Living with Legends

According to newyorkology.com "Hair" will run for one extra week in Central Park.  If you don’t want to wait all day to get tickets you can always climb to the top of  Belvedere Castle and enjoy the songs perfectly fine though the view is obstructed to say the least. The connections between the Chelsea Hotel and "Hair" are so numerous that we could never untangle them all, but for starters former resident Milos Foreman directed the movie and Galt McDermott wrote the music for the Broadway show.

This spring, former Chelsea Hotel resident and member of the original "Hair"cast, Sharmange Leland-St. John-Sylbert was in town for the 40th reunion of the original cast.  In 1966-67 Leland-St. John-Sylbert lived at the Chelsea Hotel, down the hall from Edie Sedgwick, in a small studio that was also used by a photographer as his dark room.  She talks a little about her experience at the Chelsea in this video. During her recent visit she chatted with us about the big fire of 1966.  According to Sharmange, one of the more memorable highlights was when the firemen broke through the floor while they were putting out the fire and spotted a stash of pot in the room below. The firemen call the police, which resulted in a couple of tenants getting arrested.