Shooting gallery research

Site Specific

Our site specific performance is a enactment of a shooting gallery/Shanty house. A shooting gallery is a place which is hidden from view and are everywhere . A group of drug addicts meet up and do all different types of drugs the most common drugs taken in a shooting gallery is heroine and crack.  THE CRAZIEST THING IS YOU WILL WALK PAST LOTS OF SHOOTING GALLERY.  

                                                  

This is crack         

This is heroine

A shooting gallery is a breeding ground for dieses, death, poverty and serious drug using. Many homeless drug users live there. Most heavy drug users who are there will die of overdose. The same needle is used over and over again which most likely has aids  spreading dieses and causing infections. This is an atical of a person telling you what he saw when he entered a shooting gallery.  

Inside a 'Shooting Gallery': New Front in the AIDS War

By THOMAS MORGAN

Published: February 5, 1988

Amid the flicker of stubby one-inch candles, the only light in an abandoned building near the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, a 32-year-old man who calls himself Wollenski fidgeted as he watched another man glide a hypodermic syringe filled with cocaine and heroin effortlessly into his right biceps.

Wollenski anxiously awaited his turn at the table because he did not have his own syringe and had to wait for the man to give him one - one the man said was clean.

But driven by the urgent need for a fix, Wollenski did not question him about cleanliness. Here, in this ''shooting gallery,'' in stark relief against the political and moral questions being asked about whether government should issue free hypodermic needles to addicts to help stem the spread of AIDS, such questions are momentarily moot. Needing a Needle

''They don't want to give out free needles because they want us to die, and they see it as a good way to get rid of us,'' said Wollenski, who explained that his 15-year addiction started as a cool thing to do with other teen-agers but now has wrecked his life and left him hopeless. He seeks a fix three or four times a day, and each time he needs a hypodermic syringe.

''This talk about addicts liking to share needles is a lie,'' he said. ''The only reason you would use another person's needles is because you have no money to buy them, your own are clogged up or you are too sick to care.''

The man with the needles, a 31-year-old man who calls himself Cano, agreed. Cano sells illegally acquired needles to addicts on the street to help support his cocaine and heroin habit.

A pack of 10 syringes costs him $4 he says, and he sells them to others at $2 apiece. Demand for new needles is way up, he said.

''People are buying them a lot because they don't want to share,'' he said. ''People are afraid of AIDS and other diseases.''

According to city and state public health officials, there are about 200,000 intravenous drug users in New York City, and already more than half of them are infected with the AIDS virus.

About 46,000 intravenous drug users are receiving treatment at methadone clinics or drug-free clinics where they get counseling and treatment without drugs. Another 2,800 people are on waiting lists for the treatment programs, but the number is misleading, officials say. After several months, addicts give up waiting and another takes his place on the list.

Even more tragically, there are escalating numbers of wives, lovers and babies who do not use drugs but who have been infected by an addict.

With this health emergency in mind, Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, the New York City Health Commissioner, is devising a pilot project that would allow the city to distribute free syringes to about 200 drug users who are now on treatment center waiting lists and must agree to receive counseling and turn in used needles.

The project, which was approved by the state last week, cannot begin until the details are worked out. The plan drew sharp criticism by those who claimed that free syringes would simply encourage drug use.

But Yolanda Serrano, president of a community-based drug prevention program, and other city and state publich health officials, disagree with critics of the program. They see free needles as the lure to get more people into treatment. 'We've Got to Be There'

''We are not condoning drug use,'' said Ms. Serrano, president of the Association for Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment, a private organization that receives city funds. The organization's small staff visits shooting galleries in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. ''We are trying to stop the spread of AIDS to drug users and their lovers, wives and children,'' she said.

If the free needle program expands beyond the pilot stage, no one knows how many drug abusers would be willing to undergo counseling in exchange for the needles. Drug users are suspicious of public and law-enforcement officials because drug use is illegal. Paranoia caused by drug abuse simply heightens those fears.

''I believe we can change behavior, but we've got to be there constantly,'' said Ms. Serrano, who faces danger every time she and her volunteers enter a shooting gallery. ''We've got to open up storefront offices in neighborhoods where shooting galleries are. We need vans to take them to treatment centers or hospitals and we just don't have them. Now, they must get there on their own, and too often, they miss appointments.''

Inside the shooting gallery where the proprietor, a wily man named Bigote, also called the Doctor, welcomed visitors, Ms. Serrano and Ed McCoy, a former addict who is a volunteer distributed packets of bottled clorine bleach and sterile water, sterilized cotton and condoms. As the candlelight distorted human figures around grimy walls, and a woman wrapped in blackened rags moaned on a dirty mattress, Ms. Serrano and Mr. McCoy told the drug users how to clean their needles.

After a moment's search, one of the drug users she had instructed found a usable vein in an arm and, with his newly cleaned syringe, began to ''boot'' his mixture of cocaine, inserting it into the vein, withdrawing the mixture with blood back into the syringe several times to repeat the initial high.

''I don't know where to start,'' said Wollenski, who watched the man. ''I want to pick up my life, but I have no base to work from. I'm so ashamed of the way I've gone. My life has been a waste.''