Living with Legends

Hotel Chelsea Blog

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  • Tourist of the Week: Randi Marx

    Randi Marx has a long and deep felt connection with the Chelsea vibe.  In the 80’s, she published an Randi alternative newspaper "23rd Street," which featured interviews with members of the bands that she loved, including The Ramones and The Sex Pistols.  Now, she’s busy painting images of the Chelsea.

    What do you do?
    I’m an artist

    When did you stay at the Chelsea?
    My first visit was way back in the summer of 1981. My last visit was October 9-15, 2005.  It rained and rained and rained ohmigod, I thought it would never stop…then I tried to find the symbolism in it, and I figured out how water symbolizes the subconscious.   I paint colors flowing in liquid all the time, and I’m a water sign.  I don’t know exactly what it all means, but it was a wonderful thought at the time.

    What brought you to the Chelsea?
    Sid, Nancy, and Dee Dee Ramone

    When you last visited, had things changed drastically from the first time you visited?
    Yes. And no.  First big change I noticed were the big black and white checked tiles in the halls were gone.  The lobby was a different color.  The furniture was different.  The big glass over the desk gone.  The phone booths were still there, the elevators were cleaner but in the same places. The lobby-to-first-floor stairwell still there.  The big black heavy doors were still in the middle hallways, most of them, I think were the same doors.  I hated that scaffolding all over the outside.  I even notice the dry cleaners is still across the street!  And I loved the art store was right across the street. I don’t remember that being there before.  Sitting in the lobby, it felt different, which I didn’t like at first. But later, it got better.  However, being deep within the heart, in the halls, it felt the same.


    Do you think the Chelsea Hotel has a creative spirit?
    I think some of the people who are creative bring the spirit into the hotel and it is receptive.  Being there opens some people up, the ones who believe and plug in.  But it’s a two-way street.  Just going there isn’t going to give you anything you don’t already have.

    How has the hotel influenced your art?
    It didn’t until last year.  Now I draw the halls–the extra color and flavor I feel in the halls.  I’m trying to capture that.  I’m very surprised at the outcome.  I can’t help but credit the Chelsea in helping me…the Chelsea and my Guides who are/were there.

    What’s the best/worst thing that has happened to you at the Chelsea?
    I’ve actually only had good things happen.  I guess the worst thing would be when I have to pay Stanley the bill!! Yeow.

    (more…)

  • Now That We’re Paying For It, Can We Touch The Art

                When we ran a piece about art hotels recently, a publicist (I assume) from a hotel in Louisville, my former hometown, wrote to make sure we knew about the art hotel there.  He or she wanted us to Pichotel know that theirs was not one of those phony, faux-bohemian art hotels I was ridiculing, but rather an authentic, one-of-a-kind, honest-to-goodness art hotel.
                Well, of course they all say that.  The publicist didn’t seem to get the point of my piece.  I wasn’t making fun of these places because they claim to be phony Chelsea Hotels, with their art admittedly dumbed down for the masses.  I was making fun of them because they claim to be the real deal.
                The hotel in question is called, in a supreme flight of imaginative brainstorming, 21C Museum Hotel, and the name itself tells you pretty much all you need to know about the place: there will be art of some sort in the lobby, and in the restaurant, and much cheaper art in the rooms.
                The June issue of Travel + Leisure Magazine included an instructive article that discussed the funding of the hotel and it tipped me off to what may be driving this new trend.  Basically, if you call your business a “museum,” that means it’s a charitable institution of some sort, right?  Now I’m no expert on such things, but it seems that, somehow or other, the financial risk involved in starting such a “business” is bound to be considerably lessened, probably at tax-payer expense.
                So, after all, maybe it’s less consumer demand than “owner demand” that’s at work here.  Judging from the number of starving artists living in the Chelsea, I didn’t think that there were that many people actually interested in art. 
                The owner of the 21C is a guy named Steve Wilson, described as a philanthropist and art collector.  He and his wife, Laura Lee Brown—whose family sells liquor—have apparently donated their Ten-million dollar art collection to the hotel, er, museum.  Usually, when rich people donate art to museums, they write it off on their taxes.  Though the article makes it hard to tell if that’s what’s happening here, it does say that, “Historic preservation tax credits helped offset some of the cost, and the city pitched in a $1.7 million starter grant.”
                I think our illustrious proprietor, Stanley Bard, would be well advised look into this angle.  Change the name of this place to the Chelsea Museum and we’re in business!  Or out of business.  Whatever.  And then he can give us a break on our rent!
                Anyway, this 21C hotel scam is part of Louisville’s latest efforts to revitalize its downtown ghost town.  In the seventies they had the River City Mall, then in the eighties they had the Galleria, and now it’s the Cast Iron District, or whatever they call it.  The first two schemes worked for awhile and then the novelty wore off, and the latest scheme is doomed to end up the same.  Revitalization, if it ever comes, is going to come from the bottom up, with people of all income levels living and working downtown.  They should have given Wilson $1.7 million to start an all-night deli. (Check out the cutting edge performance art.) Ed Hamilton

