Hotel Chelsea Blog
An article in today’s issue of The New York Observer spotlights the recent changes at the hotel. Mr. Bard’s right. This place is nuttier than ever. Marlene Krauss, once again, points out that she attended Harvard Business School and therefore knows everything there is to know about running a business. No quotes from Elder, but through a spokesperson he confirmed that he received a fish head and revealed that someone sent him dog poop. (Photo: Chris Shott, New York Observer)
The PR war heats up. If they’re just going to fix up the hotel, why AREN’T they doing it yet? That hasn’t been their priority at all since they got here.
Ms. Krauss is fond of the word “normal,” isn’t she.
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Ms. Krauss thinks it’s “her” hotel, despite the fact that she merely inherited her share and has done nothing for the place ever! I have been trying to see her side of things but in this interview she just comes off as a crass BITCH with no grasp of the hotel and what it means. Oh please, Mrs. Krauss-Berk, tell us again about your Harvard MBA and how that is relevant to as mysterious a palce as the Chelsea Hotel!
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Nice photo of Stanley and David. It’s so sad what those other two are doing to them.
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HI, popping in to let you all know I’ve got a book in the works, under contract to a major publisher in the UK, a high octane comedy featuring a beloved old hotel and the wealthy heirs who try to take it from its longtime manager and owner. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, so the heirs might be named, I dunno, Darlene Kelder and Mavis Grouse. Any information you can provide about certain fictional personalities currently running the hotel will be greatly appreciated. I expect to have a US deal shortly. Email me at badarmunirprod@hotmail.com. Thanks and long live Stanley Bard and Piri Thomas!
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Someone mentioned ‘sense of entitlement’ on this blog before? Man oh man, do Krauss and Elder display a sense of entitlement in this newspaper piece. Born with silver spoons in their mouths. Did someone say “free ride” for them all these years while Stanley worked himself to the bone for the Chelsea? They ought to thank their fortunate circumstances that they get something from the hard work of Stanley and the tenants all these years while contributing nothing worthwhile themselves. What a couple of whiny know-nothings. I spend about $4000 a year staying in that hotel when in New York. No more. Not until Stanley is back behind that desk.
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Marle says: Our feeling is it could be the most interesting, respected hotel in New York.
Darling, it already is! My God, you just don’t get it, girlfriend. It is far and away the most interesting and respected hotel in the WORLD! Just look at the notes to Stanley, or the worldwide press who are still picking up and running with this story six weeks after those Terrible Events of mid-June. How do you define interesting, or respected? By the snap of the bed linens and the cowed obedience of the staff, or by the unbelievable number of great minds and souls who passed through those doors, no thanks to you, dear, and Mr. Elder.
Marle, HONEY, you need to get roaring drunk on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel at dusk, as the moon is rising, with some tunes on the boom box. You need to wear a paper thin sundress, so there’s as little as possible between your skin and the cooling night air, then kick off your shoes and unroll the hosiery and dance barefoot in the moonlight with the benevolent spirits of the hotel. If you keep an open heart and an open mind as you do that, enlightenment will come to you. You will see the true human and divine value of the place, and you will be proud to pass such an unusually beautiful and creative building to your children.
(Let’s face it, Marle, the way kids are, there’s a good chance that when they’re college age, they’ll prefer the Chelsea just as it was under Stanley.)
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I’m reading Harry Potter, and can’t help wondering how J.K. Rowling would handle it if muggle developers moved in on Hogwarts.
Krauss and Elder seem very quick to have assessed a price tag to the art Stanley accumulated, in order to get their percentage of its cash value, though they had only a minor and passive role in its creation as holders of stock. Did they ask for any of the paintings? Or did they just want the cash? Did Stanley offer them artwork, or could he not bear to part with it and so offered them cash instead? There is a polar difference in attitude between these parties, and a great a gulf between the contributions of both parties to the hotel. Unfortunately, I think Stanley understands their point of view much better than they understand his.
Stanley ran the hotel his way. Of course it’s not the Harvard MBA model, which is fine if you’re running a Hilton, but look at the results, on both sides of this website, and here http://www.hotelchelsea.com/bohemia.php
There are so many more. One can never find a complete list of the greats who stayed at the Chelsea under Bard tenure because it is simply too long. How do we quantify that to present a realistic picture of the profit of the place that the investors can understand? I hope there is a way to buy these people out because the more I learn and the more I read the more I think they don’t understand the hotel at all.
