Time Out New York is a load of laughs this week. As one of their suggested "Staycations" 
— that’s a vacation where you stay in the city — they suggest you check into the Chelsea Hotel and ask for room 100, Sid’s room. As if the desk clerks don’t have enough nonsense to drive them crazy as it is.
So those of you on the first floor, look out. Here comes a whole new wave of morbid punks. For the last time, there is no room 100!
And by the way, Umberto’s (another recommended stop) is in a new location now — it’s not the same building where Joe Gallo was killed. So, I guess, ask your waiter to show you the bullet holes!
-
-
We wish to express our condolences to our illustrious proprietor Stanley Bard, who has b
een excluded from this year’s Village Voice “10 Worst Landlord List”. We know he was really shooting for it, but hey, there’s a lot of competition in this town, and sometimes these things just don’t work out. Maybe with a little extra effort he can make the list next year.I’ve gone through the article—actually a series of articles—in the Voice, and assembled a select list of factors involved in choosing the lucky 10 slumlords. Through a close study of this list, Stanley may someday realize his dream of cracking the top ten:
-Dark and forbidding hallways. (We already have these, though they used to be much darker and more forbidding.)
-Looks like a crack house. (Yeah, a great big Gothic crack house!)
-Horrible bedbugs coming from one of the walls. (I hear lots of hotels have these; maybe we could drag in some old mattresses from the street.)
-Drug addicts get in through unlocked doors, get high in the hallways. (Here they are considerate enough to use the bathrooms.)
-Obstructed or rusted fireplaces. (Yes, ours is obstructed by a wall; we’ve been thinking of busting it open with a sledgehammer one of these days.)
-Stench of urine, feces and trash dominate lobby. (The stench just dominates our hallway once in awhile when somebody throws out a bunch of diapers.)
-Hordes of rats, mice, and roaches patrol the building, breeding in the garbage cans left in halls.
-Stonework crumbling. (Ill-advisedly, Stanley got this fixed.)
-Landlord threatens and beats tenants with a bat. (At 71, Stanley’s best bat-threatening-and-beating days are probably behind him.)
-Landlord commands a goon squad to throw people out. (This may be a more practical suggestion.)
-Landlord takes money from welfare checks in exchange for cashing them. (Oh, why not?)
-Blood in the elevator.
-Toxic mold, stachybotrys.
-Walls reduced to rubble, a huge pit in the floor, and debris everywhere.
Compared to some of the buildings around town, we live in a true renter’s paradise here at the Chelsea. Stanley has his work cut out for him, but we think he’s up to the task. Then, after the awards dinner, he can throw us all out, fill this place up with high-maintenance yuppies, and let his son David deal with it as he retires, triumphant, to the luxury of his New Jersey McMansion. -
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
How did it feel to see your work published under a pseudonym?
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 the days! Rhea was good enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions. At first, we were both very disappointed that our publisher wanted to use a pseudonym. After all, we wanted to be recognized for our efforts. They reasoned that our work was "women’s fiction" and that women wouldn’t want to read such work by a man, let alone two men. Maybe they were right. I don’t know. We certainly didn’t consider our work to be for women alone but for readers who enjoyed the early and mid-career novels of Harold Robbins, for example. I do know that we have many male fans (although the majority are women) both from the fan letters we receive and the online chats/interviews we have participated in on writerspace.com, for example. I personally began to enjoy the anonymity because I quickly discovered that people reacted to you differently when they found out you were a best-selling author. Some people said we changed
with success. I think it’s more accurate to say that a lot of the people around us changed in the way they related to us. When it was announced that Joan Collins was going to star in the television miniseries based on our first novel, Sins, Liz Smith interviewed us and did an article about us in the Daily News, our first public exposure. Our publisher was not happy. TV Guide mentioned our names also. Then, a reporter claiming to be from the London Times showed up at the Chelsea to interview us and brought along a photographer. We were so gullible that we didn’t ask for identification. As it turned out, he was from one of the London tabloids and wrote a lot of garbage and published a picture taken with a fisheye lens that made us both look terrifying.
What inspired you to reveal yourselves as the voices behind Judith Gould?
In any case, for years we didn’t seek any publicity: we just kept working. But with the popularity of author websites, we finally decided to go public in that way and to participate in online chats monitored by our publisher on writerspace.com.
How do your readers respond when they learn that Judith Gould is really two guys?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, we haven’t actually received any negative responses from readers regarding our true identity. If there are readers out there who dislike Judith Gould being two men who’ve lived and worked together for twenty-eight years, not a single one has come forward. We have developed "virtual" relationships with readers, and the experience has been very gratifying. It’s great to get some of the feedback that authors get at readings, etc., rather than writing in a vacuum with only sales figures to go by.
