We knew we had a prostitution ring around here, but we didn’t know about the stud services reportedly received by this tourist. When Heidi checked in, either one of the bellmen–bellhops, she calls them– or a desk clerk, apparently started flirting with her immediately, and then, after she took a break to sample some of our famous New York pizza, he put the finishing touches on his seduction. Skip ahead where she starts to ramble on about love and such, and only read the good stuff. Although the account does have a whiff of the creative writing workshop vibe, you can be the judge. For the sake of the Chelsea and her badly soiled reputation, we can only hope that it really is true. To hell with Thailand, for a truely rewarding sex-tourism package, visit the Chelsea. Heidi promises to send the X-rated version of the encounter if you e-mail her.
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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 a novel. Portions of my blog Bill in Exile will be excerpted this fall in a collection being published by Kleiss Press. Bill is actually my blogging partner and oldest friend in New York. We’ve known each other for more than 23 years now. We ran Bill in Exile for just over a year and shut it down a couple months ago. It was very popular. Bill is in prison for 7 and a quarter years for selling meth and our blog was simply the letters that we exchanged with each other every day and that I put up on the internet.
What inspired you to move into the Hotel Chelsea?
What inspired us to move into the Chelsea was that my boyfriend at the time and I were both in our early twenties, I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps and we were dead broke and living in a shooting gallery on 10th and Avenue C in the east village when that part of town was scary beyond belief and we thought the time was right for a move uptown to a "de-luxe apartment in the sky". We had heard that the Chelsea might have vacancies and that they liked artists which my boyfriend was. Plus I loved the design of the building.
How’d you score your apartment?Our interview with Stanley Bard the longtime manager of the Chelsea was, I thought at the time, pretty straight forward. Realize that I had just gotten out of the Marine Corps and hailed from Kentucky so I didn’t know a damn thing about much of anything, least of all New York real estate. Mike (the bf) and I walked into Stanley’s office with a couple of Mike’s paintings and started talking to him about renting
an apartment. Stanley wanted to see the paintings we brought and we were only too happy to show them since we intended to try to use them in lieu of a security deposit. Stanley looked at them, snorted a couple of times and handed us a set of keys to an apartment on what I recall was the 4th floor. It was basically a large hotel room with a kitchen but it had a cute little wrought iron balcony outside right next to the Hotel Chelsea sign. After we saw the apartment we told Stanley we loved it and he said "you can move in tomorrow" and that was that. No security deposit no rent in advance. I later learned that Stanley’s way of doing business was not in the least the norm for New York landlords.
Were the punks still around lighting candles to Sid?The early 80’s had pretty much seen the demise of punk at the Chelsea by then especially after the Sid Vicious Nancy Spungeon killing. Mostly you saw a lot of punk-wannabees and those who came around hoping to discover some truth about Sid Vicious, but mainly there were really cool tranny hookers in the hotel at the time. They all had lived in the building for ages and remembered Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon and her killing in ’78. They all had great stories.
How would you describe the Chelsea vibe in the early 1980s?
The vibe at the Chelsea for me has always been really interesting. When I lived there it was right before crack hit New York really hard but there were definite hints of things to come within the crew that made up the residents of the hotel. You saw people starting to succumb to the drug and slowly, or not so slowly, and disappearing from it. Actually, my drug dealer lived a floor above us while we were there and he continued to live in the same apartment for over ten years until he died of AIDS. That was the big impact on the hotel and the city at that point. AIDS. AIDS and Crack. Chelsea as a neighborhood had a quickly growing gay population since everyone in the village to the south was dying like flies and gays that were still alive wanted to flee the hot zone. During the early 80’s the hotel had a kind of sadness hanging over it since so many residents and friends of residents were dying and the gay boys who lived there, like me and my boyfriend, all were pretty much figuring that we’d be dead in a matter of months too. So when we lived there I’d say that AIDS hung over everything. AIDS and drugs.
