Nightclubbing in the Summer of Heroin

Max Blagg by Emily Armstrong

I was beginning to think there wouldn't be an entry this week from our pals Emily & Pat at Nightclubbing. But lo & behold, here it is! This week they take us back to the summer of 1980, talk about getting ripped off by junkies in the East Village, and tell us that sometimes a poem is all a girl needs (the right sort of girl anyway), and how it all connects to a fellow named Max Blagg.

August 1980 in the Lower East Side: it was the Summer of Heroin. Clinton Street was not yet restaurant row – it was lined with shooting galleries, rows of cars with Jersey plates and steerers plying their wares. “We got Snoopy, 7-Up, Yellow Bag; we got the stuff that can kill you, man!” – a pitch both fascinating and confounding. Junkies were on every other corner and street muggings were rampant. Home break-ins were a fact of life so common that it became uninteresting unless it happened to you. Continued here.

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