Follow a week in the life of a young folk singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Guitar in tow, huddled against the unforgiving New York winter, he is struggling to make it as a musician against seemingly insurmountable obstacles -- some of them of his own making.

Butch "Bullet" Stein is a Jewish junkie from the mean streets of Brooklyn, is paroled after eight years in prison. Butch rips off a runner for local drug dealer, Tank, and is soon right back into his old habits of snorting coke and shooting up heroin with his best friend Lester. Enraged by Butch's affront and already determined to get revenge on him for a past wrong, Tank sets about getting even with his old enemy by hiring a hulking brute, Gates to beat Butch. When the confrontation occurs,...

Erin Grant loses care and custody of her daughter when she's divorced from her husband Darrell, a small-time thief. Struggling for money, she is a dancer at a nightclub, where one night Congressman Dilbeck (in disguise) attacks another member of the audience. A spectator, who recognizes Dilbeck and is fond of Erin, offers to get back her daughter by blackmailing Dilbeck. Things do not work out as planned, though.