Were celebrities dropping by in the 80s?Lets see, I walked up the stairs with a very young, very cute Mathew Modine once. I think the elevator was out and we started chatting and I didn’t realize who he was until later which is typical of me since I’m completely hopeless when it comes to spotting celebs. He’s very tall. I rode the elevator with Ed Koch once. I think he was heading to one of the big penthouse apartments to visit someone. He’s really tall too! I used to see Andy Warhol in the lobby all the time with various members of his
Factory entourage and his last protégé, Christopher Makos the photographer. Chris and I became friends and lived near each other in the village for almost 20 years from the late 80’s on. (Photo: Christopher Makos and Andy Warhol, c. 1981) A later celebrity connection that I had to the Chelsea was that of Ethan Hawke. Although I had long since moved out of the hotel when Ethan lived there he and my brother Kenneth were friends and went to prep school in New Jersey together and even performed together in school plays. I saw Ethan perform in The Glass Menagerie when he was 16 years old.
What was the best/worst thing that ever happened to you at the Chelsea?The best and worst thing about living at the hotel was that this pre-op tranny hooker named Simonette used to live in our apartment before we moved in. She had a boyfriend named Tyler who was this incredibly beautiful 20 year old cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. (Don’t ask me how he got away with it but suffice to say that Simonette could pass for a girl under all but the most extreme scrutiny). Anyway, Tyler had gotten dumped by Simonette before we moved in and apparently she moved without forwarding information and Tyler being smitten and deeply in love was basically stalking her, or at least trying to stalk her but without too much success. He would show up at our apartment door at all hours crying for her and begging to be let in. My boyfriend and I ran him off repeatedly at first and he was really making us nuts but then one night we let him in and after sitting around talking to him for hours we basically became best friends. We ended up helping him get over Simonette and I remain friends with him to this day.
Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?
Oh, yes. Without a doubt the Chelsea has a creative spirit. All one needs to do to confirm that is to walk the halls and you’ll feel it. Or you can step out of the lobby onto 23rd street and look at the various plaques commemorating who lived there if you’re less spiritually inclined. The list of Chelsea residents is long and storied and includes Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, Bill Burroughs, Gore Vidal, Allan Ginsberg and Tennessee Williams (tons of homos!) and I think the hotel attracts people who are creative as well as a bit nuts in part because of its history and in part because Stanley used to make it really easy for artistically talented individuals to find a home there. I also think that the people who live there, once ensconced in residency, feel that artistic spirit within the buildings walls and develop a sense that they need to live up to it and try hard to do so.
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Gawker picked up on our story about Time Out New York’s advice to (stay-at-home) tourists to ask for Sid’s room when checking into the Chelsea. They even called Stanley Bard to confirm our claim that, in fact, Room 100 no longer exists. However, if you’re bummed out by this news, Gawker also offers an alternative solution: you can bother Ethan Hawke.
Well, sorry to be the bearers of bad tidings once again, but, unfortunately, Ethan no longer lives at the Chelsea. He didn’t stab his girlfriend or OD on heroin—as would have been a more
appropriate leave-taking—but simply packed up his things in a moving van one day last year and moved out.However, Ethan still lives in the neighborhood, and we still see him walking his dog by the building from time to time. So if you’re lonely, or really, really bored, hang out on the street for a couple of days and you just might spot him. He is very approachable, so go up and start a conversation with him and he will no doubt become your friend. If you are a woman, he will date you; if you are a man, he will bond with you in masculine solidarity and together you will drink beer and watch sporting events.
Yes, Gawker’s suggestion remains a good one. But, you know what? Don’t let Gawker, or us for that matter, tell you what to do. Come to the Chelsea anyway, figure out where Sid’s room used to be, and burn a few candles in his memory. Rend your garments, mortify your flesh, whatever. It’s America, dude, and, perhaps more to the point, it’s the Chelsea. (Ed Hamilton)
Read more: Ethan Hawke
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Hiroya, the crazy Japanese graffiti painter with wild black hair who used to stand in the lobby in paint splattered suits and accost tourists with boasts of his artistic prowess, left several paintings behind in
the hotel when he died. Two of them, replete with crosses, caskets, and the symbolism of death, and heavy on Japanese text, have long intrigued us because they seemed to tell the story of Hiroya’s falling out with his friend, the punk rocker Dee Dee Ramone. We have been waiting for a Japanese person to happen by and translate them for us, and finally we found one in Yuko Shingyoji, a Japanese fashion designer. The yellow one that hangs in the stairwell between the seventh and eighth floors is rather poetic and reads approximately as follows:From here it’s heaven,
Heaven is a forest.
