April 11, 2024 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | By Mira Springer
“What the fuck is Girlhole?” was the question being asked all over campus last week. “I think the biggest draw for it was that people wanted to know what Girlhole was,” says Pai Kelley ’26. ‘Is it a place? Is it an event? Is it an idea?”
The answer, it seems, may be all three.
“Girlhole” is the name fondly given to a concrete stairwell on the southwest side of the former Boettcher Health Center by sophomores Pai Kelley and Linnea Anderson ‘26, who frequent the location. “It’s where we go to just hang out and relax. We sit and chit chat there,” says Kelley.
Kelley and Anderson were inspired by other 24-hour events on campus, such as 24-Hour TWIT, 24-Hour “Godzilla: King of Monsters” and 24-Hour “Minecraft.” “We think that 24-hour events are a weird niche thing this campus does and we wanted to get in on it,” says Anderson. Thus, “24-Hour Girlhole” was born.
Anderson and Kelley’s concept was different from these other 24-hour events in a couple of key ways. Firstly, the event took place outdoors, exposing the girls to the elements during all hours of the night. Secondly, most of the other events were based around a person or group of people doing one activity continuously for 24-Hours (improv, watching “Godzilla,” playing “Minecraft”). The only guideline for 24-Hour Girlhole was that Kelley and Anderson would be in the “hole” for all 24-Hours. The challenge then, was to figure out how to keep themselves entertained and how to get other people to come.
Their response to this challenge: find performers.
Anderson says they just started reaching out to groups they were already fans of, asking them to perform; “we love to go to TWIT; we love to go to Sunbutter; we love Haven and Hollow and we love Julian,” she says. As an incentive for each group, they claimed that all of the other groups were already on board. Luckily, every person and group they reached out to agreed to perform, so their white lie never came back to bite them.
Their next step was to advertise. It is important to note that 24-Hour Girlhole was very explicitly billed not as an event, but rather a “gathering of friends” in order to avoid condemnation from Campus Safety for not registering as an event with the college. Advertising an event that is not an event is a tricky task; luckily if anyone is up for it, it’s Kelley and Anderson.
Their primary mode of advertisement was the Instagram account for their joint radio show with the SOCC (@dirt.radio). They began posting teasers a full month before the event was set to take place and continued to announce performers in cryptic ways throughout the next few weeks, photoshopping fake tweets from celebrities like Kamala Harris, Shia LeBeouf, Nicki Minaj and Billy Ray Cyrus to announce the performers who would be featured in Girlhole. They also designed and printed posters for the event, which they put up in various dorms, in the library (where they mostly got taken down) and, aptly, on the inside of stalls in women’s bathrooms. Perhaps the most effective marketing strategy, though, was word of mouth through friends of Anderson, Kelley and all of the performers (which totaled more than 20 people).
Word of mouth is not always a successful method of advertising, but when the words in the mouth are “24-Hour Girlhole,” it prompts a certain amount of curiosity. Some heard about it directly from the hosts, such as Miranda Hernandez ’27 and Nick Gordon ’25. “Pai texted the Sunbutter group chat and said ‘hey who wants to perform at this thing called Girlhole?'” says Hernandez. “I said, ‘the fuck is Girlhole?'” Gordon also heard about the event directly from Kelley and responded similarly; “what the fuck is a Girlhole?” Others heard about it in less direct ways. “I heard about it through the grapevine a couple weeks ago and I didn’t know what it was,” says Gemma Giovale ’25. “Someone tried to convince me they would actually be submerged in wet concrete for 24-Hours. It’s unclear if I misunderstood or if I was being pranked.”
The non-event began at 1 p.m. on Friday, April 5. To set up the space, Kelley and Anderson brought in a rug, a couch and a coffee table, which gave the cement pit a distinctly homier feel. Anderson reports: “It started off bad because we both had to do our essays that were due that night.” After the essays, the girls hosted tea time, and spent a few hours chatting with each other and other guests that stopped in. Kelley says “there wasn’t really anything hype occurring until 8 p.m., so people would just pop in and say ‘hi’ and not stay.” Both of the hosts had a special guest in the form of their older siblings, Holden Anderson and Akiko Kelley. “I came down to see my sister,” says Holden, “but Girlhole was a big selling point.” He says an event like Girlhole is in line with what he knows about his sister; “I’ve known her for 20 years of life and I would not expect anything less than this.”
