Check out the excellent and hilarious story in Chelsea Now’s Buzz column this week (not yet online), wherein tenant activist Arthur Nash alleges that artist Nadia Bertrand “played” the newspaper by claiming that minority shareholder David Elder gave her a month’s free rent in exchange for two paintings. We have a bit to add to the story ourselves: Nadia first came to us with the claim back in April at the Film Anthology Archives screening of Doris Chase’s Chelsea Hotel. We immediately smelled a rat, because we figured there’s no way Elder would be so much of a bonehead when that’s one of the things that he and Marlene accused Stanley Bard of doing in the hostile takeover maneuver. That’s why we didn’t report the story.
We’ve since come to believe that Elder probably was that stupid—although surely he would have told Nadia not go blabbing to the press about it, hence his surprise when Chelsea Now showed up at the art show. Perhaps it was a rogue Nadia playing the paper for her own publicity purposes.
Whether the story was a plant or not, we think this is going to come back to bite Elder on the ass again and again. Most likely Marlene didn’t know about it and has already chewed him out. And the artists who have lived here for years and never had this kind of break aren’t too happy that an outsider was shown such favoritism.
On Thursday, we ran into Elder in the elevator and asked him if he would accept a sketch on the back of our rent receipt in lieu of rent. “No, that won’t be possible,” he said. And that appears to be the last word on the matter—at least for now. — Ed Hamilton
Living with Legends 
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