Drink Rum in the morning,
Everyone dance.
Beyond Death: darkness, time, space, land of God.
De De Land.
The orange one that hangs in the stairwell on the first floor, though it touches on a similar theme, tells more of a story:De De Land. In heaven I meet De De and Barbara. De De always thinking something very deeply. The job of Barbara is reading “pustory” (“true story?”) to De De. De De makes blueberry jam. He writes a poem on the pink chalkboard. My job is after he finish writing a poem, put the poem into drawing. My girlfriend Marcia take picture of the drawing and record to De De Land’s diary. End of day at De De Land. De De Land is very good feeling (comfortable), mellow world.
Yuko says Hiroya’s English is not very good, ungrammatical. Yeah, that’s Hiroya alright. The “De De” in question is the punk rocker Dee Dee Ramone of the Ramones. Barbara is Dee Dee’s wife. The story of the paintings is that Dee Dee paid Hiroya $500 to make two paintings of the Chelsea Hotel for the front and back cover of Dee Dee’s novel, Chelsea Horror Hotel. Hiroya took the money, but then started to have second thoughts about whoring himself like that, and so couldn’t bring himself to complete the paintings. This led to a falling out between Dee Dee and Hiroya, but in the end Dee Dee insisted that Hiroya at least owed him two paintings of some sort, and these are what Hiroya came up with.
About a year after their falling out, Hiroya left the Chelsea Hotel to enter a rehab program. He attempted to move back into the Chelsea a couple of years later, but Stanley wouldn’t give him a room. On the very night he was rebuffed by Stanley, Hiroya checked into the Gershwin Hotel and died. Dee Dee proceeded him in death by a year. As often happens with such deaths, there was no way to know for certain whether it was an accident or suicide. (Ed Hamilton) -
M
onday, July 24,
Today is the last day of BlairWear’s trunk show at Henri Bendel. Customized Dresses, Bags, Shirts, Towels, Tanks and Cosmetic Bags. It’s your chance to purchase the same air brushed underwear worn by Pink.
Henri Bendel, 712 Fifth Avenue, NY NYTuesday, July 25, 10:30 p.m.
Susanne Bartsch and Kenny Kenny invite you to Happy Valley Tuesdays. As usual, there will be DJs and a hot show. Hosts: Sophia Lamar, Miranda Moondust, Kim Aviance, Theodora and Amanda Lepore.
14 East 27th St., NY NYWednesday, July 26, 7:00 p.m.
The Burlesque Room will have MTV’s hottest reality celebrities " VERONICA AND RACHEL" showing off their clothing line COLLEGE DROPOUT. Also we have the amazing "Sameer Tolani" Performing his Vintage Pop acoustic songs.
Serena’s in the basement of the Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd St., NY NYThursday, July 27, 12:00 – 6:00
"What We Value, What We Throw Away," a group show featuring 50 artists working with diverse materials and viewpoints that address the full spectrum of TRASH. If this bag of Cheetos is representative of Trash Art then the Chelsea Hotel is filled with more art than even we knew about. Today’s the last day to catch the show.
Atlantic Gallery, 40 Wooster St., 4th Fl., NY NYFriday, July 28, 11:00 – 6:00 p.m.
This is the last day to view "Celebrity Portraits: Robert Mapplethorpe/Andy Warhol," billed as the first ever joint exhibition of these two artists. We stopped by the gallery a couple of weeks back to check out the show and write a review, but the gallery was closed. So, phone in advance.
Sean Kelly Gallery, 528 West 29th St., NY NYIf you have a relevant event you want featured on All Tomorrow’s Parties e-mail the information to chelblog@yahoo.com
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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 do? I’m a novelist and university teacher.
When did you stay at the Chelsea? 1999 – 2000
What inspired you to move into the Hotel Chelsea?
I already knew about it from a previous stay so when my family moved to NYC and were looking for suitable accommodation in Manhattan, that was one place to rule out! Naturally, after finding a sublet advertisement in the Village Voice, the temptation was irresistible, although you’d have to say it’s not exactly family friendly. We sublet from a guy called Joe Blow, paid him a lot of money and then found out he was behind in his rent.Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?
