Believe it or not, one of the most stressful decisions I make every week is the subject of my column. Finding a topic that I can string together 550 words about, and one that I think Northwestern students are remotely interested in, isn’t easy. But there are those rare occasions when a tremendous column idea falls into your lap. Such was the case this week, when an alert reader sent me a rather conspicuous Web site link: (www.playboy.com).

After literally hours of grueling research on the pages of Playboy’s Web site, sifting through hundreds of – um, articles – I found what I was looking for: Playboy, the end-all, be-all judge of what’s cool, named an NU Bar, Nevins Pub, its “College Bar of the Month.” This was too good to pass up.

Is it possible Playboy has dubbed an Evanston bar cool? By reading on through the Web site’s review, I found my answers, and my world turned upside down. The Playboy writers broke down nearly all of my misconceptions about Evanston as a college town.

In the review, much is made of the mingling of Evanston residents. The intro states, “Local Evanstonians – or is it Evanstonites? – mix with NU students to rack up a game of pool, listen to local bands or lounge around the fireplace with a cold one.” I was shocked. I’ve always understood that Evanston residents regard NU students with contempt usually reserved for tapeworms, and vice-versa. But now I know at a bar on Sherman Avenue you can be sure to find “fashionably-clad theater majors, ultra-hip DJs from the campus radio station and Evanston townies all chilling over brews together.”

Nor was I aware, according to the story, that “throngs of sexy sorority girls from the nearby quad head down for cocktails after Monday night chapter.” I have never seen these throngs out and about on a Monday night. I didn’t know NU had “throngs.” I felt at least certain that if sorority girls were engaging in “throng” behavior of any kind, the Panhellenic Association would have put an end to that long ago.

Alas, I was wrong again.

What really blew me away, though, wasn’t that Evanston townies and sexy sorority girls were boozing it up in harmony less than a mile off campus – it was the startling revelation that Evanston tolerates having “college bars” within its city limits. This one got me thinking: Could this mean Evanston is a real college town?

I had always assumed college towns were places like Madison, Ann Arbor, or Boulder – towns literally overrun with tens of thousands of students for nine months out of the year, towns that wouldn’t be the same without their college – not towns like Evanston. Evanston was just another upscale, snotty, North Shore suburb that happened to be unconvinced it was a college town by the unfortunate presence of a few thousand overachievers, or so I thought.

But much as it did in my early adolescence, Playboy came to my rescue, and changed my perceptions forever. Never again will I feel ashamed of the social standing of my university, or contempt for city which so graciously hosts us. NU has arrived as a real Big Ten school, and we have the bar to prove it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more research to do.