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Has the Chelsea Hotel Lost Its Will to Live?

Chelsea Does Cara Buckley's article in the NYTimes (12/8/10) get it right on the money?  Are we really going to go  "quietly into the night?"  Is this the end of the line for the Chelsea Hotel's famous spirit of non-conformity and resistance?  Even if Michael Musto is right that our "legend has been slowly evaporating," has it really dissipated entirely?  When did we lose our famous ability to "inspire terror in the streets'?  Are New Yorkers "shrugging" at our plight out of unconcern or bewilderment?  How will history remember the present tenants?
Ed Hamilton

(photo: crawdaddy.com)

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40 responses to “Has the Chelsea Hotel Lost Its Will to Live?”

  1. Mirjam Avatar
    Mirjam

    As very kind and inspiring people. As long as you and the Chelsea live in the hearts of so many people that have crossed your path in one way or the other, you guys will never be forgotten.

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  2. Betty Bishop Avatar
    Betty Bishop

    If I had a million dollars I would make a downpayment on the Chelsea Hotel and cross my fingers. She is such a great old dame!
    I would call Stanley and David for advice. Then sell memberships or shares or rooms or suites or time periods to all who had lived there or wanted to live there or continue to live there. If the hotel is debt free it must be making enough to carry itself and probably more? If not it could offer any number of moneymakers – famous artists doing demos in the lobby every Sunday afternoon?etc.etc. It could be a non-profit?
    I can’t believe there aren’t 10 former residents out there who couldn’t part with $100,000.00 and not even feel it. Get together people.
    Betty bishop at me com

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  3. Sherill Avatar
    Sherill

    The Chelsea is not dead yet.

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  4. Miss H Avatar
    Miss H

    I agree. There has got to be a way to buy this hotel back for Chelseaites, and then bring the Bards back to run it. What a shame if it gets bought by some Asian, Swiss or Gulf State chain, or even some pretentious fak-o boutique group. Selling shares is a great idea, under the right agreement. Would it be possible for the Bards to have a stake in a resurrected Chelsea, a big enough stake to continue to influence the future of the hotel–in case heirs of shareholders, who may not know and appreciate the hotel enough, try to pull the same stunt we saw in 2007? It’s a unique place, and a unique solution/agreement is needed. I’m sure lots of former residents would be keen on buying a room or suite at the hotel, for sentimental reasons as well as investment. The Bards could rent the room out and share the income with the owners. Or something like that. It seems something creative could be done, as befits the place.

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  5. Betty Bishop Avatar
    Betty Bishop

    oops – I posted in the wrong place!
    I don’t think we can assume the Bards would want to come back – I feel we can assume they would act as advisors if the right people were interested in buying or had bought the hotel. They are the only people who know how much it costs to keep the old girl breathing and how much income to count on. I have the same idea as you Miss H – a person could buy a room or a suite – in my case I would probably use it for a month a year. Maybe furnish it myself? Rent it myself or have management rent it and take a cut for the communal pot. Something like a timeshare? Something like a condo? More like a residence than a hotel? Less hassles. Since we [Chelseaites) live all over the world it should be fairly easy to fill our spaces, or have management fill them, for most of a year.
    We need a good accountant to crunch the numbers – I have one here but there doesn’t seem to be much interest??
    Hey David, talk to your Dad – is this viable? Email me; bettybishop at me.com
    http://www.bettybishop.ca
    http://bettybishophangshere.blogspot.com/

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  6. Malcolm Stanton Avatar
    Malcolm Stanton

    Hey Ed – recently I stayed a couple of nights @ The Chelsea – my second such visit since October 2009. Let me assure you, the Chelsea Spirit is alive and strong ! Sadly, I also detected a sense of embattlement from some residents there (elevator conversations etc.).
    Anyhow, any changes in the future wont work unless it’s you guys directing it !
    Don’t rest on your lawrels though …
    Cheers, Malcolm

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  7. Anonymuss Avatar
    Anonymuss

