Living with Legends

Even if you get a tattoo of the Chelsea, you still won’t have Artie Nash beat.  He has two!   Be sure to read page two of Artie’s interview or you’ll miss some exciting stuff like his encounter with the Mafia at Mamma Mia!, how he and Arthur Weinstein witnessed a gang riot and his obsession with beat writer Herbert Huncke. After reading his interview, we’re thinking of changing our name from “Outlaw Chelsea Bloggers” to the “Purse-Snatching Chelsea Bloggers.”

What do you do?
Well I’m essentially an independent curator, which may only mean I’m a frequently unemployed, frustrated artist type; but what I do essentially is assemble social history exhibits on topics that I find intriguing for one reason or other, possibly subjects that I’ve have had some more intimate connection with over the years, or both. So while my background is in art and antiques, in the past I’ve messed around with everything from club promotion to investigative reporting to –this is my personal favorite– I once ghost-wrote a NYC dining column for a critic who hadn’t digested solids in about twenty years. But these days I tinker with the historical objects, creating what I hope are meaningful juxtapositions between them and then try to find an audience that does, as well.

Tell us about “Made in America”
"M.I.A." is the first (that I’m aware of) public exhibition strictly on the topic of the Mob, and its a three dimensional retrospective on the impact and significant influence that this breed of criminal has had on U.S. pop culture since they were ‘reborn’ in 1931 as a truly ‘organized’ outfit bent on subjugating the law, hand in hand, on a broad scale. And to illustrate this "M.I.A." showcases the genuine artifacts, documents, photographs and ephemera that help to retrace this rich tradition of corruption. We’re a society whose rate of violent crime outstrips virtually every civilized nation on the globe, and we’re a country that has as many different types of criminals as we have crimes. Yet from the ranks of robbers, murderers, rapists, arsonists, pedophiles, bunco artists and so forth, there’s really only one variety of bad-guy that captivates us to no end, and thats the gangster class. None of those other guys, really. You’re not very likely to spot a kid on the street sporting a t-shirt that reads ‘Purse Snatcher’. Instead, its ‘Wiseguy’. Its the outlaw who we find irresistible. I mean, you two aren’t just run of the mill bloggers–you’re ‘Outlaw’ bloggers, right? With one word, you’ve imbued this avocation with a promise of adventure. So the gangster folklore really saturates our everything — our publishing, our films, our airwaves, our culture. For reasons not well understood, and I’m certainly not sitting on whole answer, there is something in the perceived makeup of a gangster that has huge appeal to the masses. We as Americans tend to yield to the type of personality who challenges real authority, who takes what he wants without apology. (Photo: Abel Ferrara at MIA)

How’d you score your apartment?
Stanley took pity on me, basically. Is there any other way? He’d just turned away a couple of pretty good names, so nothing was for certain. And I’ve blown through a couple of apartments since then; the first was on the second floor, two twenty six, then Stanley put me up on nine, a big corner room that I liked much more, real peaceful except for the occasional electric guitar jam in the hallway at 2 am, with fast creeping, very agressive ivy invading from every direction. And an upright piano, which was nice. I don’t play but found it was a really good place to stash things and it kept the cats entertained, usually whenever I was trying to get a nap in. I shared a bath with Rene Ricard for awhile, that was interesting. At least. He loved my room, he said; the good light, the relative silence, then assured me that ‘only the very best people’ had committed suicide there. That part had me worried for awhile, a couple of weeks, but fortunately it was all bullshit. Its true the light was good. Anyhow, by August the ivy had become dessicated and Stanley decided to renovate my place, so thats how I scored the room I’m in now, in what–it’s been written–was one of Bob Dylan’s first. I think it used to be bigger. I don’t get any of Bob’s junk mail, but a writer from SNL had this apartment before me and a few weeks ago Colin Quinn called up drunk from the lobby. Which was no consolation.

Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?
Without question. There is real magic in this place. I would say "ask anybody" but its hard to explain, you either get it or you don’t. I’ve brought friends of mine here who couldn’t wait to leave. This past week there was some creep in the lobby complaining to Stanley that the Chelsea wasn’t what he ‘expected’ from a four star hotel, or whatever. Bard had the cops on the guy so I’m thinking to myself ‘god only knows where he spent the night.’ And then there are those for whom nothing needs be explained. If you’re open to it, you can get caught up in a creative undertow here, that pulls you in directions that aren’t familiar. Or not.

What’s your favorite Hotel Chelsea story?
Personally I never tire of the story about a certain popular actress with the initials AJ on the ninth floor all hours to catch the H train. But there’s always a new favorite around the corner.

Can you tell us about your future projects?
Sure. Right now I’m developing two other social history exhibits, and one of them is on the topic of Capital Punishment from the turn of the century, essentially since executions were permanently removed from public view in the face of the abolitionist movement. It will include rare unpublished Photography, important documents tracing its evolution and then, of course, the actual implements of death–for instance the electrocution chair from Tennessee where Maurice Mays is said to have been wrongly executed in 1922, and a lethal injection machine that malfunctioned while in use here in the northeast. It only came to this collection after the State that owned it refused to pay the repair bill.

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