At 8 p.m., what Kelley refers to as ‘the hype hours,’ finally began. As night fell and the anticipated performances became imminent, the group size grew from around 10 to around 50 attendees between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m. In addition to Colorado College students, two other guests arrived during this “TWIT pregame” hour; a black widow spider and a Campus Safety officer. While hosts and guests were initially nervous about both of these visitors, they did not end up causing any harm. Members of TWIT were able to contain the spider inside of an upside-down red solo cup, and Kelley satisfied the Campus Safety officer with a comprehensive document explaining why what was happening in Girlhole was not violating any campus policies.
As Anderson points out, “Girlhole as a place on campus is kind of a gray zone,” so many of the campus policies referring to residential spaces, public buildings or porches do not apply.
Additionally, the hosts were very clear about their expectation that no one would openly consume drugs or alcohol in Girlhole. Luckily, people were very respectful of these guidelines and left the hole to consume alcoholic beverages in the “chug zone” when asked to do so. “I appreciated that because I was expecting way more issues regarding alcohol,” says Kelley. She also noted that guests were very respectful regarding the girls’ belongings, such as laptops, clothes and food. Anderson says, “there was a sense of trust in the hole.”
TWIT, CC’s improv troupe, performed from 9 to 10 p.m. More people arrived throughout, raising the size of the audience to around 100. Many people sat on the steps, and others began to gather around the fence, looking down into the stairwell. “We weren’t expecting the space to be used in the way that it was because people were able to wrap around the top and also sitting on the stairs worked out well,” says Anderson. “It kind of just worked out perfectly and that was not a testament to our planning; that was just luck.”
Luke Bleckman ’25 was one of the viewers standing above the hole. “I really liked watching TWIT from up above,” says Bleckman. “It made it a really surreal experience; it actually made it funnier, I don’t know why.” Because the performers could see the audience’s faces much more clearly than in a theater like Taylor, the show ended up having an intimate feeling, despite the growing size of the crowd. Another Campus Safety officer arrived during the middle of the show and was once again pacified by Kelley’s prepared document.
Sometime around 10 p.m., some Girlhole attendees brought large trays of food from an admitted students weekend event. “We weren’t even planning on having food, it just got brought to us,” says Kelley, reiterating that “I think a lot of it was just luck.” Almost all of the food was eaten, which was a win in terms of making sure drunk college students got fed, and in reducing the food waste of the college for that day. “I didn’t have any of the rice and beans,” says Elizabeth O’Neill ’26, “but I liked that it was an option; it made me feel provided for.”
Folk and bluegrass band Haven and Hollow performed between 10 and 11 p.m., bringing the event to its maximum attendance of around 150 students. Many people cited this performance as their favorite part of the event because of the strong sense of community it evoked. “I did really like when Haven and Hollow were on how everybody was singing along,” says Gordon. “It was a really great vibe; I’ve never really experienced that here, like how everybody was so together.”
Another Campus Safety officer came during this performance, but once again did not condemn the event. Haven and Hollow member Asa Gartrell ’26 said his experience performing at Girlhole was “enlivening.” Gartrell also notes that “it was a cool architectural format to have the performers below everyone and to have this ring of friends around you, looking down on you.”
The next performer, between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., was DJ Julian Clark ’26 (under the name Perineum Princess) with a set he called “An Ode to the Underground.” Clark was the only performer who had experience performing at Girlhole already, having done a Halloween DJ set in the cement pit last fall. “The music gives me life,” says Clark on his experience performing. “I feel like a damn Mormon missionary trying to spread the sound to others… It’s my Bible.” This was the first performance of the night that involved amplification, which was a potential concern of the hosts. “We thought the biggest problem was going to be with noise amplification because we were handling all the other issues in terms of substances and stuff, but every time Campo came, they didn’t really have a reason for us to leave,” says Anderson. “They kind of just said ‘you’re doing a good job holding this together — make sure you keep doing that.'”
Clark was followed by another DJ set, this time by Danish rapper Jonas Er Fucking Skør, who performed from 12:30 a.m. until 1 a.m. By this time, the crowd had dwindled to around 20 people and the hole transformed into a dance floor. Holden Anderson says this was his favorite part of Girlhole; “the Danish rapper, he really blew up the scene.”