    Buckley does an excellent job, though there’s still something to be said about issues she touches on only in passing. And, as usual, quotes from Musto seem coined for his amusement. Michael, there be plenty of terror in the streets without the Chelsea’s contributions.
    Another worthwhile article, this one by Oshrat Carmiel –
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-07/schrager-passes-on-buying-manhattan-s-hotel-chelsea-after-considering-bid.html
    Particularly edifying is the quote from Ian Schrager confirming that to “boutique” the Hotel Chelsea would be to destroy its allure. There was probably no better candidate than Schrager – who began the woeful trend — to make that particular statement. Of course, the shortsighted corporate partners who pried majority shareholder Stanley Bard from his long-held position as general manager have been preoccupied with boutiquing the 23rd Street property from their very first day on the job in 2007 — evidenced by comments to the media and the several Stop Work Orders they got slapped with after illegally demolishing apartments including Bob Dylan’s former second-floor residence. So whether or not the bid to sell the Chelsea Hotel is genuine or a legal subterfuge, it is — in the opinion of tenants such as myself — a sign they’ve conceded failure after only 3 years at the helm.
    But only, that is, after doggedly attempting to evict writers, artists, musicians, the bedridden and infirm, the elderly and those who simply don’t agree with the way the Hotel Chelsea was/is moving. The Times article mentions one outspoken tenant who opposed the corporate partners by seeking rent-stabilization status. But instead of battling that tenant inside a courtroom, Vice President David Elder hired a trio of goons to physically ambush that tenant in the Hotel’s lobby, causing permanent injuries. Moreover, Elder later admitted his role in the two separate attacks.
    For the sake of both articles, it should be pointed out that the myth of tenants trading artwork for rent is largely just that — a myth. Its a happy myth, though, so typically no one dissuades it from being told, and retold. Stanley Bard did, in the faraway past, trade the occasional monthly rent for a piece of art but it was an exception, not a rule.
    Meanwhile a quote in Carmiel’s article from “general manager” Arnold Tamasar (who’s previous job was quite literally beautifying toilets at the W Hotel) seeks to mire the art-for-rent myth in double-speak. After the Canadian bicyclist Tamasar mentions checked into the Hotel (supposedly in exchange for her canvas), her attempts to spread propaganda among the remaining residents made it obvious she’d been planted there by the corporate partners; and, in reality, her allegedly “beautiful painting” wound up on the floor of a storage closet and has never appeared on the walls of the Hotel. This woman, like others present at the time, personally observed Arnold Tamasar tearing out the hotel’s antique tenant mailboxes and trying to discard them on the 23rd Street sidewalk — hardly a welcoming sight for an aspiring Chelsea-ite had she been authentic. No new long term tenants clearly signified no need for tenant mailboxes, and Tamasar’s misleading quote is just one example of lies and deceit that now permeate the one-time artistic mecca.

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  8. Resident Avatar
    Resident

    more like new management has lost its will to manage

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  9. Jessica Avatar
    Jessica

    I wish they’d accept long term residents again. I keep trying but they keep telling me there’s a twenty-one day stay limit.

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  10. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Too bad David Geffen doesn’t buy the Chelsea, reinstall the Bards, and then let the glory days return.

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  11. management Avatar
    management

    Oh please, get over all of this. The Chelsea Hotel is resting on its laurels … and it is nothing more than a memory at this point. Certainly not anything that can retain its tangibility (e.g., as evidenced by the Bob Dylan and other room renovations.)
    It is done, it is over. And if you haven’t paid your rent then GET OUT YA BUMS!! Get out!

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  12. Randall Avatar
    Randall

    Chelsea hotel should have its place in the history books just because Bob Dylan had lived there and some famous personalities too. And because of the intriguing stories behind it. If i have the money, I would buy it and live there and maybe make my income from the hotel itself.

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  13. The Ghosts Avatar
    The Ghosts

    The post-Bard management has certainly tried to make the Chelsea ‘over,’ rather the way governments push privatization of health care by first destroying public health care. More than ever, New York needs the Chelsea if the city is going to retain anything of what made it so ingenious and rise again. Otherwise, it may turn permanently into a vertical Beverly Hills-without the culture and history.

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  14. Evan Avatar
    Evan

    Management may have lost its will to manage, but apparently not its will to blurt unintellibly on the world wide interweb. Make no sense, much?
    Congrats, Bloggers, you obviously get under this spokesperson’s skin 😉

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  15. Evan Avatar
    Evan

    Unintelligibly.