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I wonder how many of those bad reviews were written by Mrs. Krauss or Mr. Elder or their cohorts. You people hear the story about the CEO who posted anon negative reviews about a company he was trying to takeover, apparently to help lower its stock price.
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You are probably right, Andy. Madame Krauss hides behind the press that she “buys”, and Mr. Elder is not eloquent enough to speak… so i’m sure the public relations firm that they bought is right there typing away… one finger at a time…. hoping that people buy their shtick!
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I doubt that they’re writing bad reviews on a place that they are part owner of! Stanley would NEVER sell out to them anyway and they wanted to sell out to the Bards, they’d want the price to be HIGHER, not lower.
Let’s all face the fact that the hotel IS in need of repair and ISN’T for everyone’s tastes. Did a complete overthrow of management need to happen to get this place in better shape? My opinion is that it did NOT. It will definitely be done at a much faster rate, but at what other costs? Character? Spirit? Residents losing their homes? I certainly hope not.
Stanley is set in his ways for sure. The guy’s got character! David would probably have worked with the other shareholders a bit more easily, yet preserved all that his family has built. Perhaps David will be brought on at some point in the near future and work WITH new management in tandem. THAT would truly be the best for the hotel and it’s legacy.
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The bad reviews would be to help their court case, not necessarily to enable a buyout.
Hopefully, the Bards will get the hotel back. It doesn’t seem possible to work in tandem with these people.
The Hotel seemed fine when I weas there last year. I will not stay there again until the Bards are managing it again.
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No, PR flak, the best for the hotel and its legacy would be for Stanley to come back. You’re the guy who keeps trying to get people to roll over and accept it, right? This is your latest slightly different angle? Accept two know nothing minority shareholders who unceremoniously, to say the least, fired Stanley, after fifty years. People who did nothing for the place all these years. As someone here pointed out, where were they when the area was depressed and Stanley kept the place going? It needed a lot more repairs then. Didn’t seem to bother them until the last five or ten years when the real estate values went up in Chelsea and then — surprise — suddenly they’re interested in the place. You are either one of them or one of the yuppies who moved in the last few years who wants a sterile spiritless home, one of those people who moved to New York and liked that it had become a cross between Beverly Hills and Peoria. A big fake theme park for people with money and no guts or authenticity.
Repairs. Right. They’re going to pump a lot of money into the place and not take it out of the residents’ hide? They brought Andre Balazs and BD Hotels in to fix the toilets, right? You’re either naive or dishonest or stupid. Looking at what they’ve done so far, repairs seem pretty far down their list.
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In a million years, they can never create what Stanley and his residents created in that place. There was a spirit, and a magic there, that began with the Bards. These people might make more money than Stanley, by packing it conventioneers or yuppies, they might put a veneer of art on the place, but they’ll never capture its soul, and they’ll never be able to create the mix of residents Stanley brought in naturally. Where else could one live with a retired bullfighter, a Brazilian opera singer hiding out from the Russian mafia, a rock star, a movie star, a secretary, a great painter, a great librettist, a Beat writer doing the best work of his life, a Ramone, a witch, a family of artists, a great director, a great theater artist, Venus the Goddess of love, and a giant white rabbit named demetrious who lived on the third floor balcony. Where else might one ride up in the elevator with a transsexual, Ron Jeremy, and a three-foot statue of Jesus? Where else would an heiress fall in love with and marry a bellman? Where else would one drop in on an impromptu party and find oneself having a conversation with Arthur Miller, Arnold Weinstein and Rita Fecher? Stanley unorthodox methods facilitated and nurtured it all. It was the naturalness, the spontaneity, the spirit, the democracy, the endless possibilities of the place that will be lost forever if the Bards don’t get the hotel back. If New York doesn’t do all it can to save this place, then New York is no longer worth a bucket of warm spit.
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LP, you need to switch to decaf because no one said anything so naive or dishonest to deserve your hostile rebuke. Repairs DO need to be made – that’s just plain as day truth. To paint anyone who makes honest observations as flaks or “one of them” seems to me to have no purpose at all. Grow up.
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Cowboy- well said! I’ve found some of the responses to honest observations and statement that in no way takes the “side” of new management OR old management (they’re pure, honest observations) being twisted, skewed, and spun in such juvenile and ridiculously closed-minded, tunnel-visioned ways that I’ve simply stopped responding to them.