Does having such a close working relationship affect your personal relationship?Since the first week we met, we’ve been working together – as strange as that may seem – so I have no idea how our relationship might have been different otherwise. We began talking the first night, and neither of us has shut up since.
Which contemporary author(s) do you admire and why?
We both read on a daily basis, and we read a vast range of writers. It’s impossible to list favorites, but I’ll mention a few. We rarely, if ever, read the sorts of novels we write. Nick as more of a penchant for adventure than I do, but we do read a lot of the same writers. We both read and like Ian McEwen. I supposed he’s considered "literary," but his novels are also full of good old-fashioned suspense. We both love John Le Carre. He’s a wonderful writer who’s made the transition from the cold war to present day effortlessly. Another contemporary author we both read is Mark Helprin. I supposed you can deduce that neither of us goes in for minimalism! We both love the mysteries of Ruth Rendell (or Barbara Vine, her other persona). Nick is crazy about Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle and all the current "Slammerkin School" novels, as we call them. The combination of day-to-day minutiae from another time and a good story, well told, is enormously appealing. I read Donna Leon’s mysteries set in Venice because I love Commissario Brunetti, who reminds me of Simenon’s Maigret. And the food always makes me salivate! And I admit to a penchant for a few amusing British ladies: Muriel Spark (I will miss her), Penelope Fitzgerald and Penelope Lively, and the late Barbara Pym. I also love Patrick McCabe and Alan Hollinghurst, and although he’s now dead, Lawrence Durrell. His "guides" to Greece are virtually useless nowadays, but wonderfully written. W.G. Sebald, also recently deceased, is a hero to me. His writing astonishes me. All of these writers are romantic (some accused of being florid), but not necessarily sentimental, and some are great satirists.
How much of your own life is similar to Judith Gould’s life?Our lives are so entwined with the characters and stories in Judith Gould stories that it’s difficult to separate reality from fiction sometimes. We often use people we’ve met as springboards for characters, and real-life events are often used in the same way. But the imagination invariably takes over as we write, and the finished novel never has characters or stories that resemble their real-life counterparts. Also, we travel a lot and these travels are reflected in all of the novels, as are our other interests.
When did you live at the Chelsea?
We lived at the Chelsea from the early 1980s (@1983) to 1995, so for more than a decade. We’d given up our apartment on Horatio Street and moved to San Francisco on a whim. Quickly tiring of San Franciso, we moved back to New York and camped out at a German friend’s apartment in the West Village for a while. We had to leave on short notice and remembered that our friend Robert Mapplethorpe (and Patti Smith) had moved into the Chelsea at one point, so we went for a look-see. We took a room by the week for a few weeks, then got an apartment. It wasn’t really something we planned but more of an accident. Funny enough, we’d both known Robert, even before we knew each other, but he didn’t like to visit us at the Chelsea. He hadn’t liked it – it was a difficult time – and had left owing money, he said.
Do you think the Chelsea Hotel has a creative spirit?I won’t guess as to whether the Chelsea itself has a creative spirit or not, but a lot of creative people have passed through its doors for whatever reasons. We certainly got a lot of work done there, and it was something of a comfort to know that other people were slaving away on creative projects upstairs, downstairs, and next door, some more successfully than others. There was a lot of stimulation from some of the people you got to know.
Describe the best/worst thing that happened while you lived at the Chelsea?
The worst thing that ever happend at the Chelsea was, hands down, having the apartment broken in to while we were there asleep in the bedroom. Nick had just flown in from the West Coast and was exhausted, and I had just come home after oral surgery. He left all of his "hard" Louis Vuitton luggage – a ton of it – open in the living room, and I took off my clothes and left them in the living room, with a jeans pocket stuffed with a lot of cash. When we woke up later, somebody had come in and taken all of his luggage – along with all of the clothes in it (mostly custom-made bike leathers) – and taken the wad of cash out of my jeans. To top it off, whoever it was – and we always suspected a bell clerk whose career at the Chelsea was very short-lived – threw up all over our work table – computers, paperwork, etc. The police said that wasn’t unusual, and at least two New York friends asked us if the thief had thrown up or defecated. Our ancient wood door was quickly replaced with a metal one, after a contretemps with Stanley Bard, the manage/owner (also not unusual).