In an interview with Skør himself, the rapper says, “I was a little skeptical going in at first because it’s just this concrete pit, you know. I got there and it was just all love, man.” In response to allegations that he bears a striking resemblance to CC student Baxter Waltermire ’24, Skør says “I wouldn’t know about that. I guess this Baxter Waltermire character must be a really cool and handsome guy.”
The group who remained at 1 a.m. proceeded to play a rousing game of Mafia. Gordon says his favorite part of Girlhole was “when I got picked to go to a party with Baxter every single time in Mafia.” And Giovale, who was chosen as a mafia member along with Katey Grealish ’24 and Griffin Silver ’25, says her favorite moment was “fucking winning at mafia.”
Around 2 a.m., most of the guests bade the hosts goodnight and departed to go to bed, which began the most difficult stretch for Kelley and Anderson. The evening in Girlhole had been surprisingly warm due to body heat and a sunny Friday, but overnight temperatures dipped into the low 40s and wind gusts were around 13 mph for most of the night. Morale was low during the night due to the lack of performers, guests and blankets. “We were probably at our lowest at 5 a.m.,” says Anderson. Because Girlhole is located both west of a building and underground, the sun didn’t hit the hole until long after it had risen over the rest of campus.
By 11 a.m. though, sunlight was streaming into the hole in time for the closing event; a Sunbutter meet and greet followed by a stand-up comedy performance. Even though it was a Saturday morning, Girlhole still drew a crowd big enough to fill the staircase, around the same size as it was at the beginning of the TWIT performance the night before. Sunbutter performers reported that, similar to TWIT’s experience, they found that being in an unconventional space and being able to see their audience so well made for a much more intimate and interactive show. Bleckman, who performed, says “it felt super comfortable, super lowkey space… I had the feeling of being more comfortable than I would be [in Taylor Theater].”
In my conversations with attendees in the days following 24-Hour Girlhole, people overwhelmingly came away from the experience with a strong sense of community and connection with other students. “There was a person sitting next to me at one point who I [didn’t] know that well and it’s the first time I’d seen them laugh and it was really nice,” says O’Neill.
An event (or, officially, gathering of friends) like Girlhole is exemplary of the best parts of Colorado College culture; the spontaneity, tenacity and overall strangeness. Anderson’s brother, a student at the Colorado School of Mines says “it is something I would never have seen at Mines… just an event led by students, bringing the community together.”
Giovale, who transferred to CC from the New School this fall, says “This is not something that would have happened [at my old school], and honestly I was sitting down there last night and feeling so so glad that I transferred because this is able to happen. It was happening four steps away from my door, I loved everyone there, I was having a good ass time; it was making me feel really happy.”
Anderson and Kelley stressed that “really what made the event was all the performers; we just put it together,” but it is undeniable that they played a huge role in creating a unique community space. Girlhole drew attendees from all spheres of student life: from people who were already fans or friends of the performers to those who heard the name Girlhole and were curious, or those who just happened to be walking by. Although the performers certainly may have drawn the crowds, as Zeke Lloyd ’24 says, “I think the credit goes to the determined, unrelenting energy of the hosts who were just always ready to bring the energy if it ever slipped up, which it rarely did.”
There is a high demand to see more events from Girlhole in the future. Will Compton ’27 says he “would love to see more people in the Hole.” “Girlhole forever,” says Skør. “We are going to start a Danish Girlhole called ‘pige’ hole” (pronounced “pee,” meaning “girl” in Danish).
Lloyd says he believes Anderson and Kelley’s personalities and fervor were essential to creating 24-Hour Girlhole. “Should it happen a decade from now?” he says. “No, I think these two people have to be a part of it. But if they want to do it annually or every semester, I think there’s huge value in that.”
Luckily, Girlhole lovers have nothing to worry about. “We’re doing it again,” says Anderson. Kelley says they are thinking about applying for a creativity grant so that they can provide food themselves and potentially pay the performers. They promise 24-Hour Girlhole will be bigger and better next year. “There’s gonna be two couches,” says Kelley.
So, what the fuck is Girlhole? Certainly, it is a place and it was an event, but it’s bigger than that. On the weekend of April 5, Girlhole transformed an empty cement stairwell into a third space for students to gather, share their talents and connect with people they may otherwise have never met. Compton speaks for everyone who took part in this unique community event when he says “We love the hole; we love girls.”