Living with Legends

Hotel Chelsea Blog

recent posts

about

  • Fellow Countryman of Dylan Thomas Pleads For Room

    How does Stanely Bard do it?  He must receive e-mails like this by the dozens.  These people just want to be able to stay at the Chelsea for a couple of nights, for heavens sake!  Is that too much to Illtud2 ask? They’ve been saving their money and it’s their life-long dream trip. They seem to have a genuine appreciation of the Chelsea and it’s history. Here’s Illtud’s resume.  We had room for Dylan Thomas, surely we can make room for Illtud. Read his plea and offer your suggestions:

    I’m scared of sounding like a real cheapskate but is there any way of getting a discount on a room at the Chelsea for a couple of nights? My girlfriend and I have booked flights to New York in February to celebrate building our own home (we’ve been in a knackered old trailer for over two years) but as we’ve splurged so much on the house we’re rather strapped for cash, NY mightn’t have been the right place to choose for a holiday! Any advice about the Chelsea would be much appreciated (a specific room to request etc).

    New York is one of those special places, it’s been described to me so many times as ‘like being in a movie’. As a photographer my idea of New York is heavily influenced by the photographs of Weegee, Illtud1 Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand – a lively, bustling, cosmopolitan city. As it’s my first trip to the city there’s a list of things that I want to do – visit the Whitney, MOMA and Guggenheim, drink a double whisky at the White Horse Tavern, people watch in the Village, brows the windows at Tiffany, eat a hotdog on the boardwalk at Coney Island, take the Staten Island Ferry, but when it comes to somewhere to stay, it has to be the Chelsea.

    Trawling the list of people who have lived/stayed at the Chelsea gives me butterflies – and it’s not celebrity worship it’s an appreciation for music, literature, photography and film. We’ve been building our house now for over two years and the things we miss the most are the material things – our books, records and paintings. I imagine that staying at the Chelsea will make us somehow seem closer to those people who’s work fill our shelves and adorn our walls.

    From the long list of past residents, I would have to say that those that I’m drawn towards the most are some of my fellow countrymen – firstly, John Cale. He was born some ten miles from where I type this now, in the village of Garnant (which is now a grey depressing post-industrial village with nothing going for it), it’s quite incredible to think that he came from there, and that he influenced so much of late 20th Century music. The first song I heard Cale sing was Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, I was captivated, and I have been ever since. I took my girlfriend to see Cale at the Union Chapel, Islington in London and it was one of the most incredible musical experiences we’ve ever had.

    The second Welshman on my list is Dylan Thomas, he once said that his hometown, Swansea was the graveyard of ambition but he like Cale made his way to London and then to New York. Thomas unlike Cale was part of the small bohemian Welsh world, he was part of the Kardomah Gang (a group of poets who used to meet at the Kardomah Café in Swansea) and met his wife Caitlin whilst she was with the painter Augustus John. At the time Tenby a picturesque Georgian seaside town was the summer home of Welsh bohemia, it is now, though architecturally beautiful just a seaside town filled with tourists and drunks on stag weekends. New York has The Village an icon of bohemia in much the same way as Paris has Montmartre. We haven’t got anything like that here in Wales. I just want some experience of what might have been had I been born sixty years ago.
    Cheers, Illtud.

    Well, if you had been born 60 years earlier, things sure would have been a lot different. The place as a really hoppin’ flophouse in those days!  On the plus side, the fact that your coming to New York in February may get you a lower rate.  And, if you don’t mind a room with a shared bath, that may be the less expensive way to go. It never hurts to mention your love of the Chelsea to our illustrious proprietor Stanley Bard!
    As for which room to ask for, you can’t go wrong with Sid’s room! (Just kidding, actually.  They’ll never let you in if you do that.)  Oh, and I think you’re supposed to have 18 whiskeys at the White Horse before you check into the Chelsea.

  • Test Your Chelsea Hotel Knowledge

    Ny The most recent issue of Time Out New York features the essential New York City quiz.  Question number 19 tests your knowledge of our famous former residents.  If you can’t answer this question you must check out immediately and/or throw yourself down the famed staircase! 
    Which of the following people never lived at the Chelsea Hotel?
    A, Mark Twain
    B. Bob Dylan
    C. Stanley Kubrick
    D. Thomas Pynchon

    For the full quiz, click here.

