Living with Legends
Hotel Chelsea Blog
Category: Hotel Chelsea
-
Sad news. It appears that yet another of the Chelsea’s tormented creative souls has shed its mortal coil. Yes, that’s a skeleton on the roof of the Synagogue next to the hotel. Judging by its advanced state of decomposition I would say that the owner of the corpse must have jumped – or been pushed…
-
After we wrote about the BBC Chelsea Hotel documentary last week, Joe Bidewell (he’s the guy jamming behind Nico in the film) wrote to give us a a few behind the scenes details. Here’s his letter: (Photo: Joe is in the center) Yes, that is me playing ‘chelsea girls’ w/ nico. I’m strumming my then-new…
-
The sinister doorway undertaker got to our poor portal while we were out of town. Other residents have been surprised to come home and find their previously cherry doors buried beneath a heavy coat of dreary, depressing black paint. Lately, however, some of the hotel’s residents have begun to fight back against this virulent Black…
-
Watch it now before it disappears! Here’s an eight minute clip from the 1981 Chelsea Hotel documentary which aired on BBC4 Saturday night. As far as we can tell, the only person in the clip who is still alive is Joe Bidewell, who we once saw play at CBGB. Joe accompanys Nico on guitar as…
-
The 1981 Chelsea Hotel documentary by Nigel Finch will air today on BBC4. Too bad that the clip of Jobraith playing his piano on the roof, which was featured in Finch’s documentary, has been removed from youtube.com.
-
Because photographer Keith Green found the hotel to be a peaceful retreat in 1988, he vowed to return. And return he did—to photograph Dee Dee Ramone for his book jacket (Chelsea Horror Hotel) and to witness the tail end of superstar Viva’s eviction: During the latter part of the 1980s, I worked as a photo…
-
Check out this review of the Chelsea in The Connected Traveler. According to the author, Russ Johnson, the Chelsea is "more Crackhaus than Bauhaus" and it apparently reminds him of a "Soviet era mental ward." Fortunately, in the video interview, our beloved benefactor steps up to the plate to defend our building’s honor, correctly pointing…
-
When our friend Robert Shaw from Australia checked into the hotel recently, he must have requested the Street-Furniture Special. (see photo 1) Yes, folks, that chair has only three legs, and when Robert sat in it, the results were predictable. Requests at the front desk for a furniture upgrade were of course ignored, and so…
-
We’ve always wanted to learn German, but it just seemed like too much time and effort. Now we find that it wasn’t that hard at all. Here we are, speaking fluent German on German Public Radio (download mp3), with nary a trace of an accent at all! Here’s a picture of our instructor, Martina…
-
Ed’s article about the annual Valentine’s Day party hosted by Tony Notarberardino to honor Vali Myers is online at Chelsea Now. It was a great party and if you missed it this year, there’s always next year. For those of you who couldn’t attend here are a few pics. Andrea Ho brought a mockup of…
Living with Legends 