Living with Legends

Our illustrious proprietor Stanley Bard paid a visit to the hotel last Thursday, and apparently

decided to take the opportunity to do some house cleaning.  I was across the street dining at the Pita Hut when I noticed several of my Bohemian comrades from the Chelsea going through the boxes of trash that had accumulated on 23^rd Street by that evening.  Never one to pass on any opportunity to get something for free, I quickly scarfed down the rest of my sandwich and dodged traffic in a beeline to the rubbish pile.  My fellow scavengers were rummaging through boxes of old art books – most of which seem to be in foreign language – and speculating as to who could have discarded such treasures.  What we eventually discovered was that most of the books contained a section on the Chelsea Hotel!  The books and magazine had apparently been given by their authors to Stanley over the years.  Since the early trash-picking bird get the worm, most of the better books had been snatched up before I arrived.  But here’s a representative sample of the leftovers, in what I take to be Italian and Japanese.
    Hopefully Stanley hasn’t thrown out the rest of his archives.  I searched in vain for a box of old rent receipts; Alas. — Ed Hamilton