  • Old and Crappy: It’s An “Only In New York” Kinda Place

    Michael Armstrong and his friends are definitely our kind of tourists.  They were looking for an "only in New York" kind of place and understood that "old and Straw crappy" is good!  Michael says his stay at the Chelsea was one of the greatest experiences of his life.

    What brought you to the famed Chelsea Hotel?
    i was planning my first trip to new york (along with 3 friends) and started to researchMja  hotels. to be honest, i wasn’t even considering the chelsea. one of the friends i was going with suggested we stay there. of course i had heard of the chelsea, but for some reason i never considered it. as a side note, i went to some site that has hotel ratings by the people that’ve stayed there, and the chelsea was a mixed bag. most said they liked the atmosphere but that it was "old and crappy", as one of them put it. so reading those ratings is what made me want to try the chelsea. i thought "the only thing they’re saying is bad about the chelsea is that it’s old." well, the whole reason i love new york is that it retains it’s history, doesn’t tear it down and start new (for the most part). i wasn’t looking for a holiday inn or the mariott. i wanted a real, only in new york, kind of a hotel.

    Has your art been inspired by any former or current residents?
    looking over some of the famous people that’ve stayed at the chelsea, there are some names that stand out. i wouldn’t say these people influence my art, but definitely inspire. robert crumb: a great character. i love his outlook on life, his taste in music, and his art. william dekooning & jasper johns: i would say they inspire me because i hate their art so much that it really pushes me to create what i think is good art. diego rivera: this guy on the other hand was a great artist. he definitely has a small influence on my art. as does a lot of art and artists of the 30’s. art deco is my pornography. it gets me more excited then almost anything. so to be able to walk down any given street and to see examples of art deco architecture is a major thrill for me, and just that vibe alone is what inspires my art.

    Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?
    any place that is home to numerous artistic and creative people i would say has a creative spirit. that’s the reason i love new york. the whole city has a creative spirit.

    What was the best/worst thing that happened to you during your stay?
    there was no key event that was either good or bad. but i can say that, as a whole, our stay in manhattan/at the chelsea was one of the greatest experiences of my life. just being in the city was an event in itself. being a lover of architecture, especially architecture from the 20’s and 30’s, to be in new york is like an orgasm for the senses. i wanted to get a lot of good shots of architecture and just the city in general. but in a place where every street is a photo op, it’s a little hard to decide what to focus on. so i decided to limit my shots to things that were specific to our trip. and leave my more mass documenting of architecture and street life for when i move there next year.

    thanks to the chelsea for a great stay. i’d recommend it to anyone.

    michael james armstrong
    san diego, ca (soon to be nyc!)
    to see photos from my trip and examples of my art, go here:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/starberrysweet/tags/thehotelchelsea/

  • The Magician of the Chelsea Conjures Up A Show

    If you walk through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, with it’s grand, museum-like quality, you may
    Dcexhibit_1chance to encounter a living artist among the shades of yesteryear.  In an air charged with the accomplishments of the giants of the past, perhap you will notice the tall, handsome Texan with the cowboy hat pulled down over his long brown hair, sweat beading upon his forehead as he hunches over his canvas in a corner of the room, oblivious to distraction as he immerses himself in his painstaking work.  This is David Combs.

         A journalist who was interviewing us about the blog came into the lobby recently and immediately felt the tingling creative energy of the Chelsea.  He saw David toiling away and felt this as part and parcel of the Chelsea’s vibe.  But at the same time he wondered how the painter could stay here and work with the energy level so high.  He felt it would be a distraction.  Telling us about it later, he said Da that when he approached David, the painter had his eyes closed as he worked at his canvas.  “How does he do it?” the puzzled journalist asked us that day, pointing out that, “It wasn’t some kind of abstract mess either.  It was very detailed.”  He concluded that the Chelsea was a kind of a magic place, and we agreed with him wholeheartedly, of course.