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  16. Resident Avatar
    Resident

    Something like a condo?
    I wonder if you realize that’s exactly what the corporate takeover was all about? Altering the hotel’s organic chemistry and making it a refuge for the few who can afford to purchase real estate in this city — thereby tripling the property’s value. Of course, they wanted to gut it like a fish first, but I’m surprised this point was lost. The frustrated corporate partners have done everything short of burn the hotel down for the insurance money in pursuit of this one greedy premise.

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  17. lynne jordan Avatar
    lynne jordan

    Oh my! I haven’t stayed at the Chelsea yet but am planning to do so in the near future but all this talk is scaring me… buy outs and gentrification… no matter, conflict is good. Just stay there girl so i might bask in the glow! Great blog!

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  18. The Ghosts Avatar
    The Ghosts

    Thank you, Resident. This says it perfectly:
    Altering the hotel’s organic chemistry and making it a refuge for the few who can afford to purchase real estate in this city — thereby tripling the property’s value.
    At this point, is there a way to restore the organic chemistry? It will never be exactly as it was, but maybe there’s a way it can evolve into something that honors the legacy and principles (or lack thereof)? Maybe an inmate-led buyout of the asylum is in order, not with condos or owned apartments, per se, but with shares in the entire enterprise? There are pitfalls in all options now. The best is making sure the hotel ends up in the hands of people who love and understand it and its place in the world. It would be tragic if the Chelsea only exists from hereon in as another institution to service the trendy rich.
    Note, the Chelsea has never been anti-rich people and it has attracted the very best rich people over the years. Maybe these blessed would be amenable to putting together a unique consortium of tenants and lovers of the hotel to buy it back and run it by its own rules (or lack thereof)?
    There is still magic in that hotel. Once its gone there’ll be none left on the entire Island of Manhattan.

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  19. Betty Bishop Avatar
    Betty Bishop

    In reply to Resident
    No, I didn’t know the shareholders wanted to convert the Chelsea to a condo. Obviously the shareholders who ousted the Bards were/are amateurs and incompetent. God help the residents if a competent developer buys the Chelsea and wants to convert it to a condo!
    I am Canadian and I own a house which is part of a condo corporation. The owners own the corporation. The owners vote for a board of directors which are other owners. The board of directors have certain rules. I don’t like them all but I can run for the board if I don’t like most of them – or I can move. That doesn’t sound so bad to me. Yes, I had to buy my house/unit and yes I am fortunate enough to have been able to do that. Are the condo laws not about the same in the US? Maybe I should have said something like a co-op but I don’t know exactly how they operate. I said it could/should be non-profit and previous residents should be the new owners. Having lived there myself it seems to me they wouldn’t exactly be a conservative group! The hotel is for sale ….. Who do you think is going to buy it …. Who do you hope buys it …. do you think you will be living there a year from now and if so how so? … if not what do you suggest?

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  20. Betty Bishop Avatar
    Betty Bishop

    Reply to The Ghosts
    I have to say – being rather plain spoken and practical I don’t actually know what “organic chemistry” means in this context?! I do understand an inmate-led buyout of the asylum! Love it! Okay, lets say the inmates buy “shares in the entire enterprise” what does the inmate get? Yes, they would get their living quarters but how would they maintain the hotel and pay the mortgage [assuming they could get one] and could the current residents come close to buying 90 million dollars worth of shares? If so, I say go for it!!
    I am sure you could get ex-inmates like me to buy my old room for 10,000 [dollars or shares] as long as I could rent it [or have you or your management team rent it] for 10 months of the year. I only need to be in New York for 2 months a year. Send me your prospectus as soon as it is available please!!! Anyone else willing to sign up for the prospectus?
    If you can get 200 people to put up an average of $10,000 each you will have a couple of million bucks – who knows maybe the present shareholders would accept that as a down payment? I imagine they are rather anxious to put this big mistake behind them!
    You are right, the Chelsea deserves to be sold to people who love and understand it. From the few suggestions posted it doesn’t look like there is much interest in working in that direction. Thanks for your post and good luck.