What’s your favorite Hotel Chelsea story?We have so many stories about living at the Chelsea, I can’t even begin to choose a favorite. Despite the problems associated with living in the building – breaking down elevators, poor maintence in general, so many I can’t begin to elaborate! – it became almost like an addiction, and it was nearly two years of living in the country before I no longer missed it, along with the constant drama, although we both detested so much about living there. One thing Nick and I agree on: Stanley is brilliant at choosing tenants. We’ve never figured out how he does it, but he knows what he’s doing. The mix was always fascinating, even if there were disgusting individuals and events, and life there was never dull. I will never forget Viva’s screams! She could shake the skylights from the lobby, and I loved her for it. Or seeing Grace Jones hooded and draped in fur, coming and going to see Richard Bernstein (I really miss him). Or taking the dog out the morning they wheeled Virgil Thomson out on a gurney for the last time (I miss him, too). Or coming home from the grocery store and barely missing being hit by a flying shoe when a woman jumped to her death from the ninth floor and hit the street in front of me. Or screaming bloody murder myself when they were filming Madonna’s sex book down the hall and kept knocking out our electricity while we were ghost-writing for someone very famous. A lot of money and a deadline were involved, but nobody really cared or listened. It was just another typical daily drama at the Chelsea. We loved it and hated it. -
Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine has helpfully provided us with a list of 11 concepts that
have changed the face of the hotel industry in the past few decades. Because we had nothing better to do today, we thought we’d see how our own favorite hotel measures up to the industry standard:1. The Internet. Amazingly, we do have WiFi access. You can connect in the lobby with no problem—besides the threat to your sanity. For seven dollars a night–rather steep in my opinion—they will tell you how to get access in your own room. Though we only got computers at the front desk in 1999—moving into the 20th century at the last possible moment—we didn’t waste much time in offering internet access, presumably because a lot of people wouldn’t rent rooms without it.
2. The celebrity chef. You kidding me? We have one of the finest delis in New York right down the block.3. Better hotel restaurants. I guess we can count the El Quijote. Their food is standard Spanish fare, but it’s pretty tasty, and they always give you a lot to eat.
3. The boutique hotel. Ian Schrager claims to have invented these. Well, he’s wrong.
4. The budget hotel. Ha! Should be cheap, but somehow, strangely, isn’t. Once upon a time our fine establishment was an off-Bowery flophouse. Does that count?5. Easy air travel. Thankfully, the hotel management doesn’t have any control over this. Or do they?
6. The Spa. Well, we used to have a gym, but the guy who ran it just up and left one day. We have a hair salon—April in Room 303 (may as well put in a word for her)—is that close?
7. Eastern European labor. Nothing so exotic for us. Where was Steve, the old engineer, from?
8. The death of stiff service. According to the article, “…service in even the grandest hotels has become a little more unbuttoned and relaxed.” We are clear and away the industry leaders in this category.
9. The high fashion hotel bar. We have Serena’s in the moldy old basement. According to the article, the bar should be a little hard to get in. Although Serena’s is not that trendy anymore, you’re not allowed in at all if they find out you’re from the hotel.
10. The vacuum wine saver. Just get one of those big jugs and drink yourself into a stupor like everybody else around here. If you have any left over it’s just as good the next day.
11. No more single beds. “There can be few more depressing sites on opening a hotel door than a 2ft 6in wide bed overlooking the dustbins,” writes the author, David Harris. Well, you haven’t stayed here yet, buddy.
-
There was a new guy staying next door in the transient room. “I hear him out there,” my girlfriend
Susan said. “Open the door and see what he looks like. Maybe we can interview him for the blog.” It was late at night and she had just settled into bed. I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, since I was tired and ready for bed too, so I waited until I didn’t hear anything outside before I went to take a piss.The guy was still out there, hanging out in the hallway. Short, thin, with gray, close-cropped hair, he eyed me up and down as I stepped out of my door. “Are you something?” he inquired.
“Uh, well, I’m a writer,” I said.
“I’m a writer myself, of a sort. I do ontology. I’m from Tennessee.”
He was an older man, and half-way distinguished looking, so I thought he meant he was a professor there. “You must be in the Philosophy Department,” I said.He clearly didn’t know what I was talking about, but decided he didn’t mind being taken for an academic. “Uh, yeah. I just got back from Hungary. I decided I needed to familiarize myself with western philosophy before I immersed myself in the eastern variety. But you know what, once I started studying, I found out that they were the same thing.
It seemed like an oversimplification to me, but I didn’t feel like getting into it at the moment.“You live here, don’t you?” the philosopher inquired.
“Yeah, 11 years.” Since he was curious, I opened the door and showed him my room. Susan hid her head under the covers.
“Not bad,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, closing the door. I still had to use the restroom, as I headed in that direction.
“Can I live here?” the man asked hopefully.
In the old days, no problem, I thought; he would have fit right in. “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “You’ll have to talk to Stanley Bard. It’s pretty expensive these days.”
“I saw a bag lady in the hall. She can’t be paying much, if anything.”
“Well, you’re probably right about that. But she’s been here 30 years.”
“I’m going down to the Spanish bar next door for a drink,” he said. He seemed to be inviting me to come along.
“The El Quijote,” I said. “Say hello to Santi for me.”