         And David, I might add, is certainly one of our resident magicians.    He showed up in the Chelsea Lobby one day without warning, set up his easle, and began painting the lobby on a round canvas, sketching in the couches and chairs, the mantle piece and the front desk, and even the art that hung on the walls.  We all speculated as to his motives, but after awhile it became clear that David was angling for a permanent room.  (It’s very difficult to get one.)  He took a long time on that painting, coming back day after day, peopling the canvas with familiar lobby-sitters, touching it up and The_angel_of_the_chelsea_1 retouching it, as if he was waiting for Stanley to give him a place and was not about to budge before he got one.  As the weeks passed, the painting began to seem obviously complete, but yet David lingered, still attempting to will himself into the Chelsea.  And then in the bottom right hand “corner” of the round painting he began sketching in a small easle and canvas–and then a tiny cowboy-hatted artist bending over the tiny canvas!  David was literally painting himself into the Chelsea.  As, in the final analysis, he did indeed score a room, I don’t know how any more proof of the magic of his art could possibly be required.

         The infamous round canvas David was working on that day was on view at his show in Room 219 of the Chelsea last week.  Entitled “The Angel of the Chelsea,” the painting portrays the woman in the hanging sculpture in the lobby as a sort of  guardian angel watching over the denizens of the hotel—or perhaps haunting them, depending upon your perspective.  At first I hadn’t cared for the painting, felt it too cheerful, too sunny and bright and yellow, the people a bit too happy.  But as David worked on it over the days and weeks, the canvas seemed to take on depth almost like a patina of age and grime, reflecting the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of the Chelsea, somehow in the end fully capturing the mystery and the shadow world of enchantment that animates the Chelsea spirit.

         David’s paintings radiate out from the canvas, pulsating with a weird energy.  One painting was particularly striking in this regard, and I noticed several people commenting on its power. Looming behind the Chelsea, the fierce red skies of a lightning storm threaten to overwhelm, engulf, and sweep away the doomed hotel.  Strangely, however, the storm seems alternately to be emanating from the Chelsea itself, it’s palate strangely in harmony with the red brick hues of the building’s façade.  As reported—albeit somewhat faciciously–in no less august a publication than the New Yorker, the Chelsea is the entrance to hell; this was the first thing I thought of when I viewed this striking canvas.  In any event, a storm is a brewin’ here at the Chelsea, and we have to ask ourselves: is it the artistic storm in the hearts and minds of the artists themselves, or is it the storm of gentrification that threatens to sweep us all away?  David’s painting poses this question in a primal and intuitive way.

         Though David’s painting is realistic, sometimes, as in the red painting, disturbingly so, he often adds a whimsical touch to lighten the proceedings.  Another painting that proved quite popular was his “Chelsea Dogs” which portrayed the lobby populated by the various dogs living at the Chelsea, happily frolicking about, some of them even floating through.  (This one sold right away, to an animal lover from outside the hotel—as did previous two paintings discussed.)  One of the most memorable moments of the show was when two of the dogs in the painting, a couple of little docshunds, showed up to romp and frolic about the feet of the assembled throng.  It was if the hotdogs knew they were the stars of the show and they weren’t about to be denied their 15 minutes of fame!  I think they had the best time of anybody that evening.  Only David could have conjured up such magic.

         Included in the show were a few paintings from David’s earlier incarnation as a street artist—before Stanley brought him in from the cold—and at least one deserves special mention.

    It’s a painting of the inside of the New York Public Library; but what makes it notable is that the famous lion statues have now been animated and brought indoors to roam the halls!  Striking as well is the tree sprouting from the cracked marble tiles, having forced its way up through the floor.  Reflecting on this painting I felt that it could be taken as an apt metaphor for David’s career, for his ambition to bring the gritty realism of the streets—together with the magical dynamism of New York—indoors (into the stolid, stuffy, self important gallerys) in the service of explaining to the world, and even to ourselves, this special indescribable something, this mystique that enlivens the Chelsea.

         When told of the eyes-closed-painting incident, David himself expressed puzzlement.  “Was I asleep?” he asked.  “I must’ve been really tired that day.”

         “No, the journalist said that you were actually painting,” I said, feeling that obviously this sorcerer of the art world, this man who can turn metaphor into reality, had been channeling the spirit of one of the old Chelsea masters: Larry Rivers or Willem de Kooning perhaps, or even (as I suppose would make more sense) Diego Rivera, in service to his art.

