While on a rooftop in Iowa at the wedding of one of my editors, I decided to get an Alligator tattoo.
Others at the wedding — a reunion of former Alligator staff — already had the recognizable serif “a” etched into their skin, and I wanted one too.
You see, the Alligator, well, it changed our lives.
With news breaking of the impending sale of this dingy, vine-covered, squeaky-carpeted building on West University Avenue, all of us who worked there are a bit worked up.
We’re apart now, in New York City at People.com or Time Magazine; in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the city magazine there; in Houston at the university’s journalism department; in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Galena, Illinois, writing about corn or other Iowan and Illinoisan things for their newspapers; or working for a Tallahassee congresswoman in Washington, D.C.
The band of us, writers, editors and photographers from the early 2010s, we might not see each other every day or talk most months, but this building, this space that’s about to be turned into apartments, it always brings us back to each other.
Way back when Tim Tebow was my roommate’s lab partner and he used to come to our dorm room in Beaty Towers, put his foot on my bed and play Madden on my roommate’s Xbox (as himself, naturally), I was a silly 18-year-old, hiding vodka bottles in my ceiling on the sixth floor, destined for law school.
That semester, my first at UF, I nearly failed economics, I dropped chemistry and I must have spent a collective 72 hours at TutoringZone trying to save my life from the shambles it had become. I had never known failure before! This was so new, so terrible! I didn’t belong at UF! I had made a mistake!
A new friend who lived six floors higher in Beaty encouraged me to pull my life together and go to the Alligator’s open house that following semester. I brought along an unpublished story about something unimportant, but that editor — the one who got married in Iowa a few years later — took a chance on me.
From there I became a contributing writer and, when she surprised me one morning under my byline, a staff writer. I took on the role of metro editor the following semester along with that same friend in Beaty Towers and then moved on to opinions editor, where I wrote the most hilarious Darts and Laurels (and sex columns) this newspaper has ever seen.
It goes without saying that I never went to law school. I started working at magazines and communications offices, as most of us did.
The Alligator, I tell you, this building changed my life.
When I come back to visit Gainesville, I’ll undoubtedly make a trip to 1105 W. University Ave., as we all do. Only next time, it won’t be the Alligator anymore. It’ll be some sophomore named Karen’s apartment, who never knew there used to be a newsroom where she eats her Karma Cream.
I sound like an old, wise adult with responsibilities, a dog and a full-time job when I say it, but the connections you make here, Gators, whether they be to people, to places or to memories, they matter.
Even when you’re 26 and old and you live more than six floors away from your best friend, remember that night you stirred a drink with a stapler inside the newsroom that saved your life.
And if all else fails, just get a tattoo.
Jared Misner was an Alligator staff member from 2009 until 2011. He now lives in Charlotte, N.C., where he writes for Charlotte Magazine.
