Living with Legends
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Category: Bard Family Ousted
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Joseph Chetrit is starting to look like the Pied Piper of Hamlin: wherever he goes, the rats follow. It seems that in 2007, they even followed him home! Imagine waking up in your beautiful mansion in Englewood, New Jersey to find one of these fearsome critters staring you down! Chetrit and his family were understandably…
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Here’s what remains of Beat writer Herbert Huncke’s room. Huncke, who inspired characters in Ginsberg’s Howl, Kerouac’s On the Road, and Burrough’s Junky, lived a hand-to-mouth existence in this rent stabilized room until his death. He could have never afforded to live in NYC if the Chetrits of the world had had their way. Underpaid,…
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Local Union 79 continues to protest the non-union demolition going on at the Chelsea Hotel. Almost all of the non-occupied rooms have been gutted. Maybe the rat plans to stay long enough to get rent stabilization.
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Union workers erected a large rat in front of the Chelsea Hotel today to protest Joseph Chetrit's use of non-union labor to demolish the interior of the hotel. Former Hotel workers had long been union members but in August when the Chelsea Hotel was in the process of changing ownership, the union workers arrived at…
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Since we haven’t posted on the blog in awhile, we thought it was time for an update. Non-union workers have been busy on almost all floors, completely gutting all unoccupied rooms. The demolished rooms, now just empty shells, include, on our floor alone: the room where Madonna filmed her Sex book in 1980; the last…
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Piri Thomas, born John Peter Thomas in New York City's Harlem Hospital in1928, grew up poor in Spanish Harlem and wrote the now classic best-selling autobiography “Down these Mean Streets” about his childhood there. Among his other works are: "Savior, Savior Hold My Hand", "Seven Long Times" and "Stories from El Barrio". A true artist…
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If you learned about the ongoing struggle to save the Chelsea Hotel from today's Morning Edition of NPR, welcome. And, in case the NPR piece left you with the impression that the Chelsea's troubles were a new thing, you should know that the struggle to save the Chelsea has been going on for four years now, ever…
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We thought it was rather odd that Joseph Chetrit’s Chelsea Dynasty Corp., who had said that they were going to start renovating the hotel immediately had not filed for any permits with the DOB. Finally they got their act together and filed an application, and guess what we found: surprise, surprise David Elder may still be involved in…
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Once again, Tom Acitelli at the Observer puts the spotlight on Chetrit's Chelsea Hotel business partner, Clipper Equities. "David Bistricer, one of Clipper’s principals, has a checkered past as a residential landlord, with several—and we mean several—housing violations to his name." One of Bistricer's properties in Brooklyn has over 8,000 housing violations. Here's some insight…
Living with Legends 