         However, perhaps ill-advisedly, but in any event in search of a more rational explanation, I suggested, “Maybe you were just pretending so the journalist would go away and not ask you any questions.”

         “No, I wouldn’t do that,” David assured me.  “I don’t mind talking to people about my art.” 

         And so, the mystery remains. (Ed Hamilton)

  • Something Wicked This Way Comes

    Get the candy ready!  The little Chelsea ghouls and goblins will be heading our way anytime.  Here are some shots from last year courtesy of Linda Troeller.

    Angel

    Bear

  • THE GRAY MAN OF THE CHELSEA

    An old Chelsea babysitter writes:

                Though I never lived at the Chelsea Hotel myself, I used to babysit for a young couple who lived there back in the early nineties.  They were not artists. The man was an engineer and the woman owned a small business and I’m not sure why they chose the Chelsea.  Perhaps because they liked to 001k_small_10 enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle (they had an active social life) or maybe they wanted to be thought of as artistic or daring.  Or maybe just because it was cheap.  That’s the only thing I can think of.  I was a teenager at the time, and since they were gone all the time I babysat for them nearly every day one summer, and they went out a lot at night too.

                Their little boy was six or seven years old.  They were very protective of the child, and tried to keep him away from the dubious characters that roamed the halls of the Chelsea, and they were always complaining to Stanley about somebody doing something immoral. In fact, that’s probably why they hired me, because I came from outside the hotel.

                Now, what I’m going to say is the God’s honest truth, though the couple won’t admit it and they called me a liar to my face, but one night they had gone out to a cocktail party and they came home really late with another couple and they were all talking and joking around out in the stairwell.  I wanted to leave and I was waiting to get paid. The cocktail party was in the hotel I think, or at least there was some sort of party on one of the lower floors.  All I know is it was really loud.  They lived on the tenth floor.

                The boy, for obvious reasons I don’t want to say his name, came out in his pajamas.  When we noticed him we all said, what are you doing out here, go back to bed, but he wouldn’t.  Instead he went to the railing of the stairs and looked up at the skylight.  He just kept looking up and finally he said, “Mommy, who is that man up there?”    His parents just laughed and said, “Oh, what are you talking about?”  But instead of dropping it, the boy became increasingly excited, pointing and screaming: “Mommy, why is that man up there?!”  “There’s nobody up there honey,” his mother said.  “That man!  That gray man up there!”  “There’s nobody up there,” his father said sternly.  “Get back to bed.”

                Then the boy got quiet.  He kept staring at the skylight, but he was quiet.  I probably should have taken him to bed, but it was late and I really wanted to get paid and go home.  “He’s just tired,” the parents said to their friends, who said their goodbyes and got on the elevator and went down.  But while we were distracted watching them leave the boy had somehow managed to climb up on the railing and stand there, I don’t know how he did it, balanced on the top rail.

                Luckily, they saw him.  “Oh my God!” they said.  “What are you doing?!” the mother said, and the father grabbed him back down from there before he could jump or fall.  The boy started shaking and shivering all over as they both held him, almost having an epileptic fit, and he peed in his pants.  The parents were drunk and had been smoking pot I think, but that really sobered them up quick.  I didn’t even get my money that night but I guess after that I forgot about it and really just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

                Like I said, they say I’m a liar about this.  But what they can’t deny is that their son changed after this incident.  I can’t prove anything but I personally think he was possessed by some kind of spirit that night.  He was a really sweet kid before but after that he was either like a zombie or else he would go into a violent rage.  They told me to keep sharp objects locked up and not to let him out of my sight and not to go anywhere.  They were keeping him locked in his room at night because he would try to sneak out and one time he turned on all the burners on the gas stove and almost killed them all.  When you took him out him out you had to hold onto him because he would go for the railing, not rushing for it but like pulled to it in a trance.  And he was strong too.  A couple of times he Scarystair got away from me and tried to climb up onto the railing, whether to jump or what I don’t know, but I was able to pull him back down and get him into the elevator thank God.  I don’t know if he was trying to get to the man or to throw himself over but it was clear that if he kept doing it he would fall eventually.  Darkness was bad, but an overcast day was the worst.  He tore his room all up when he went into his violent rages and he graffitied all over the walls in crayons in gibberish or an unknown language.

