Tag Archives: new york

SANDWICH RUN by Peter Nolan Smith

New York nightclubs closed at 4am in 1979, however many people didn’t want to go home after Studio 54, the Mudd Club, Xenon or CBGBs. The Mafia ran the after-hour clubs like the Cisco Disco, the 82 Club and the Nursery on 3rd Avenue. Drinks were served with an undesirable degree of danger, so when […]

BRIGITTE NEVER GETS OLD by Peter Nolan Smith

Ten years ago I returned to New York after a long time in Thailand. Culture shock had been minimized by staying at my friend’s $2 million Ft. Greene brownstone, however after a week I had acclimatized to fat people with loud voices, young people walking with cellphones in their hands, and the lack of serious […]

Dark Humor

On the first anniversary of the World Trade Tower Attack I was sitting with two NYPD narcotic detectives in a bar on Avenue B. Rocco and I went back to the Milk Bar and his partner Stevie was telling us about his 9/11 “My sergeant said as we approached the north tower, “Be careful, boys, […]

LONG GONE LONG by Peter Nolan Smith

Twenty-five minutes after the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve 1982 a masked assassin shot dead the main investor a block away from the Continental Club on West 25th Street. The FBI and NYPD’s Internal Affairs investigating Viktor Malenski’s murder quickly drew lines between the dots. My ex-girlfriend was living with the dead man’s partner. […]

Winter’s Rainbow

My baby brother died on AIDS in 1995. My mother succumbed to cancer in 1996. I mourned their passing with a circumnavigation of the globe. Every holy site on the route was my destination; Luang Prabang, Zhongdian, Lhasa, Benares et al. My soul was washed by the waters of the holiest rivers in the world, […]