Living with Legends

We’ve written before of what a shame it is that the old McBurney Y has been turned into a condo building for soulless yuppies, but a recent photo spread in New York Magazine brought the point home in a much more visceral manner.   It’s the specifics that do the job.  The floor that held the historic pool has been taken over by someone named Cindy Gallop.  She’s turned the place into a warehouse collection of worthless junk that she calls art.  She has a framed AK 47 (aren’t those illegal?) with a Chanel logo on it, as well as a gold Gucci  chain saw  (This is just advertising, and you paid somebody for it!)   Two chairs are covered with leopard skins with the heads attached to bite you on the ass when you sit down.  Bizarrely, she parks her motorcycle right in the middle of the apartment.  (Don’t those things leak oil?)

Perhaps the most annoying feature of the apartment is the display of stilettos running along the living room wall – part storage, part installation, Cindy says – and, may I add, a fairly shameless display of wealth.

Cindy claims to have had a vision of this place while relaxing at her favorite watering hole in Shanghai.  Too bad the Chinese didn’t Shanghai her ass.  The place looks dark as a cave and completely unlivable.  But Cindy doesn’t care what I say, or what anybody concerned about gentrification has to say.  When entertaining in her glorified storeroom, she had the young hunks who serve the hor’d’oevres grind their loins in tiny towels bearing the Y logo.  “Kiss my rich ass” she is telling us all.  (Ed Hamilton) (Photo: Part storage, part installation at the Chelsea.)