                After a few days of this I wanted to quit but the parents begged me to stay and said they couldn’t get anyone else.  These days they would probably say the child had ADD, and they got a doctor and medicated the child and it kept him quiet but he still couldn’t be left alone or he would go out into the hallway and head for the railing.  I lasted about two weeks, it was not worth the money even though they agreed to pay me double.

                Now I’ve done some research on this issue since then and this type of possession is never straightforward.  (Though I was a babysitter then I went on to get a college education and studied psychology and parapsychology.)  The boy was smart and he knew what was happening to him in a way though understandably he would often become confused and I think this was the source of his violent rages.  Sometimes he thought that adults were trying to lead him to the railing or even to throw him over.  He would scream and run away and hide in his room.  I guess in these instances he was not possessed and maybe he even thought the adults were the Gray Man.  When he was like this then you couldn’t get him out the door for anything.

                I mention this because of what happened next.  I was trying to take him out to the dentist one day.  His parents were stupid for making me do this but they insisted because they wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong.  I knew better by this time and I kept a tight grip on the boy and kept my body between him and the railing as I steered him toward the elevator.  This time though he didn’t go into a trance like usual and try to make it to the railing.  Instead as soon as we got near the railing he started screaming hysterically and struggling against me.  I held on and told him to shut up as I pushed the elevator button.  But he bit my hand and got free and ran back to the room and started struggling to open the door, turning the handle and pulling and  pushing against it.  Of course it was locked but he started screaming at me and cursing me, calling me a fucking bitch and every other name in the book, telling me to open the door and let him in or he’d kill me.  Alright that’s it, we’re not going anywhere I thought, and I got the key out of my pocket and opened the door.  He burst in and before I could get in he grabbed the door and slammed it on me.  I got my body in the way and stuck my foot in the door so he couldn’t close it all the way but he was freakishly strong and I couldn’t push it open.  He got the chain on somehow and he ran back into the apartment.  I couldn’t just leave him in there because who knows what he was going to do so I tried to stick my hand in and get the chain off.  When he saw that he ran at the door but I had my foot in  it and though it hurt like hell he couldn’t Stab close the door.  Where he got the scissors I’ll never know, but the next thing I know he stabs me in the hand!  I screamed and pulled my hand out and my foot too, and he slammed the door and threw the dead bolt.

                So then I was standing there bleeding and I didn’t know what to do.  I was bleeding profusely and I couldn’t even leave to go to the hospital because what if the kid got out and killed himself?  Or killed himself in there?  I tried calling for him in my confusion, begging him to open the door but of course that did no good.  Finally I banged on all the neighbors doors and finally somebody opened up and gave me a rag to wrap my hand in.  I told the lady to call the mother at work and she came home and tried to act like it was no big deal and I was the one who was crazy and caused the problem in the first place.  I don’t think anybody believed her, but still!  I was the one who was trying to help!  I had to get five stitches in my hand at the hospital.

                There was no way I was going back after that, and I told them they should get the child institutionalized.  They didn’t appreciate that one bit but there wasn’t much they could say after the kid had just stabbed me.  The man paid me, overpaid me by several times, trying to pay me off I guess, to buy my silence and it’s true I didn’t say anything to anybody for nearly a year after that and by that time they had already left the Chelsea.  And New York, I think.  The reason I didn’t say anything was not the money but because they made me feel like I was crazy for even mentioning it.  I was just seventeen, remember.

                They got another babysitter, a girl in her twenties who I knew from school, and the kid drove her crazy.  She started taking drugs, maybe she had been taking them before, and eventually she had to get psychiatric help.  I think she may have even spent some time in a mental hospital.  The couple tried to blame her for their child’s condition, saying she was a junkie, but she had nothing to do with it since like I said the child was like that before.  I feel more sorry for her than for anybody to tell you the truth.  Except for maybe the child.  He was supposed to start school in the fall, but they held him back and I doubt he was ever normal again.