I hear that other people realize and think the same about such responses (though I’m sure some agree with them as well) and it’s not really helpful to continue feeding silly responses with attempts to explain or defend; it just brings MORE of the same from the same few people.
Their “purpose” in doing so is make it seem as though new management is full of it regarding their statements of repairing and cleaning the place up when anyone who knows the place knows otherwise. The need for repairs has never even been refuted by the BARDS as they were renovating the place.
If they “take it out on the residents’ hides” or not is a valid concern. There are people who are paying below (well below) market rate for rent stabilized apartments, and there are those who are paying above (and some well-above) market rate. I’d say that if anything, by making this hotel more upscale, the cost would come out of the guests who stay here because they are the ones who will be getting more upscale services. But then, this is all just an opinion as I am NOT with BD hotels and, unfortunately, don’t know what their plans are.
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Also LP…I hate to break it to you, but new management IS in charge. If someone wants to accept it or not is an individual thing, but not accepting this as a fact isn’t going to change that fact.
Nobody said anything about being happy about it or not being worried that residents will start being evicted simply because they want to make more money off their apartment. Nobody said NOT to fight for the Bards, but if you go to Stanley for managerial things, he can’t help you. I wish he could, but you’ll probably be redirected to new management. THAT is simply a FACT.
If you don’t accept this and you live at the hotel, what are you going to do to NOT accept it, not pay your rent? That’s a great way to get yourself evicted for absolutely legal and justified reasons.
If you don’t respect a management’s basic, REASONABLE rules, you could find yourself with an eviction notice ANYWHERE in the country and probably the world. We aren’t talking about accepting illegal things or anything that’s absolutely unreasonable (like employees only behind the front desk), so…all you can do is face the facts, fight for what you believe in, but realize that- right now- new management IS in power whether you like it or not. There’s nothing untrue, naive, or taking sides about that statement. It’s a fact.
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Hi there guys, I am in apt.#1024 I had an altercation with Glennon Travis our new fearless leader, I was locked out of my room after being in DR. Peter Ferro’s office for 5 hours of procedure. I went upstairs to get my purse to pay DR. Ferro and to take care of my service Dog only to find that the fearless leader had locked me out with my dog locked in. I called the police and he had no valid reason, he told the police that I would not sign a piece of paper which was totally untrue. he tried to raise my rate by $59 doolars which I would not approve and they had alredy had gotten an auth. fro AMEX for $4000.00 for 7 days on the 24th of July I checked in on the 17th of July. I called our fearless leader this AM and informed him of a problem with the TV,George Duane and Victor all tried to fix the TV but all agreed that it was not possible so they would get me another one then they were told by our FL Glennon that they would have to have his approval so I called and he informed me to be patient and he would locate one even though the employees had alredy done that. Now he is offering to change me to another room with a TV that works and should he charge the one that is not working to my charge since he does not know if I broke this one!!!!!!!! I called the Police and they had him open the door and told me that it was not a Police matter but none the less they had him open the door!! I have contacted the New York Times and they are very intrested in this story and everything else I can tell them. I have to put as much in writing and Fax to Paul in the Metro desk please get back to me I am in apt.# 1024
Thank you,
L
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Look, the dishonest or naive part is believing that these boutqiue-o people are here to fix the infrastructure. Nonsense. If you continue to believe this is their main purpose here, then you are dishonest or naive or kissing up to the invaders. Take your pick.
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LP- nobody EVER said that new management was here SOLELY to fix the infrastructure!!! Why do you keep making those claims? That is DEFINITELY a PART of it but also definitely NOT the ONLY reason they’re here. I don’t think anyone actually thinks that’s the reason they are here is to fix the place up and do nothing else.
Is that their MAIN purpose? Of course I don’t believe it is and I don’t think most people do either. Is it something important to them? YES, for many reasons.
What else are they here for? TO MAKE THIS A MORE PROFITABLE PLACE (or so the other shareholders see more of the profits the place was making). Who can dispute THAT? I certainly can’t and I don’t think other people could or ARE disputing it.
Nobody is being naive, being dishonest, or kissing up to the “invaders” as you put it. Kind of a juvenile way of putting it, but, if that’s what it feels like to you (and at times it does to me as well), then that’s fine.
Are we on the same page now, LP?
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