The philosopher left a Hungarian bill on the bathroom sink when he checked out. A tip for the maids? I left the bill tacked to his door in case he came back looking for it. (Ed Hamilton)
-
Monday, July 3, dusk
If you haven’t seen director Robert Altman’s first studio feature, M*A*S*H, in a while here’s your chance. About a month ago we met Altman’s charming wife Kathryn at a party here at the Chelsea Hotel.
Bryant Park, Note: The lawn opens at 5pm. Though the film won’t begin until dusk (between 8 and 9pm), arrive early for a good seat. FREE.Tuesday, July 4, 10:30 p.m.
After the fireworks, Susanne Bartsch and Kenny Kenny invite you to Happy Valley Tuesdays. Hosts: Sophia Lamar, Miranda Moondust, Kim Aviance, Theodora and Amanda Lepore. Show: Julie Atlas Mews & Stars and Stripes
14 East 27th St., NY NYWednesday, July 5, 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
The Lost Weekend. (1945) Failed writer Ray Milland hits the sauce and bottom in Wilder’s first Best
Picture Oscar-winner. Famous sequences include the bat and mouse hallucination and a desperate search for a drink on Yom Kippur (filmed on Third Ave. locations). The Lost Weekend is based on the bestselling novel by former Hotel Chelsea resident Charles Jackson. Jackson took an overdose of sleeping pills in the Chelsea in 1968.
Film Forum, 209 West Houston, NY NYThursday, July 6, 11:00 a.m.
Catch the encore broadcast of Gerald Busby’s weekly Internet radio show, Collaborations.
www.tribecaradio.netFriday, July 7, 11:00 – 6:00
If you didn’t make it to Coney Island this past weekend that’s ok. You can stay close to home
and get a feel for the amusement park. This summer, Ricco/Maresca Gallery will present original drawings, blueprints, and vintage photographs of New York City’s favorite amusement park, Coney Island. Never before has this collection been on exhibit to the public. The show closes August 19.
Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor NY NYIf you have a relevant event you want featured on All Tomorrow’s Parties e-mail the information to chelblog@yahoo.com
-
Six young guys are trying to check into the Hotel Chelsea late on Saturday night of Pride Weekend.
Desk clerk: Two beds for four men, not six! Not six men for two beds. [Pause] That’s a different hotel!
–Hotel Chelsea, W. 23rd St (via Overheardinnewyork.com)
-
Here is a random survey of Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches that brought people to the blog this week. A search for David Bard, but not Stanley Bard? If only we knew what was on their minds. In any event, at least this tells us what sort of topics readers of the blog are interested in: death, music, books, hot babes, fake watchs, celebrities and rent. Pretty much the same crap that we’re interested in writing about.
Famous Spanish suicide in the Chelsea Hotel
Hot Babes in New York
David Bard Chelsea HotelHow to tell if a Movado watch is fake
ethan hawke favorite novel look homeward angel
Chelsea Hotel Deaths
Guitar Store Next to Chelsea HotelWork + Live + Chelsea + Rent
Spanish suicide? If anybody has any information about this, please drop us a line.
-
A recent Chelsea Hotel guest visiting from Atlanta Ga was a little disappointed. (via tripadvisor.com) God knows there are plenty of things to be disappointed about around here, but this lady seems to have got off easy:
I had a bad feeling when I booked our room at the Chelsea Hotel. I was given a confirmation number but not an email stating what we had discussed (my error, get your confirmation in writing). I reserved a queen bed and told them my son would be with me. Stanley, the manager, said he was giving me a "deal" for $225 a night. When I asked about the cancellation policy. Stanley said indignantely, "Why would you want to cancel, I just gave you a deal at $225 a night!"
When we arrived at the Chelsea, Stanley was yelling on the phone to a customer. This incident was upsetting for my son. He then went on to say, I did not book a "double" and I could have two double beds for $275/night. When I explained he had quoted me $225, he said "the city is full, you can do what you want, but a double is $275". Well, I had just called three other hotels and they were booked, so I had no options. I was charged an extra $50 a night for my 9 year old son.
What, not even any junkies in the bathroom? Seems like she booked a single and then wanted to upgrade to a double. She probably thinks it’s like the Holiday Inn where it would just be the same size room with another bed in it. Here, she probably got a much bigger room for only $50 more. Actually, if you read her review, this lady does have one valid complaint. She mentions that her room was filthy. For $275.00 per night you should get a clean room.Here’s Cara and all she’s got to complain about is that she couldn’t get a hairdryer! This is not a Holiday Inn. This is the most famous hotel in the world. What do these people expect.
Our hotel, the Hotel Chelsea. Couldn’t miss the chance to stay at a place famous for its past residents (lots of writers and other artists). Plus, it’s the same hotel where Sid allegedly killed Nancy. Only complaint: no hairdryer. Atmosphere is cool, but for the price of the room, give me a freakin’ hairdryer.
