“Last Thursday night Debbie inscribed the paper tacked up on the elevators on each floor with the wildly inflammatory slogan: “Bring Back the Bards”. The next morning at about 9:30 AM two policemen came to our door. The security cameras had caught Debbie in action! (At least we know now that the cameras work. We were really worried about that because it seems they were conveniently inoperative when security goons were beating another resident.) “The management wanted us to ask you not to do that anymore,” the cops said.
“Why not?” Debbie asked. “It was just a piece of paper.”
"Of course it’s NOT A CRIME to write on a piece of paper,” the cops said, “You’re not damaging their property in any way, and they were just going to throw that paper away. But they felt insulted.” It was clear that the cops thought that the whole thing was a joke and that their time was being wasted.
“Do you know about the situation with Star Lounge and all the fights outside the hotel?” Debbie asked, redirecting their attention to a more important issue. “Yeah, we’re monitoring the situation,” the cops said. (Significantly, our security guards have not been calling the cops when they witness fights in front of the hotel, endangering hotel and neighborhood residents alike.)
So, basically, management (which I guess means either Andrew Tilley or Arnold Tamasar or both) called the cops on Debbie for defacing garbage! The Chelsea Hotel has a proud history of radicalism and dissent. Have we really sunk so low that not even this polite, mild mannered exercise in the Freedom of Speech is to be tolerated? Oh, another thing the cops said was that the management said they would have to take that paper down each night and put up new the next day! That’s going to get pretty expensive, given that they’ve already been painting (and “repairing”) the elevators for a number of months with no end in sight. First they painted them gold; then they primered them; then they painted them black; and when that experiment didn’t work, they primered them again, then painted them a lighter shade of gold. Now we’re back to the primering stage again. At one point, they looked really good, but I don't even remember what point that was anymore. Bring Back the Bards!
Living with Legends 
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