‘80s Drug Scene Turns 54 Into an Unlucky Number

Studio 54, once Manhattan’s trendiest nightspot among celebrities and glitterati, was ordered closed for two years because of rampant drug use and the sale of cocaine and other drugs inside the club. The club’s cabaret license was yanked and its owner, Shalom Weiss, barred from reopening the disco for at least two years, according to New York Consumer Affairs Commissioner Angelo Aponte. In its heyday in the 1970s, Studio 54 was second home to arbitrators of hip such as Calvin Klein, Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger. It fell out of the limelight in recent years, however, as new clubs became more popular among fickle New Yorkers. Consumer Affairs officials testified at administrative hearings that overt sale and use of illegal substances, such as crack, cocaine and marijuana, were commonplace inside the club and that club employees not only allowed drug activity, but in some cases participated in it or alerted patrons when police were coming.

--June Scobee, widow of Challenger space shuttle pilot Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, is engaged to marry an Army general in June. Mrs. Scobee, 46, will marry Lt. Gen. Don Rodgers, commander of the Global Army Information Systems Command at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz. The two met last Easter at a sunrise service at Arlington National Cemetery, where Mrs. Scobee had gone to visit the grave of her husband, who died with the six other crew members in the Jan. 28, 1986, shuttle explosion. Mrs. Scobee spearheaded efforts to create the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, dedicated to continuing the mission of the Challenger crew. Rodgers, 54, is a widower. Mrs. Scobee will be the first Challenger widow or widower to remarry.

--In an expedition intended to melt the “ice curtain,” the United States and the Soviet Union have announced plans for a joint U.S.-Soviet dog sled and ski trek from Siberia to Alaska across the Bering Strait. Six Americans and six Soviets will depart March 1 from Anadyr, Siberia, on a two-month, 1,200-mile journey visiting 30 native settlements along an old Arctic trade route. They will arrive at the Alaskan village of Kotzebue in late April. Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) said of the Bering Bridge Expedition: “We are opening up the ice curtain that has divided us for so long. We’re bringing together the Alaskan and Soviet Eskimo.” The last surface crossing was in 1948, the expedition’s sponsors said.