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  21. The Ghosts Avatar
    The Ghosts

    Betty, I understood “organic chemistry” to mean the intricately-linked chemical processes that create and sustain and evolve life in a rare and amazing ecosystem. Just my interpretation, of course.
    I envision shares working as they would in a conventional corporation up to a point), as an investment that would produce some dividend, once expenses are taken care of. It would not necessarily mean a free room, but it would seem reasonable for shareholders to get some sort of perk in addition to their stake, a discount on rooms for non-residents/rent for resident shareholders perhaps? An annual shareholder meeting/party/jam? I believe many people would love to help save the Chelsea and stick a thumb in the eye of greed by buying and holding shares. Any profit would be a bonus, of course. Beyond that, the corporate laws could be unconventional, in keeping with the Chelsea spirit.
    Were I corporeal and able to use money, I’d buy a share just for the satisfaction of snatching something beautiful back from the mewling, insatiable maw of capitalism.
    On a side note, Mars Bar closing, and Max Fish too, there’s hardly a place worth haunting in all of New York. We ghosts are being forced out of our homes and into the near-empty churches of the city.

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  22. Miss H Avatar
    Miss H

    Don’t leave without a fight. In the worst case scenario, inmates should take over the asylum and hold it until they send the National Guard in after you.

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  23. Betty Bishop Avatar
    Betty Bishop

    I have no idea what to say – I can only hope someone[s] are working behind the scenes there and one of these days I will hear that a group of Chelseaites have bought the Hotel Chelsea and have rooms for rent, for sale, or whatever. If there is anything I can do, aside from sending 90 million bucks, let me know. Take care.

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  24. El Sid Avatar
    El Sid

    The time for not leaving without a fight may well be past; two or three Christmas seasons ago would have been opportune moments for Chelseaites to band together, to start up or join a protest and tote that famed “spirit of resistance” out of mothballs. So possibly those tenants sneaking their belongings out in the wee hours have lost more will to live than the Hotel Chelsea has. They came in pursuit of their dreams, inspired to reach them by the example of those who checked in before them; but now they scurry like mice into the dark, clinging to either Marlene Krauss’s buy-out money or an excuse that the Chelsea’s heyday is past. Avarice is an easily explained aspect of the human condition, but here’s a tip: the glory days of the Hotel were already long gone when virtually all of the current tenants moved in. It existed only in their imaginations — to inspire them. That, for an artist, should be enough — but too many wanted more. It wasn’t enough to merely call the Hotel their home, they wanted to become Chelsea “Legends” in their own right, to have their names indelibly linked to antique brick, mortar, glass and cast iron they’re not even willing to fight for.
    A significant part of the problem is, in fact, the glut of resident ‘artists’ who foolishly believe being artistic is the same as being helpless — poor victims allowing others to run roughshod, never saying or do anything about it. Predictably, some of this group made conscious decisions to turn against pro-active tenants to become snitches, liars, saboteurs and much worse in selfish bids to preserve their own corner of the Chelsea. Non-conformity may have existed in the faraway past, but this particular gaggle of tenants conformed, all right, and in a hurry. They won’t be missed.
    Then there’s those with egos greater than their actual artistic endowments who vainly thought the corporate suits would spare them the chopping block because they’re just such super-fantastic, eminently talented human beings. Wrong, again.
    One can definitely point a finger at the agenda of those who replaced the Bard Family for trashing the nurturing atmosphere and traditions of the Chelsea Hotel but plenty of those leaving can have a share in that blame. They didn’t stand up, so one by one they fall like dominos.

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  25. bob Avatar
    bob

    Well, best wishes and all,
    but the chelsea is too expensive and celebrated nowadays,
    not a great pasture or garden for art.
    When I lived in nyc I stayed at the old kenmore…. now that was counter-culture warhol style.

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  26. Miss H Avatar
    Miss H

    The change in the Chelsea began before the coup. As I remember,mysterious murmurings about :”stockholder pressure” began around 2000, more or less. Rents and room rates went way up after that, which attracted a different element to the hotel. I agree on almost every point you make. But there are still legends and legends-in-making in that hotel.