Absolutely. Apart from all the usual stories (Syd and Nancy, Brendan Behan, Arthur Miller et al) we discovered that an eccentric Australian woman had once lived in our apartment with her fox. Ethan Hawke was making a film in the corridor outside our room for God’s sake. The place reeks of creativity.
Has Your Writing Been Influenced by Any Former or Current Residents?
The lady with the fox, Tony, the concierge, the owners, Patty Hearst, Nick Cave are all in my 3rd
novel, ‘Channelling Henry’. So is the room, which turns out to be a central setting in the story. My character Jeremy Moon, a young writer, stays at the Chelsea and meets a street vendor around the corner who gives him a manuscript to read. The vendor’s story is set in the same room Jeremy is renting. My previous novel, "Chelsea Manifesto," also has a number of chapters set in the Chelsea and was named for it.Who are the contemporary authors that you most admire?
Philip Roth for sheer intellectual power, Anne Tyler for dazzling realism, and Saul Bellow for unforgettable portraits of men struggling with family life. Henry Miller, spurned and spat upon by the establishment, was my hero and central inspiration for my last book. He should have lived at the Chelsea. Then perhaps he would have felt better about New York. Miller writes about desperation, love, struggle and life in a language all his own. Don’t get me started.What is the best/worst thing that happened to you while staying at the Chelsea?
Worst: when we discovered that the cool photographer we had sublet the place from hadn’t paid his rent, although he did collect a large amount of money from us in advance. We thought we’d be on the street, but the owner’s son was gracious and understanding.Best: my wife rushed in and said ‘I just came up in the lift with Kris Kristofferson!’ ‘What did you say to him?’ I asked. ‘O nothing, I didn’t want to act like a groupie’.
Did you meet any other famoust people while staying at the Chelsea?
Ethan Hawke allowed us to watch a scene from his movie in the making, right outside our door. He apologized to my then five-year-old because the actor/policeman had to swear and curse. -
If you’ve ever wondered about that bearded guy in the flowing robe and the turban who’s been
wondering the halls of the Hotel Chelsea with a bird on his arm, well, wonder no more. His name is Alan Parrot (the T is silent), and that bird is not a parrot, but rather a falcon.Parrot has been raising and training these birds of prey since his youth, and his unique ability with falcons has allowed him access to the inner circles of the mighty oil sheiks of the Middle East, who consider falcon hunting a sign of power, success, and masculinity. Parrot now runs the Union for the Conservation of Raptors, which works to end illegal smuggling of these beautiful animals, which are fast becoming endangered.
Through his association with the oil Sheiks, Parrot became aware of a secret source of organization and funding for the terrorist group al Qaeda. Apparently, falcon hunting camps sponsored by legitimate Arab leaders serve as clandestine venues where they can meet with al Quada operatives. Since his discovery, Parrot has been working to bring the existence of this network to the attention of the American people.
Where else would he stay but at the Hotel Chelsea? We hear his falcon likes it here too, what with all of the yummy mice.
Thanks to Jean Pearson for the tip and the photo. -
I just finished reading an article in The NY Times about Rock-and-Roll Hotels – you know, hotels
where rock bands stay and throw TVs out the windows and such. I didn’t even think they were going to mention the Chelsea – and of course I was outraged – and then when they finally did it was only to imply that the building where the Dead and the Airplane partied was no longer a rock-and-roll hotel! Apparently, a band called “Metric” chose the Hotel Rivington – a glass and steel monstrosity that sticks out like a sore thumb on the Lower East Side – over our proudly anarchic establishment. Rock stars are people with aspirations, you see, no longer tolerant of grunge or disorder. They want high speed internet and a workout room.
Well, who the hell ever heard of “Metric” anyway! Suddenly the Hotel that was home to Jimi & Janis is no longer good enough. Wimp rockers! Who comes to your concerts? Nine-year-old girls? Your band is barred from the hotel now anyway! No hotel rocks more than the Chelsea. (Ed Hamilton)
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I just read an article in The NY Times about the Algonquin Hotel’s famous cat, Matilda. Well, we have a cat at the Chelsea too, and she could kick Matilda’s ass. Our cat’s name is Suki, which the
owner 
says is Japanese for “Love,” though I have reason to doubt the veracity of that translation. Suki likes to hang out in the hallway, greeting tourists. Just the other day I was listening in when some innocent Midwesterners decided to approach our charming feline mascot: “Oh look at the little kitty!” a woman exclaimed. “Such a pretty kitty! What a good kitty! Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty…….SHIT!!!!!Suki has mangy black fur, one eye and one and a quarter ear. She is so fat that she can’t lick the fur on her back and consequently it’s matted and stiff. She travels between floors – via the fire escape – and sleeps in whatever room she pleases. If she doesn’t like you, she’ll poop in front of your door.
