#room100

Room 100: Sid, Nancy, and the Night Punk Rock Died by Jesse P. Pollack 

Pub date - 4/15/25

3.5 stars,

Sid and Nancy were still a big part of the public lexicon when I was a teenager and obviously still are - a pair of star crossed lovers, fraught with poor parenting, mental illness, addiction, abuse, murder, and suicide. 

I read And I Don’t Want to Live this Life by Deborah Spungen in the early 90’s and DS’s and her take was so entirely blameless that it didn’t seem at all possible, if you know what I mean. After I became a parent, I revisited the biography and it struck me as two young adults, in over their heads with a colicky baby that when the pediatrician suggested a specific RX and it seemed to work, it probably seemed like a lifeline. As an adult, I view it as lazy - lazy on the doctor’s part, and on the parents’. But considering that doctors prescribed smoking cigarettes from the 1930’s to 1950’s, well, I guess we can’t really expect better. As a parent of an almost 20 year old, the life Nancy lived distresses me. 

When I saw this book on NetGalley, I was curious to see how the ultimate fates of Nancy and Sid would be addressed in a new book. While there isn’t anything brand new here, the author does a good job of bringing the story into the 21st century -  humanizing both, laying out all the known facts, theories, and presenting suspects. 

No matter how one looks at it, the stories of Sid and Nancy, individually and together, are tragedies. 

I found Room 100: Sid, Nancy, and the Night Punk Rock Died a worthwhile read and would recommend to fans, and those interested. 

Thank you to Backbeat and NetGalley for the DRC

Rule number one – the subways in New York are extremely unpredictable. One must either plan ahead or have a plan ‘B’. Rushing from one point to the next, the last few days have been back to back, with too much too see and a lot to absorb.  

I wake up hoping today will be a little slow and I will have time to reflect on what I have processed the last few days. My morning was scheduled to begin at the Dairy Visitor Center, for a guided tour with a Central Park Conservancy expert. Helen our guide for the day, took us around Central Park, gave us an insider’s look at some of the most iconic features of the world’s greatest urban park. The main highlights of this tour included the Dairy, Sheep Meadow, Cherry Hill, The Lake, Bow Bridge, Bethesda Terrace, The Mall, and Literary Walk. The Central Park Conservancy restores, manages, and enhances the Park in partnership with the public, that generates 75% of the Park’s annual budget. What interested me the most about the tour was not only the Park but the development that was happening around and outside of the space – how the tall building cast a shadow over certain areas of the Park, that are said to be a threat to the ecology of the Park. The conversations around urbanization and city development have been everywhere I go, from New York to Karachi.

I managed to get to the New York State Criminal Court. Unfortunately, I had to kill an hour and a half before they resumed since everyone was off on their lunch break. The court resumed at 2:30 pm, I went to room 1000 for information regarding the public hearings for the day. The options were rape, NPSN and con – and I of course picked the trail hearing on rape. I have always been interested in the laws and the legal system concerned with women, especially rape victims/ cases and honour killing. Considering that the legal recognition of rape in Pakistan, since 1979, the introduction of “Hudood Ordinance”, has been questionable over the years, the laws have been revised and a bill has been passed but not implemented. To see the trial today, was indeed insightful and intense to process, in a context different from mine, was at the same time promising. The hearing was adorned and is rescheduled for tomorrow morning – therefore, a conclusion was not reached.

While selecting the hearing, I was not conscious of the fact that my next schedule was meant to take me to the Bluestockings Bookstore, Café and Activist Center, for a self-defence workshop with POP GYM. What are the odds? How connected are the two activities, I only realised while I was on my way to center. Bluestockings is a volunteer-powered and collectively-owned radical bookstore, fair trade café, and activist center – a safe space, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The workshop conducted by POP GYM, a project that works towards strengthening ourselves, our communities, by offering free classes for fitness, defence and self-care.