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  27. Anon Avatar
    Anon

    I don’t buy for even one millisecond that the Hotel is legitimately for sale. Sounds like a PR or lawyerly ruse to demoralize the troops and have em move out on their own. To my knowledge theres no gag order on the Bard Family who actually own the place so if they were selling then Stanley Bard would have a lot more to say about it than he has up to now don’t you think?

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  28. Miss H Avatar
    Miss H

    New York is a dying city for artists. Without the Chelsea, it’s over. Detroit is the place to go:
    http://www.palladiumboots.com/exploration/detroit
    ‘Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity.’
    It looks like the east village in the 1980s:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit#/?picture=370173046&index=11
    http://gas2.org/2010/01/22/detroit-from-motor-city-to-urban-farm/

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  29. Friend of the Bards Avatar
    Friend of the Bards

    Look, none of this crap matters and please will you cut the sentimentalities? The Chelsea Hotel is, above all, a business — that’s right, a business, i.e., a capitalist establishment. It has been home to some artists, yes, but, more to the point, it has been home to many artists who have used it as an excuse NOT TO PAY THE RENT. Just because you are an artist that does not mean that you are exempt from paying your bills just like everyone else.
    If you can’t pay the rent GET OUT. That, my friends, is the simple bottom line. If you would like to try and sell your art or create things— or whatever— then do it, that is fine, but make sure that you have the money to pay your bills like everyone else has to (namely, like all of the non-artists have to).
    Being an artist or being a creative individual does not translate into a get-out-of-paying-the-bills-for-free card. I think that many people fail to understand this. A bunch of famous people have chosen to RENT SPACE from the Hotel and now those people are dead and gone, and life is evolving and we still live in Capitalist America, folks.
    So, look here, you can rest on the laurels of the hotel’s history for as long as you want, and continue to sit at home painting and writing poetry, but understand that the Chelsea Hotel is a business establishment—- always has been—- not some non-profit organization that shelters struggling artists.
    Pay the bills or get the hell out. Or you are going to be forced out because the Management is litigating.

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  30. The Ghosts Avatar
    The Ghosts

    Thank you, Krauss, Elder et al for that ringing endorsement of American-style capitalism, which has so much to recommend it these days! It was clear the minority shareholders saw the hotel as just a business when their first communication with tenants after their coup was a terse demand for rent and their first press release mentioned not the hotel’s highly unusual history, bot even in passing, but the potential of street front retail space. They’ve never really seen the hotel as anything but a pile of gold bricks. they seem to have an almost pathological fear that someone might write poetry and not pay rent and get a free ride–you know, someone not lucky or hardworking enough to inherit a bunch of money at birth. Personally, I don’t know anyone who didn’t pay their rent eventually.
    The heirs have never been able to see the big picture.
    Many of the famous people who lived in the hotel did so because of the atmosphere it offered as well as a practical attitude towards rent. That is, people who work in the arts do not get paid regularly like salaried individuals or trust pups. They were not all famous when they moved in, though many did their greatest work, the work that would make them famous, while there, and that in turn made the hotel more famous. It was symbiotic. Have you read Patti Smith’s book, which recently won a National Book Award? There’s be no room for people like that at the inn these days. But that Bard attitude which accommodated artists is also the reason it remained a living legend and stayed profitable as well as creative through bad times and good. It’s a myth that Stanley wasn’t looking after the business all those years. Trust me, it was never fun owing Stanley money, it was hell.
    In fact, the Bard mangement the current regime mocks was the right idiosyncratic business philosophy for a unique place like the Chelsea. Those artists brought money into the hotel and publicity the current crew in charge couldn’t buy with all their prefab events and PR firms. It’s off the back of those artists, many of whom worked very hard and introduced earthshaking ideas, that Krauss and Elder have profited so ungratefully.
    I don’t know anyone who moved in thinking they could get free rent. It was the community, the atmosphere, the inspiration of the ghosts, and a je ne sais quoi–call it magic, fostered by the Bard management which drew us here, In the last decade, since the “stockholder pressure” cited elsewhere in the comments, rents have gone way up and there have been fewer greats in the hotel. Coincidence? Which great artists have Krauss and Elder attracted to the Chelsea?

