Category Archives: East Village

FURY FORGOTTEN by Peter Nolan Smith

FURY FORGOTTEN by Peter Nolan Smith New York City has been bled of out-of-towners with a merciless fury. Jobs once abundant for aging emigres to Manhattan dries up, as your age passes 40. Successful friends move out of your pay bracket and your old work slow has been replaced by twenty year-olds willing to work […]

WHY I MISS JUNKIES by Peter Nolan Smith

Most New Yorkers depend on air-conditioning during the summer heat waves, however AC always felt to me, as if a dirty old man from the Arctic was breathing down my neck and that dirty old man wasn’t Santa Claus. Truthfully after so many years in Southeast Asia I liked the heat and any temperature under […]

First Night At CBGBs

JANUARY 16, 1978 – JOURNAL ENTRY – EAST VILLAGE

Jim Fouratt hired our CBGBs gang to work at the New School registering students. He laughed upon seeing me, since he only like the way I had defended gays in the punk clubs. The music impresario leaned over and said, “None of these fools realize that as many people have graduated from the New School […]

BIG FOOT by Peter Nolan Smith

In 1977 I moved out of my SRO room in Greenwich Village to the East Village with my hillbilly girlfriend. The third-floor walk-up on East 10th Street had a bathtub in the kitchen and a water closet off the living room. I carved Alice’s name on the wooden window sill. We lasted until 1979. The […]