Letters

New Year's Steve

PETER BRAUNSTEIN nailed MTV's laziness covering the premiere of 54 and J. Hoberman was right about the screenplay's oversight of the preppie regulars [''Safety Dance''; ''Behind the Music,'' September 8]. Anyway, contrary to what is portrayed in the movie, here's what actually happened on New Year's Eve 1979:

Steve Rubell didn't speak, no one OD'd, and the raid by the Organized Crime Strike Force of the U.S. Attorney's office had taken place one year earlier. Baskets hung over the balcony with guys in rooster outfits dumping confetti and streamers. There were four costumed stilt-walkers (one was a big pink sheep), a magician-juggler, and face painters. Clips of '70s newscasts and movies ran on two overhead screens. The last song of 1979? Festival’s ''Evita'' medley. Then everyone sang ''Auld Lang Syne.'' ''Vertigo/"Relight My Fire'' chimed in 1980 and aired four more times that night;later, ''Brown Sugar'' played three times in a row (let one of today’s DJs get away with similar repeats, but at Studio it worked).

My gang (average age 23) was once lampooned as ''a bunch of UVA grads working at Chemical Bank.'' At Studio we inhaled Rush so that our highs would coincide with the sax break in Suzi Lane’s ''Harmony,'' and occasionally snorted coke, but generally preferred screwdrivers. We danced with a theater critic for a major newspaper chain, a dentist who always wore a red bow tie, numerous aspiring chorus boys, HBO secretaries, a couple of well-known drag queens, a middle-aged peroxide blond of indeterminate gender, and a closeted Dutch boy and his girlfriend. The girlfriend later made the cover of New York magazine for having been murdered and stuffed in a trunk (not by the Dutch boy).

Mark Christopher’s movie was a cute two stars, but there are a few Studio stories remaining to be told.

Charlie Carson
Soho

Down On Jamaica

RE JAZELL ANDUJAR'S ''Jam Session'' [September 8]: Call me cynical, but I don’t see how anyone could describe Jamaica in such a favorable light.

In the eight years I have been riding the Long Island Rail Road through Jamaica, I have seen an obviously blighted place. There are people living in sickening squalor under bridges or in houses made of garbage. On one side of the tracks is a recycling plant with a shard mountain of broken Heineken bottles, and dozens of ugly metal warehouses with locked gates. You see mean-looking men hanging out and guard dogs chained to back stoops. There are ubiquitous mounds of garbage, not to mention a livestock market in one residential neighborhood I pass, where chickens, sheep, and goats are stuffed into stables waiting for some asshole to slit their throats.

Am I angry and disgusted that this ''beautiful'' place exists? Yes. But I'm angrier that through the years it hasn’t changed much since, as Ms. Andujar puts it, it was purchased from local tribes for ''eight bottles of liquor, blankets, and a few guns.''

Teri Bollweg
Long Beach, New York

Christ Almighty

AS A LONGTIME Voice reader, I was appalled to see Michael Sofronski's blasphemous photo of a man wearing a T-shirt with the words ''JESUS IS A CUNT'' in your publication [Street Style, September 8].

As a Catholic, I take personal offense at this derogatory material, which publicly disrespects our Lord Jesus Christ. Not only is this photo an offense to all Christians, but the Voice is freely accessible to younger people who may be wrongly influenced by this demoralizing depiction of our Christian faith.

It’s not cool to be anti-Christ.

George P. Choma
Manhattan

Come Again?

IN DAN SAVAGE'S August 18 column, he misinforms readers about the transmission of gonorrhea and genital warts via oral sex.

The exchange of bodily fluids, such as semen, is in no way related to the transmission of genital warts, and it is not a prerequisite for the transmission of gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is an easily transmittable bacteria that lives on the opening at the tip of the penis and along the surface of the urethra, not in semen, like HIV.

In other words, if you go down on your partner and he or she has the clap, you can get the clap whether your partner comes in your mouth or not. In most cases, gonorrhea can be easily treated, but if left unchecked it can lead to sterility and/or heart disease.

Halley Low
Brooklyn

Brat Pack

IN EDMUND LEE'S article ''Asiatown'' [September 8], he writes, referring to Korean and Chinese kids who roam around Flushing in large groups and don’t like to socialize with anyone who is different from them: ‘‘If you’re an outsider, they notice. You don’t look right. They ignore you.'' As a Chinese girl who doesn’t dress in ‘‘tight-crotched, bell-bottomed jeans’’ or ‘‘tank tops,’’ I often receive dirty looks from girls who think I am inferior to them. Their ‘‘wolfpack’’ logic tells them to ignore and look down on people who don’t dress, look, or talk like them.