In my first year at the Chelsea I wrote a story called “Movado,” about a guy who tried to sell me a fake Movado watch when I was moving into the hotel.  It was published in Pif magazine, and then I promptly forgot about it.  Ten years later, a guy from Washington, DC—Jose Padua—read it…

Around the corner from the Chelsea, on Seventh Avenue, I was waiting for a friend to ride the subway uptown.  There were two homeless men camped out near the entrance to the subway.  They were old, or at least they appeared old, their faces worn and weathered. “Fuck the salad,” the bigger one said.  He…

     A semi-famous painter, an abstract expressionist who studied in Paris in the forties and fifties, Mr. Peyton was gray haired, stocky, lumbering like an old bear, genial.  He was always cheerful, though sometimes slightly addled, forgetful, since he was after all in his eighties.  He was sociable, and always stopped to shoot the…

A middle aged man in a blue uniform came into the Chelsea.  He was small, with a little round stomach, balding, with a tuft of black hair sticking straight up from his forehead.  Apparently, he couldn’t get his shampoo machine into the hotel because a moving truck was parked in the way.  He started complaining…

Part II:  Sandwiches  (If you missed Part I, click here) Over the days that followed, more came to light.  Jerry learned that his wife had opened several secret charge accounts over the years, which she had used to order things over the phone, running up tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt.  Naturally,…

Part I:  Donuts Before it closed, Donuts Sandwiches, along with the Chelsea and the McBurney Y, was one of the pillars of the Bohemian community of West 23rd Street.  You could get a Cheeseburger deluxe —  that’s a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, a pickle, and French fries—for $2.95 in the mid 90s.  For a dollar,…

     Around the corner from the Chelsea on Seventh Avenue, a homeless man, apparently drunk, was mediating a dispute between two of his similarly situated buddies: “Nah, you know the story of Moby Dick, don’t you?  They didn’t call him that because he bit his dick off!  He bit his leg off!  That’s why…

What is the Chelsea Hotel Style?  My girlfriend and I have been discussing this question lately, and failing miserably to come up with a definitive answer.  Some of our residents look like they just stepped out of a fashion magazine, while others wear black leather and tattoo themselves heavily.  One woman has blue hair, and…

There was a bum raving in front of the hotel: “these fuckin’ rich people are living in glass houses!  Can’t be throwing no fuckin’ stones!  You see what I’m saying!?  One more terrorist attack and they’ll be out of here!  Out of this fuckin’ city!  Runnin’ scared!  Glass houses, I tell you!  There’s one over…