                Since then I’ve often thought of the Gray Man, wondered who he was, perhaps the ghost of someone who committed suicide by throwing himself down the stairwell.  Or maybe a more elemental spirit, a sort of evil pied piper of children.  When I asked the boy one time who the Gray Man was, he said he was smoke.  I don’t know whether this makes any sense or not, but this was when the boy was in a good, or rational state of mind.  The parents and their child disappeared into middle America and obscurity, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the Chelsea as possible.  The boy would be in his early twenties now which is typically when a dormant mental illness manifests.  I assume they’ve had him on medication all this time, but now that he’s an adult what if he decides to stop taking it as often happens?  There was a powerful attraction working on him, that I know, pulling him toward that railing and that skylight.  And so I have to ask, is this paranormal force still drawing him to the Chelsea?  Will he return to the scene of his childhood and his lost innocence?  And what form will his madness take in adulthood?  It seems only time will tell.

    Wow, this place is even scarier than I thought.  Junkies and schizophrenics are one thing, but elemental spirits are more than I can handle.  Almost makes me want to live in the suburbs!  And this woman seems pretty authoritative too; after all, she’s studied parapsychology.  Keep your doors locked tonight!  (Ed Hamilton)

  • All Tomorrow’s Parties: Oct. 30 – Nov 5, 2006

    Monday, Oct. 30, 7:00 p.m.

    Ray Sette, whose book, The Planets Align So Rare, examines the ancient art of astrology, will give a seasonally enjoyable reading at the Half King on the day before Halloween. Sette’s book explores the human potential in its relation to and its various dimensions within astrology.  Sette will entertain the audience even further by giving us astrological readings! Free.
    The Half King, 505 WEST 23RD STREET, NY NY

    TUESDAY OCT. 31, 10:00 pm

    SUSANNE BARTSCH INVITES YOU TO  OUR CHURCH HALLOWEEN co hosted by MONSIGNOR Sbfront_1 KENNY KENNY masters of sermon: LARRY TEE, RYAN & GUEST DJ’S SAINTS: DIRTY MARTINI, THEODORA, ASTRO, KIM AVIANCE, LADYFAG, AMBER RAY, MUFFIN, IGGY, BRANDON, LAVINIA, JUN, NICKY LONDON, JULIE ATLAS MUZ & MORE. MOTHER SUPERIOR: AMANDA LEPORE: GATE KEEPERS: ADAM & CYNTHIA

    AVALON, 20st & 6 (Back at Happy Valley Next Week)


    Franklucya_1Tuesday, Oct. 31, 7:00 p.m.
    It’s the 33rd Annual West Village Halloween Parade. A couple of friends from the McBurney Y enjoy last year’s parade. On 6th Avenue from Spring Street to 21st Street

    Friday, Nov. 3, 8:00 p.m.
    Ballet Hispanico offers an interesting program featuring Palladium Suite — an affectionate flashback to the larger-than-life characters who filled the original Palladium nightclub in its red-hot prime.
    The Joyce Theatre,  175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, NY NY

    Nov. 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
    It’s WFMU’s annual record fair. Not only can you purchase rare records from more than 200 vendors you can hear live music and catch their awesome DJ’s in action. Well worth the $6.00 entry fee. Here’s the complete schedule of events. Select events include: Sat. Nov. 4 from 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. Velvet Underground: Under Review Obscure footage, interviews, critical analyses, and some private Warhol footage. (85 min)  WFMU is an independent freeform radio station broadcasting at 91.1 fm in the New York City area, at 90.1 fm in the Hudson Valley, and live on the web.
    Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, between 6 & 7th Avenues

  • Halloween Recommendation: Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road

                If you like a good horror tale for the Halloween season, but you’re tired of the refried Steven King pabulum that was bland as hell even the first time around, then Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is the book for you.  Most people wouldn’t even consider this a horror tale, and it’s certainly not horror of the jump-out-and-get-ya variety.  The book is not even horror in the supernatural sense—no zombies of werewolves here–though it’s certainly suspenseful, and I for one have always been of the opinion that there’s enough horror in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people to scare Count Dracula half to death.