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  31. Robert Avatar
    Robert

    The Hotel is legitimately for sale and is not a ruse by any means. Maybe Stanley realizes that the hotel is being sold regardless and rather than publicly bash the reputation or deter any potential buyers from making an offer, he is better staying silent until the deal is completed.
    Maybe you people also have no clue about the actual business side of the Hotel and what has actually gone on there during the Bard era (which none of you have any information about).

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  32. Friend of the Bards Avatar
    Friend of the Bards

    As the old English proveb goes, “All good things must come to an end.” There is an end to everything, to good things as well. There was a time when very famous people did very famous things at the Hotel Chelsea. And that is what made it famous— or, as some would say, infamous.
    But, folks: it ain’t like that no more.
    One word from the title of this blog is very accurate: ‘LEGENDS’. The Chelsea Hotel has a lot of ‘legends’ surrounding it: stories from the past, many of them merely myths, and most of what was true now hyperbolized, embellished, and, above all, obsessively coddled, cherished and manipulated for personal use by by self-proclaimed artists.
    The difference is that, in the past, the ‘legend’ that was the Chelsea Hotel was not cherished and coddled by the prior greats. The fact is that Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin were so out of it on cocaine and whiskey, that the last thing on their minds was the Great Chelsea Hotel.
    Mark Twain, Bobby Dylan, Jackie Kerouac, on and on the list goes. But you know, most of these greats were people who were living their lives and otherwise passing through, staying at a place that was a nice building, in a good location, with reasonable prices.
    But that is done and it is over. It is all a memory and a legend, and, especially: a romanticized image that is really only meaningful to a few people. Others who know the real story know about the drugs, the booze, the lingering smell of body odor in the hallways… there is nothing charming or alluring about Sid Vicious hacking his girlfriend apart in room 100 no matter how many ways you try to hide it behind cutsey ghost story cover.
    In sum: these were artists passing through the night. It is over. It’s over. The post-Bardarian management simply does not want to continue this facade. We are not going to be a homeless shelter for artists. stamps foot down And that’s it! This is a business establishment. When you are famous and you have some money, come back. Until then, it is important to acknowledge that these are all embellished legends and ghost stories.
    The leases are not going to be renewed and obstinate people who — for some inexplicable reason believe that they can live in a space without PAYING anything — will continue to be summoned to court. And you will be evicted. That is it. Case closed.
    If you want a space to stay in for free while you work on art, go home to mom and dad’s.

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  33. The Ghosts Avatar
    The Ghosts

    You promulgate more myths than lovers of the hotel do. Drugs are everywhere my friend. That and the tales of body odor–never noticed that–are hugely embellished by you, while at the same time you laughably diminish and distort the history of the hotel. A few famous people passed through, apparently by accident? (Interesting you seem stuck on the word ‘famous’ rather than ‘great.’)
    There were many great people in that hotel right up into the 20th century, and even many who moved on came back often, There are great people there now but I fear you can’t see them past the dollar signs.
    The Sid Vicious story is terrible, but being the scene of a murder is not all that unusual in New York. And let’s not forget who exploited the Sid and Nancy tragedy. It wasn’t Stanley. He broke up the room and renumbered it to try to keep ghoulish pilgrims away. The Krauss-Elder regime sold Sid Vicious action figures at the front desk. Maybe that;s the smell youmistake for body odor, which I never noticed in the palce before the new regime.
    Stamp your foot? Appropriate.
    You think it was a coincidence that SO MUCH great work came out of the Chelsea hotel? And do tell how you managed to get into Leonard Cohen’s head and read his thoughts–it’s a trick I haven’t yet mastered. Clearly, you want to spin a version of the hotel that will serve your desire to sell and reap a big profit out of a place you don’t understand, never appreciated and spent very little time in before the takeover. I’d be quite happy if you sold your stake–back to the Bards.
    ALL good things must come to an end? Do you have a rational argument to back up that platitude? I think you should make a list.

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  34. Alicia Avatar
    Alicia

    I like you spirit Miss H… Yah why live without a fight. In this kind of world giving up is no place. Think of all the inspiration that memories for the past years. And think of the things to be sacrificed and wasted. I think those are worth fighting for.

