of bread, the cheese melts like a yawn.
Night owls, insomniacs and graveyard-shift workers—for those who devour the darkness, Stanford is an all-you-can-eat buffet of nocturnal activity.
For many Stanford students, the hours between sunset and sunrise are no different than the daylight hours by which most of the world functions. Staying up late is simply a fact of life: they study, rehearse, eat, play and procrastinate. And behind the scenes, Stanford employees—janitors, sheriff’s deputies, chefs, computer wizards and others—labor in the wee hours to make things more pleasant for the rest of the community.
For three nights this spring, we peeled back the twilight and peeked under the shadows, searching for life after dark on the Farm. Here is what we found.
10:04 p.m.
Sunny Premakumar is on the attack. He moves his pawn with one hand and slams the digital timer with the other. His opponent moves a rook. They go back and forth three, four, five times at a rapid clip. When the flurry is over, Premakumar adds another queen to his arsenal.
The freshman has been playing chess since he was 6. His opponent tonight, on the back patio of Tresidder, has been playing since before Sunny was born.
Nearly every evening, local residents Joe Salazar, Guy Marlor and several other men gather here for pick-up games of speed chess. With thick European accents, big faded jackets and skullcaps to keep their balding heads warm, they spend hours focused on the chessboard, gulping coffee and smoking limp cigarettes a few feet from a “No Smoking” sign. They used to gather at La Dolce Vita, a coffee shop in Menlo Park, until it closed a few months ago. Now, even though Salazar lives in San Jose, they congregate here for the late-night coffee (the CoHo stays open until 1) and the competition.
Premakumar used to play in tournaments, but these days he prefers quicker contests. He usually sits for a game or two, as he has tonight, after working out in the Tresidder Gym. He smiles sheepishly as Salazar lays down his king, signaling defeat. Salazar reaches for the timer to start a new game, but Premakumar says no thanks. He has homework to do.
As he strolls off, Salazar is five moves deep into another game.
10:34 p.m.
The Quad is entirely empty. Not a soul in sight. The mosaic atop Memorial Church, illuminated by floodlights, glows an eerie orange. Its huge doors are locked.
Suddenly, there’s movement, and the sound of bouncing footsteps. Fifty yards and several sandstone arches to the left of the church, a woman dashes beneath the dimly lit arcade. White wires snake down from her ears to her hand: it holds her iPod. She’s jogging the Quad.
10:50 p.m.
The Urban Styles hip-hop dancers chat and giggle as the music is cued up, but Tracy Conner snaps them back to attention. There are only 10 minutes left in tonight’s rehearsal—the Old Union ballroom closes at 11—and Conner knows the group will need every last repetition if they are to be ready for their spring show.
Conner, a junior, is still working out kinks in this routine. It’s a cadenced Fiona Apple mix, including one song called “Fast as You Can.” The title describes how they’re learning these steps, if the intensity on their faces is any indication.
Conner choreographed this routine, and she spins and twirls while counting the beats: “Five, six, seven, eight.” Her ripped black “Stanford” T-shirt flutters as she moves. The 16 dancers here tonight—15 women and one man—shake the ballroom floor with their stomps, hops and thrusts.
When rehearsal ends, Veronica Flores, a co-term in the School of Education, characterizes the group. “There are 10 current and former Dollies in this room,” she says, counting herself. “Urban Styles is where Dollies go to die.”
11:26 p.m.
On a ledge above Cynthia Cho’s desk at the Stanford Daily is a long row of empty Diet Coke cans—every 12-ouncer consumed since she became editor in chief on January 31.
“Every EIC has their poison of passion,” she says. “Before me, Will Oremus had Red Bull.”
The caffeine craving is understandable. Daily chiefs are contracted to work in the Santa Teresa Street office from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. Cho, a senior majoring in political science, wraps up the paper on a good day around 2. (The posted deadline is 1:30.) She returns home and works on her thesis about U.S. control of media in occupied countries for three or four hours, then sleeps until 11 a.m. After a shower and a noon lunch, Cho continues working on her thesis, sometimes at the library, until she’s back at the Daily at 3 p.m.
ESPN’s SportsCenter plays softly on a nearby television, and Hiram Duran Alvarez munches popcorn while staring at the set. Alvarez, who has worked here on and off for more than 20 years, does layout for the Daily. He’s waiting for text to be dropped into Quark XPress, the software program he uses to design pages. Alvarez, a resident of Fremont, Calif., remembers the days when the Daily was assembled by hand. Digital cameras and desktop publishing software have simplified the process, he says, but the paper isn’t finished any sooner.
“Now it’s more convenient for them to massage their stories,” says Alvarez. “They have the luxury to sit on the paper and edit more, and they take advantage of that.”