                We’re not exactly in the mundane world here, however: in The Road we enter a familiar post apocalyptic wasteland in which the sun is blotted out by a gray pall of fallout that cloaks the land in a nuclear winter.  All plants are dead and nothing grows; there are very few living mammals, human or otherwise, wandering about.  Black ash coats the land, rivers run black, and when snow falls it is gray.  Through this world we follow an unnamed man and his son as they make their way south—pushing a grocery cart filled with their worldly possessions along the titular road–to escape the increasing cold of the coming winter.  Dirty and haggard, half-starved, they hunt for cans of food in farmhouses and handfuls of grain on the floors of barns, hiding in ditches when other humans come by, huddling under a tarp to sleep when it rains.

                Anarchy has gripped the land: bands of bloodthirsty cannibals have sprung up to hunt those lucky, or perhaps unlucky, enough to have escaped the initial, unnamed, calamity.  One of the scariest scenes of the book occurs when a band of these desperate characters pass by on the road a mere thirty feet from where the man and boy lie hidden:

    When he raised up to look he could just see the top of the truck moving along the road.  Men standing in the stakebed, some of them holding rifles.  The truck passed on and the black diesel smoke coiled through the woods.  The motor sounded ropy.  Missing and puttering.  Then it quit….They could hear the men talking.  Hear them unlatch and raise the hood.  He sat with his arm around the boy.  Shh, he said.  Shh….He raised his head to look and coming through the weeds twenty feet away was one of their number unbuckling his belt.  They both froze.

    The book goes on like this from start to finish, and it’s hard to put down.  I read it all the way through over a two-day period, and I’m not really a fast reader. 

                McCarthy is very good at description and plotting, though not so good at characterization: the two main characters, the man and the boy, are mere symbols.  Although the novel purports to explore the moral dimension of survival in a post apocalyptic world, it’s parameters are overly simplistic (there is, for instance, no examination of the moral structure of the cannibal society: they are just “evil”), and at the end we are left with a rather pat and predictable reaffirmation of convention moral values.  This book is thus not for science fiction fans, who will feel like they’ve been here and done this countless times before.  The Road is a trash novel for the literary set: it’s not great literature by any means, but it gives you a break from D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Wolfe and takes you on a hell of a frightening joy ride. (Ed Hamilton)

  • First Day In Hell Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be

    Well, the secret is officially out!  Even The New Yorker knows the Chelsea Hotel is the entry point into 001k_small_11 hell.  We used to get a goth punk or two in here maybe once a month to burn a candle in front of Sid’s room. But now they’re gonna be lining up down the block.

    My first day in Hell is drawing to a close. They don’t really have a sunset here, but the fires seem to dim a bit, and the screaming gets more subdued. Most of the demons are asleep now, their pointy tails curled up around them. They look so innocent, it’s hard to believe that just a few hours ago they were raping and torturing us.

    The day started off at a party at the Chelsea Hotel, where some friends were daring me to do something. The next thing I knew, I was in Hell. At first, it seemed like a dream, but then I remembered that five-Martini dreams are usually a lot worse. (MY FIRST DAY IN HELL, by JACK HANDEY) (via CherryRamone)

  • Larry The Ghost

    Larry the Ghost is perhaps the Chelsea’s most famous resident spirit.  Our Anonymous Hotel Chelsea Blogger # 3 interviewed several live residents in order to come to the following conclusions about Larry:

    Zebralarry_1 The main thing about Larry is that he never stops talking. This is upsetting to the other ghosts, because they’re eager to tell their stories once they find someone who can hear/see them.  But Larry always pushes his way to the front and starts lecturing in such a loud voice that the others can’t get a word in.  What he wants people to know, mainly is:
    1) It’s what’s inside the Chelsea that’s real. Everything out there, in the so-called city, is an illusion.
    2) There was something there long before the Chelsea was built that is the source of the place’s creative power.
    3) It’s not about the product–the specific art that’s created; it’s about the life that is led at the Chelsea Hotel.  "That’s what’s important, man," says Larry.

    Though skeptics in the world at large might say that the residents who claim to have encountered Larry are a bit on the batty side, we take solace in the wisdom of Larry himself: he would have no doubt as to whom was really crazy.  (photo link)