“The scene now is one of club kids who don't even have a 'fuck the rules' men­tality — they don't know any rules to fuck. They manage to combine a youthful, energetic wholesomeness with a jaded sense of decadence, as typified by their major domo, 22-year-old Michael Alig”

Twisted tales of surviving the holiday season from Michael Musto, Ann Powers, Lynn Yaeger, Elizabeth Zimmer and a half dozen other Voice contributors

Father Gigante has rebuilt much of the South Bronx. But who has profited more, his parish­ioners or the mob family run by his own brother?

“Verta maintains that the Gullah, who originally spoke a language they called Ngulla, were from Angola and that in prehistory — you know, when the continents were all at­tached — what is now South Carolina was joined to what is now Angola”

“The rumor had Nixon plotting to use election-eve violence as an excuse for massive repression of students and blacks, mass ar­rests, and suspension of Constitu­tional guarantees to keep the dis­senters behind bars... The rumor was really saying that a Reichstag fire was in the works.”

“At the end of the '80s, while America concerned itself with the consequences of crack, and crack dealers continued in that hyper trade, Boy George was running five heroin locations in the South Bronx”

The war in Northern Ireland is one of the longest-running and most intensive guerril­la insurgencies in the history of modern warfare. On one side, the forces of the Brit­ish union. On the other, the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Beyond them, a network of supporters 3000 miles away in the United States.

“George Carlin is funny. Congenitally, genetically funny. He's got these harty-har-har chromosomes and genes. Carlin is TRANSLUCENTLY funny.”

“The notion that John Gotti — or any single mob figure — was some sort of omnipotent New York mafioso is ludicrous. The word 'Godfather' had a nice, Brando-­esque ring, but the title itself is a fraud.”

“For nearly two weeks the Singer-Swapps — a family of fundamentalist Mormons — barricaded themselves in their cabin and, armed with an arsenal of handguns, ri­fles, and sawed-off shotguns, held off an army of county deputies and federal agents. On the 13th day, the standoff erupted into a gun battle that left one officer dead.”