In August 1979, over three million cockroaches and their friends gathered at a home in Schenectady, New York, for what would be the largest, most legendary in-home infestation in the history of the world. Roachella was the “Woodstock of Cockroaches”, the culmination of 1970s cockroach counterculture, closing out a decade of filth and ushering in the much cleaner and prettier 1980s.
The Electric City
The City of Schenectady, N.Y., lies about 160 miles north of New York City, and about 90 miles north of Bethel, where Woodstock happened in 1969. Now a virtual ghost town, it was once the technological center of the universe — “The Electric City”, “The City That Lights And Hauls The World” — home to both the American Locomotive Company and birthplace of General Electric. It was also home to the first radio station, the first television transmission, and was even the birthplace of Vaudeville.
At the turn of the 20th century, Schenectady was like the Silicon Valley of its time, a center of the industrial and technological universe through World Wars I and II and right up to the 1960s. But then came the 70s and the layoffs. Consolidations and relocations to warmer and cheaper climates resulted in thousands upon thousands of Schenectadians losing their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods. The city fell to corruption and …slums.
In the heart of the slums of Schenectady lies the Hamilton Hill Neighborhood notorious for drugs, hookers and crime. By 1979, “The Hill”, as its often called, was overrun with trap houses, whorehouses, halfway houses and addicts, welfare recipients and mental health patients all living on assistance. Peppered amongst all of that were the last remnants of the “Old Schenectady”, the retirees or their widows now too old to move or living on fixed incomes and unable to afford to. And it’s there in Hamilton Hill where the story of Roachella takes place and where it earned Schenectady a new nickname…
Welcome to Roachella!
On August 2, 1979, Schenectady Police responded to a routine noise complaint — a neighbor’s dog was barking constantly and wouldn’t shut the fuck up. The responding officers discovered the reason why as soon as they rolled up and before they even stepped out of their cruiser. They heard “crunching” below their tires...
Hordes of cockroaches were EVERYWHERE, pouring from the noisy house out every door and window, covering the street out front — one officer said it looked like the street was “moving” — climbing the trees and overtaking parked cars. It was like a scene from a horror movie.
As the officers crunched their way up to the front door, the knee-high grass on both sides of the walkway swayed in the opposite directions as streams of roaches scurried away. Up the steps, the porch, the outside screen door, inside door, and doorknob, all teeming with roaches. The officers were already inundated with roaches climbing into their shoes and up their pant legs. It was a nightmare.
But it was only beginning…
When they finally cleared off the doorknob and opened the front door, the blast of light literally SHOOK the house as millions upon millions of roaches ran for cover towards the back. The walls moved in waves. The click-click-clicking sound of roaches trampling over each other could be heard out in the street. Chicka-chicka-chicka-chicka-chicka! As more roaches rained from the ceiling, the officers looked down to notice their feet were completely covered — they were ankle deep in cockroaches! Not just roaches — maggots, too!
“Indy, why does the floor move?”
And there, in the middle of all of it all, were two old ladies sitting in recliners eating TV dinners, watching an old, black-and-white TV, swiping bugs off the screen to get a better view. They were seemingly unbothered by it all. Surrounding them were 22 starving dogs and 20 starving cats, all mangy, flea-bitten, barking and meowing, and begging for a bite of food. In a corner, two more dogs and a bunch of rats were tearing away at the carcass of a dead cat totally unbothered by the intrusion.
The officers ran like hell out of the house and called for back-up. Soon, police, fire, emergency medical, animal control, and the County Health Department were all on the scene trying to figure out what the fuck to do.
The Aftermath
The two old ladies were forcibly removed. Covered in roaches, fleas, maggots and other bugs, their wigs and clothing were torn off them and they were hosed-down in the street then whisked away by ambulances to the local hospital. (It was later said the ambulances had to be fumigated and were ultimately put out of commission.)
The animals were rounded up and taken to the local shelter where they, too, were hosed down. Unfortunately, many if not all of them had to be put down.
Once it was cleared, by order of the Health Department, the house was immediately set ablaze by the fire department and burned to the ground. As it burned, bats upon bats flew from the attic windows. Hundreds of mice and rats ran down the sidewalks and streets looking for places to hide — into sewer drains and manholes and into neighboring homes. And finally, the mass exodus of cockroaches — the largest ever witnessed by humans to-date — covered everything in sight as they spread like wildfire throughout the neighborhood — like teenagers running from the keg party when the cops arrive.
“Forty years later,” one of the officers told me, “many of us still have nightmares.”
Ultimately, the City of Schenectady paid for every home in a five-block radius to be fumigated, but that didn’t stop Schenectady’s cockroach infestation. Soon, the entire city would be infested with cockroaches, earning it the title of “Cockroach Capital of the World”. Growing up there, I can’t recall anyone that didn’t have a roach problem. The whole area was (and still is) a gold mine for pest control companies.
And now once a year, cockroaches from around the world make their annual Pilgrimage to Schenectady to lay some eggs and pay tribute to their Roachella ancestors. They travel by bus, plane, train and automobile. They stowaway in boxes shipped by Amazon and come from overseas hidden in your Wish, SHEIN and Alibaba orders. Sometimes, they get lost along the way. Last year, one accidentally got off in Manhattan and found itself at the Met Gala instead.
(P.S. — I’ve literally itched a layer of skin off my arms writing this.)
—P.
Featured Image: Periplaneta Louis Vuittonius
Publisher
As a child my mother said to me, ‘If you grow up to be a soldier, you will become a general. If you grow up to be a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I grew up to be a degenerate, and now I’m publisher of SCREW.