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  35. Anon Avatar
    Anon

    Robert you’re just a fount of information! Yet you fail to suggest in your eagerness to make a point why Stanley Bard would “bash” his life’s work. Wouldn’t make a lot of sense now would it? As for the business side, all one has to do is eavesdrop to the desk staff kvetching over how management has no idea how to fill vacancies. And what “deal” are you even talking about? I’m sure there’s a long line of suitors just waiting to inherit all the monumental headaches that Krauss, Elder, and their bathroom-beautifying yes-man Tamasar have brought to the Chelsea.

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  36. BFF Avatar
    BFF

    Hooray for you and Wikiquotes, tho I’m sure the English weren’t thinking specifically of the Hotel Chelsea, or the pleasure you undoubtedly take informing everyone(like some wind-up toy) that you were part of something while it was ‘happening’? Your squawking “It’s Over! It’s Over!” isn’t really so helpful in terms of understanding.
    “The Hotel was no coddled by the prior greats”? No, the Bards were there to coddle it, hence its longstanding reputation as a people magnet — and the “Greats” sure came back again and again, thereby demonstrating their preference for the atmosphere the Bards created. I cringe to quote you again, but “WE are not going to be a homeless shelter for artists?” Man, you’re really out of touch. And who are “We”? You and your computer keyboard?
    As for the awkwardly put “Post-Bardarian” managment’s alleged unwillingness to support a facade….what are they themselves, if not a facade? In fact they’ve done all in their power to profit off the memories of famous tenants, they’ve just failed miserably even at that, and they’ve got no more ideas.

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  37. Resident Avatar
    Resident

    How come so many articles about the Hotel being offered for sale to boutique hoteliers? Is that even a scoop? Seems like news of the Chelsea’s boutique-ing broke three years ago when BD Hotels tried to revamp her, then withered away — then sued — which coincided with the start of present management’s “misfortunes”, as I believe Curbed dot com referred to them. But, for the record, management’s “misfortune” didn’t arise because of those who sought to preserve the Hotel. Rather, the trouble began with manangement’s convoluted schemes to evict long term residents including the sick and elderly, to withhold rent stabilization, to harass outspoken tenants, and to begin systematically demolishing the landmark without troubling to acquire permits or Certificates of Non- Harassment like every other property owner in New York City is required to do.

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  38. Lenny Cohen Avatar
    Lenny Cohen

    “Jackie” Kerouac, huh?
    And what leases won’t be renewed oh great arbiter of what was and what will be?
    A quickie newsflash ~ residents don’t need their leases renewed ~ they got a lease when they moved in and now they have their rights including rent stabilization ~ a disposition which nobody worried much about when the Bards were around ~ and this is thanks to whomever’s now in the captain’s chair. thank you thank you thank you

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  39. What a fuckin shame Avatar
    What a fuckin shame

    It is disgusting how the usurper regime tries to sell th story that the Chelsea was over “decades ago.” I lived there in the 1990s and these are a few of the people who lived and worked there during my time: Milos Forman, Rufus Wainright, Benicio Del Toro, Julian Schnabel, Larry Rivers, Herbert Gentry, Ryan Adams, Herbert Huncke, Ethan Hawke. Patti Smith came back while househunting. Arthur Miller, Mike Nichols and Robert Altman were frequent visitors. Add to that scores of artists regarded as great within their field, but not necessarily “famous” outside it, all those composers, set designers, costumers, gallery owners, studio musicians, writers, activists. There were also strugglers, budding stars, has-beens, people in more regular professions and other characters difficult to label. The new management has systematically destroyed it.

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  40. Bob Higgins Avatar
    Bob Higgins

    That’s right, and don’t forget about me, as a not necessarily “famous” artist, who lived in room 607 from July 1988 to July, 1989, and then again in room 808, with my friend Audrey, for about 6 months, before we left the Chelsea for an apartment in Red Hook. I left new York and returned to Louisville, Ky. in 1991, yet I will say, that now, almost 22 years later, that ending up at the Chelsea Hotel, serendipitously,as it turned out,remains one of my proudest lifetime achievements.

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