The Algonquin’s cat, Matilda, apparently receives lots of fan mail. We think Suki should get mail too, though obviously it would have to be hate mail. There’s a woman who sends Matilda cryptic collages of rabbits on a moped and of the Geico gecko and the like. This woman is as nutty as a fruitcake. She should check into the Hotel Chelsea and get to know Suki. Lucky Matilda even got a letter from a death row inmate – though for some reason they didn’t want to encourage this at the Algonquin. Believe you me, we will do everything in our power to encourage such letters here at the Hotel Chelsea. Death row inmates, mental patients, skid row bums: write to our damn cat! (Ed Hamilton)
Over at 23rd & 7th blog, Carie Bedsore also reports on the cats of the Chelsea Hotel.
Read more: hotel cats -
The most beloved–and enigmatic—character ever to grace the halls of the Chelsea is of course our illustrious proprietor, Stanley Bard. Among his many endearing qualities, Stanley possesses a congenital inability to admit that anything bad has ever taken place in the hotel. There are no roaches or mice, and certainly no junkies have ever lived here. If pressed, he might be willing to admit that Sid and Nancy had a slight altercation one night back in the seventies, but absolutely nothing untoward has happened since. The writers and artists living here are all brilliant, contented and wealthy. The
magnificence of the Chelsea ’s luxury accommodations is scarcely rivaled even by The Plaza or the Waldorf-Astoria—perhaps not even by Buckingham Palace itself.
We were talking to a friend in El Quijote the other night, someone who used to live here back in the eighties and nineties, and he told us a tale that’s perfectly illustrative of this tendency of Stanley’s:I was going up to the ninth floor to visit my friend one time. The elevator was slow, probably somebody was holding it up, so I walked up the stairs. As soon as I turned onto his wing I saw cops all over the place, about eight or ten of them. They were coming in and out of an apartment. There was a stretcher in the hall with a body in it in a black body bag.
I knew whose apartment it was—it was a guy I knew, I’ll call him Joe–and I assumed it was him in the body bag. Joe was a junkie, so of course I immediately suspected that he had ODed.
One of the cops finally noticed me standing around, and said, ‘Don’t come up here yet. Go back downstairs. We’ll let you know when you can come up.’
The elevators still weren’t working, so I walked back down to the lobby. It was full of people. They weren’t allowing anybody to go up.
Stanley was standing behind the desk and so I went up to him and said, ‘What’s going on up on the ninth floor?’
‘Nothing, why would you say that?’ Stanley said.
‘There were cops all over the place!’‘No there weren’t.’
‘Yes there were!’
‘You may have seen one or two policemen,’ Stanley admitted. ‘They probably have a room here.’ Stanley’s manner was so matter-of-fact and convincing that he made me doubt the evidence of my own senses. I began to think that maybe I was becoming one of the crazy people wandering the halls here. Still, I’m not that far gone, so I said, ‘ Stanley, you can’t tell me nothing is going on.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you want me to tell you then.’‘That was Joe, wasn’t it,’ I said. ‘Joe’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Joe?’ Stanley said. ‘Oh, no. Joe’s fine. He just went on a little vacation. Europe, I think. He’ll be back in a couple of years, I’m sure.’
In the days that followed there were plenty of rumors circulating around the hotel, but nobody ever got any definite information, and nothing about the incident ever appeared in the papers. Stanley has his ways of keeping things like that quiet.
It’s difficult to discern how much of Stanley’s act is a con, and how much a sort of rosy-spectacled tunnel vision. Whatever his secret, he’s a brilliant magician whose slight of hand has allowed him to conjure up the infinitely seductive shadow reality of the Chelsea. Who but a Philistine, a sworn enemy of art, would mention such trivialities as heat or running water? It hardly matters that Joe—or whatever his name was before he passed into myth–has yet to return from his sojourn abroad. (Ed Hamilton)
