Living with Legends
Hotel Chelsea Blog
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Category: Living Authors
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Scott Smith takes us back to the early 1980s, a time when fabulous tranny hookers, crack dealers, and punk-wannabes ruled the Chelsea Hotel. According to Scott, it was also a time of extreme sadness at the Chelsea, as many of the residents began to succumb to AIDS. What do you do?I’m a writer presently completing…
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Against his better judgment, Australian novelist Bruce Russell signed up for a sublet at the Chelsea Hotel. His interview gives us some insight into why Stanley Bard dislikes sublets. We had better luck with ours, thank heavens. We were also interested to learn that the Chelsea is not a family friendly place. What do you…
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Nick Bienes and Rhea Gallaher are co-authors who collaborate on writing bestselling novels under the pseudonym Judith Gould. One of our neighbors tipped us off that they used to live here at the Chelsea. She also said that they had one of the most elegant apartments ever and threw the most sophisticated parties. Yes, those were…
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Eileen Myles is the author of numerous books, including our favorite, "Chelsea Girls." The title story in the book begins with the narrator going on a date with her girlfriend and ends with her enjoying a steamy romp here at the Hotel Chelsea with a waitress she met that evening. Luckily, she only has to…
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When we’re not busy blogging Bohemia, our room becomes a frat boy bar. The skull on the foosball table belongs to Thomas Wolfe. We found it in the basement along with his size 13 shoes. Julia Calfee has been photographing the Chelsea residents over the past three years. We’re hoping we look weird and edgy…
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FATHER’S DAY My father is a hard-boiled soldier. He adores battles, strives for medals, fights in the Gulf and in Babylonia. He prizes bombshells, gathers explosive memorabilia. My father loves my mother. My mother is a blond bombshell: memorable and dynamite. in pictures and flesh. She is the talk of Astoria. Copyright, George Chemeche 2006…
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Last year, on June 8, we interviewed Swedish author Sara Stridsberg. Sara was passing through the Chelsea Hotel retracing the life of Valerie Solanas, the author of SCUM Manifesto and shooter of Andy Warhol, for a book that she was writing. Each day, she would sit in the lobby for a couple of hours channeling…
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Well known author and NPR fixture Andrei Codrescu has been kind enough to send us a piece he read on the air a couple of years back. We were struck by the extent to which its sensibility—a respect for the continuance of the past and its influence on the present and future—accorded with that of…
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I found a booklet called Frank 151 in the Chelsea Hotel lobby last week. In addition to a ton of ads, it has short profiles of "cutting edge" New Yorkers, including a few former and current Chelsea Hotel residents such as Rene Ricard, Julian Schnabel, Jonas Mekas and Ben Rhue. It also has…
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Traveling SalesmanIn the mid 60’s I was a traveling textbook salesman for Random House and Alfred A. Knopf. My territory was the rocky mountain states. Every day after visiting college teachers I would go to the practice rooms in the music school and play any piano that was free. One day at Colorado State University…
Living with Legends 