As if to prove his point, seniors Camille Ricketts and Simon Shuster talk in hushed tones at a nearby computer. Ricketts, the managing editor for news, is making final edits on Shuster’s second article for tomorrow’s paper. One article concerns a worker strike at all nine UC campuses; the other outlines meal-plan changes proposed by Stanford Dining.
Shuster, who started working at the Daily this year, soon will make the difficult transition from writer to news editor. “You need to be a night person,” Cho explains. “One person we were trying to train to be a news editor couldn’t do it because he needed eight hours of sleep a night.”
11:50 p.m.
On the second floor of Tresidder, in a room called the Lair, either daylight saving time has ceased to exist or the analog clock on the wall is an hour slow. Not that anyone here seems to care. The inhabitants of this alternate universe have more pressing things to attend to. Like Romanian music videos.
Melody Dye, a sophomore working on her Math 51 assignment, explains. “There’s this ridiculous Romanian pop song with this ridiculous video, and it’s like a campus phenomenon,” she says. “One night last quarter, it was really, really late and I had a paper due. And because there were so few people in the Lair, we were playing it on one of these computers quite loud and people started dancing around. Some random people I didn’t know looked sort of perturbed.”
A few feet away, Evan Raff is reading an article entitled “Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender” for a class on boys’ psychosocial development. The junior human biology major works comfortably here, but he’d rather use his home computer. “My computer has a virus,” he says, “and I’m also studying for the MCAT, so I kinda had to take my whole life in here.” Raff admits he’s seen the sun rise through Lair windows at least five times.
Dimitry Belogolovsky, a senior majoring in computer science, spends nearly every evening here and is familiar with the rosy fingers of a Lair dawn. The sight always makes him feel “like I should be working faster.”
12:28 a.m.
Nestled between two purveyors of late-night snacks—the CoHo and the Treehouse—is Tresidder Gym. The cramped first-floor space is packed with equipment, and bright overhead lights give the place the timelessness of a casino. Sixteen people grunt and sweat on stair climbers, rowing machines, bicycles and a variety of weight-training and resistance machines. One person runs on a treadmill facing a blank wall. Others stretch on floor pads while glancing at textbooks or course readers. A janitor vacuums the floor near the treadmills, periodically rubbing his eyes.
The gym stays open until 2 on weeknights and midnight weekends. Armon Sharei, a freshman pedaling on a stationary bike, echoes a common sentiment: “I’d rather be outside during the day, and I come this late because it’s less crowded.”
Elizabette Amaral packs up her belongings. The co-terminal degree student in psychology has a paper due Thursday for her Personality and Psychopathology class. Before Stanford, she was never a gym regular; she admits succumbing to a cult-like mentality of “everybody goes, so I better go. Otherwise I’ll be the only one who’s not got the six-pack abs or something.”
Now Amaral is a devoted gym rat, so much so that the posted hours can’t contain her workouts. “One time I came here on a Sunday night,” she recalls, “and it wasn’t open but the doors were unlocked so I came in anyway. It was dark and I was by myself, but no one kicked me out so I worked out for 45 minutes and I got my energy back up a level. I didn’t turn on a light because I was afraid they’d kick me out.”
1:03 a.m.
Inside the Enchanted Broccoli Forest—a house on the banks of Lake Lagunita—a big-hair band covers classic Led Zeppelin songs as dozens of partygoers drink and schmooze on an elevated deck.
Fifty yards away on a cement basketball court, three guys with hammers are pounding nails thwack-thwack-thwack into a 6-by-3-foot sheet of wood. In the plywood, propped a few inches off the ground, hundreds of nails protrude toward the pavement in tight rows. Without stopping, the guys explain.
For Davis Day, they say. Thwack-thwack-thwack.
Since 4 p.m. these members of the Stanford Band’s drum section have been striking nails. Davis Day—a battle-of-the-bands event on the banks of a river near UC-Davis—is this coming Saturday. Every section of the band builds something fun.
Last year, the drummers made a floating hammock. This year, it’s a bed of nails.
1:19 a.m.
Outside Stern Hall’s dining facilities, bicycles dart by. First, there’s the sound of squeaky wheels, then a white headlight or blinking red taillight whizzes past. Foot traffic is minimal.
Inside, the Stern Cyber Café (also known as Late Night) is teeming. Stepping from the dark serenity of campus into the hustle and bustle of a packed eatery overwhelms the senses. More than 25 students, mostly freshmen, talk and laugh and eat and flirt, lounging on leather couches, stools and in booths. A smoothie machine whirs behind the counter. Rush Hour 2 plays on a flat-screen television, its dialogue delivered throughout the room by speakers hidden in the ceiling.
