Living with Legends
Hotel Chelsea Blog
Category: Hotel Chelsea
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We’re not experts in the hotel business by any stretch of the imagination but we thought the idea was to rent as many rooms as possible in order to achieve a high occupancy rate. But we must be wrong. Recently we’ve overheard tourists being told that the hotel is 100% booked through the…
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Many of you will recall former Chelsea Hotel resident Nguyen as the nice young man who helped tourists to their rooms, lighting their way with candles, during the blackout in 2003. Others will recall some of his darker deeds. Apparently his fascination with candles is an on going thing. Nguyen was recently arrested while attempting…
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The lobby of the hotel was temporarily transformed into a den of thieves straight out of the Arabian Nights yesterday as Board Member Marlene Krauss (Harvard MBA), BD Hotels executives, Bluebeard, Al Capone, Jesse James, and various of their desperate, cut-throat partners in crime assembled to debate how to carve up the Chelsea…
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He was the angel-headed hipster who dragged himself through the Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix. He was the man who taught Bill Burroughs how to shoot heroin, and helped him grow marijuana on his farm in Texas. His exploits are recounted in Ginsberg’s Howl, Kerouac’s On the Road, Burroughs’ Junky, and…
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Thanks to Chelsea Now for keeping the plight of our residents on the front page. (Well, the second page anyway.) They quote us in their buzz column this week on the anonymous Chelsea Hotel tenant who has his rent raised from the exorbitant $200.00 per night, to the near extortionate $315.00. We have…
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By 1920, the theatre district had moved uptown to Herald Square, except for a few bawdy houses and burlesque palaces that remained on 23rd Street, and the neighborhood was getting a bit rundown. The Chelsea Hotel, however, was still at or near its peak, the stained glass windows and plate glass mirrors remaining intact, the…
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The redesigned official Chelsea Hotel website is less cluttered and it’s much easier to use. The focus is clear as well: make a reservation. (We didn’t try the registration tool but we hear it’s still confusing.) But that’s a little bit disturbing, since it tends to de-emphasize the status of the Chelsea as a cultural…
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Today, our thoughts turn to Halloween. Last year, we published a slew of ghost stories some of which were sent in by guest contributors. We’ve got even more scary in store for you this year. As Sherill Tippins admits, this isn’t much of a ghost story, but it’s still kind of scary since everybody in…
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The history of The Windermere, that graffiti covered eyesore at 9th Ave. and 57th Street, parallels that of the Chelsea Hotel in many respects. Both were built in the 1880s as a part of the wave of large, ornate luxury apartment houses that were built around the city after the invention of the elevator. Like…
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We’ve heard of a couple of instances recently where BD has been trying to raise resident’s rents. In one case, they were successful in getting the person to leave. This individual had been living in the hotel for several months when BD told him his rent was going to increase from $200 a night to…
Living with Legends 