From MTV to NIU, Cribs is in the house … well, apartment.

Throughout the semester, Sweeps will frunk out the funkiest fly facilities NIU students inhabit.

Close to campus and next to the endlessly exciting birthplace of barbed wire, five upperclassmen assuredly have one of the “pimpinest” pads in town. All five tenants knew each other before moving in and most of them had lived on a floor with one another before.

The apartment contains nine and a half rooms, five bedrooms and two and a half baths. It’s complete with a Pepsi machine right outside the front door. The apartment’s main draw is the boys’ toys. The center of the house is the main living room, which contains a 32-inch television, an American flag, a full-size poker table and an actual WWF Wrestle Fest arcade game.

“I got [the poker table] off of eBay, along with all of the chips,” said Chris Andrus, a senior business management major. “[Everything came from eBay] except the chairs – those I got at Target. All the tags are still on them, too, in case I want to return them.”

The poker table frequently becomes the center of the guys’ get-togethers. There is no question about it: Who wants to sit in a residence hall and play when they can head over to this flat and play on an actual table with some 550 regulation poker chips?

“I got the WWF Wrestle Fest arcade game and the 5-by-8-foot American flag off eBay,” Andrus said. “I also have another 13-foot flag boxed up in my room. There isn’t anywhere to put it.”

This happenin’ pad also boasts a bevy of appliances and electronics. Feeling hungry? Well, this is the place to be: besides the standard range and oven, the guys have four microwaves, a toaster oven, a toaster, three George Foreman grills, an outdoor propane grill, a smoothie maker and a rice cooker.

Interested in taking a sneak peek in the fridge? Don’t get your hopes up.

“We don’t have anything in our fridge,” Andrus said. “All we have is condiments and maybe some milk.”

When the guys aren’t eating, you might find them challenging one another at one of their six game systems – not including the arcade game. The guys are proud owners of two PlayStation 2s, two Nintendo 64s, an original Nintendo and a PlayStation 1.

Aside from communal objects, some of the guys keep more personal collections.

“I have a water bottle collection,” junior accountancy major Ryan Nishimoto said. “I think I have well over 100 empty bottles [in my room]. I keep them because I don’t want to just throw them away and we don’t have a recycling program.”

The guys’ love of nature goes beyond plastic recycling. They said they’ve unofficially adopted the stray cats that seem to have taken over their backyard.

“There are about eight or nine cats that hang around our back door,” Andrus said.

“[Andrus] feeds them shrimp and stuff all the time,” Walz said.

This concludes our glimpse into the fabulous pad of these saucy NIU upperclassmen. And on that note, the guys leave us all to champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Crib: 9.5 rooms, 5 bedrooms and 2.5 baths

Who: Tim Walz, junior marketing major

Chris Andrus, senior business management major

Justin Scalise, junior accountancy major

Justin Hermosillo, junior manufacturing engineering technology major

Ryan Nishimoto, junior accountancy major

Where: 1001 Lincoln Highway, Apt. 1