Eight or nine people line up to order: chicken wings, garlic fries, quesadillas, calzones, pizza by the slice or by the pie, cheesecake, Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, coffee drinks provided by—you guessed it—Starbucks. Almost everyone swipes an ID card to pay, deducting points from University meal plans. The Cyber Café and several other Late Night locations around campus are open till 2 a.m. Three Branner freshmen—with smoothies, teriyaki bowls and mozzarella sticks lined up on the table in front of them—moan with delight as they sample the chicken tenders. “It sure beats dinner,” one of them offers.
1:35 a.m.
Unless they arrive by ambulance, late-night visitors to the Stanford University Medical Center emergency room meet Ray Oropeza. One of three E.R. admitting representatives on the late shift, Oropeza has been registering patients and snapping bracelets to their wrists for 3 1/2 years. Monday through Friday, his day begins at 9 p.m. and ends at 5:30 a.m.
Only 5 to 10 percent of late-night patients come from the Stanford campus. Business pours in instead from East Palo Alto and other communities for which Stanford’s is the closest emergency room. The late shift is unique, Oropeza says, for its particular brand of clientele: “We get all the drunk people, basically.” Victims of car accidents, gunshot wounds, stabbings and other gang-related violence are common. By contrast, lacerations, suture removals, sports injuries and sprains are the daytime shift’s typical fare.
Like many nocturnal workers, Oropeza was lured by the promise of extra pay: he makes about 16 percent more than his daytime colleagues. His traffic-free commute from Fremont has helped keep him working nights. He also likes that he can spend time with his young son during the afternoons.
When Oropeza began working the late shift, in 2001, he thought it would last only a year. How much longer does he think he’ll lead a nighttime life? “Oh, maybe another year.” He pauses. “Or two.”
2:19 a.m.
On each small black-and-white television screen, someone is asleep. Most of the eight patients are flat on their backs, but one or two are curled up on their sides. Several wires connect each patient to a glowing bank of bedside machines. An overhead light appears to illuminate each room, but these examination rooms are actually pitch black—the light is infrared, as are the cameras that record the sleeping patients.
Here at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic, four sleep technologists focus not on this central bank of television screens but on eight bright computer screens that circle a control room. On each screen, more than a dozen squiggly lines make their way EKG-like across the “page”—some form tight patterns, while others resemble the scribble of a seismograph recording an earthquake. These lines measure the patient’s pulse, brain waves, leg movements, breathing, blood oxygen levels, rapid eye movement and more. A window in the lower right corner of each screen displays a digital video feed of the snoozing subject. Now that patient monitoring is fully computerized, the bank of television screens is a quaint reminder of the clinic’s early days.
Founded 35 years ago, the world’s first sleep clinic makes its home in an unassuming building on Quarry Road, across the street from the Stanford Shopping Center. The clinic is open for patient monitoring and treatment every night except Saturday, and sleep technologists gather data around the clock.
“We’re like Santa Claus,” says Anissa Guerrero, a night-shift technologist for more than three years. “We know when you’re asleep, and we know when you’re awake. I like to tell the kids who come in here, ‘I’ll know when you’re dreaming, I just won’t know what you’re dreaming about.’ “
The clinic’s most common diagnosis is sleep apnea, but patients also exhibit restless leg syndrome, insomnia, narcolepsy, excessive daytime sleepiness, sleepwalking and other problems. Even with a doctor’s referral, there’s a four- to six-month wait for an appointment at the clinic. “We do see some Stanford students,” Guerrero says, “but it’s mostly med students—they have weird sleep patterns.”
5:20 a.m.
Sprinklers shoot water across the thirsty grass of Wilbur Field. One sprinkler head needs repair—its stream sprays back and forth over the Campus Drive pavement. The deep blue eastern sky fades to pale gray. A woman jogs by with a long leash pulling her weary dog. A chorus of birds begins to chirp.
At a quarter to 6, a U.S. Foodservice truck rumbles away from the Stern dining hall loading dock. Inside the Stern kitchen, Jon Rose starts a pot of coffee.
Rose, morning head chef, has been preparing meals for Stanford students for 20 years. The girlfriend he followed to medical school is long gone, says Rose, but he’s still here.
By 6:10, the kitchen is bustling. Soccoro Barron, a man with a weathered face and strong hands, fills a stainless steel sink with several boxes of tomatoes and begins rinsing them.
The tomatoes go on a giant metal tray, and an adjacent tray is filled with chopped onions and garlic cloves. Barron places both trays inside a preheated oven. A third tray, sitting next to the oven, is covered with dried jalapenos. “Fire-roasted salsa,” Rose explains. “We make three kinds of salsa and go through 30 gallons a week.”
Now Rose is trying to replace the blades on a slicer. “Aiee!” he yelps. He’s cut himself on a new blade. A minute later, he’s back at a cutting board, his finger bandaged and secure inside a latex glove. Breakfast starts at 8, and there’s much to be done before the early-bird diners come sniffing for freshly baked muffins.
JOSHUA FRIED, ’01, is a freelance writer in San Francisco.