  • Capitol Fishing Tackle Co. Moving

    Capitolfishing Last month we heard rumors that the fishing store was moving.  Today’s issue of the New York Post sheds some light on the reason for the move.  "Chelsea Hotel’s shareholders also want to create one large retail unit."  The store has been at this location for over 35 years. (Photo: forgotten-ny.com)  Elvert Barnes has some recent photos on his site.

  • Eloise at the Chelsea

    In the following list, choose the item that doesn’t belong: Plaza, St. Moritz, Sherry-Netherland, Pierre, Eightbike Ritz-Carlton, Regency, Carlyle, Hotel Chelsea.
         I just read an article in Travel+Leisure magazine that purports to be searching for real-life Eloises – you know, kids who grew up in hotels. The Plaza had Eloise, and we had, who, Sid?  As you might suspect it’s an article about people who are so rich and spoiled they make you long for the return of Robespierre, and it’s humorous to see denizens of the Hotel Chelsea mentioned in the same context.
         Amenities you can expect from a luxury residential hotel include: 24 hour room serivce, house phones, valet service, shoe shines & mini-bars!  Well, we do have phones at the Chelsea. Ask Stanley Bard about room service and he’ll tell you that the best deli in all of Manhattan is two doors down.
         The lawyer/author Michael Rips and his family are profiled as typical Chelsea Hotel residents.  Our favorite part of the story was when his daughter, Nicolaia, was once assigned to do a paper on the British Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, he sent her down to the lobby to do research.  Amazingly, she was not abducted and sold into white slavery, but came back with pages of notes.
         When describing how he go into the Chelsea, Michael says he needed a recommendation.  Most of us get by with a note from our psychiatrist.  "We all represent different aspects of Stanley’s mind," he says.  I knew I was in somebody’s dream, I just always thought it was my own. (Ed Hamilton)

  • No Room for Stanley Bard’s Long Lost Son

    The two desk clerks were laughing when I came in, though one of them, Morgan, was laughing the loudest.  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

    “Henry just said a transvestite came in last night and said he was Stanley Bard’s son,” Morgan said.

    When I heard that I cracked up too.

    “So what did he look like?” Morgan asked Henry.

    “He was tall,” Henry said, indicating with his hand. 

    “Was he dressed in women’s clothes?” Morgan asked. 

    “No, but he had on all the makeup and everything.” 

    “Did he look like Stanley ?” I asked.
              Henry seemed to be tiring of the interrogation.  “Well, he was the same color.”

    “I wouldn’t just dismiss it out of hand,” I said.

    “Yeah, you never can tell what kind of weird shit goes on around this place,” Morgan said.  “You’d have to get a DNA test to rule it out.”

    “He didn’t have one of those,” Henry said, irritably.

    “Are you sure it wasn’t just David?” I asked, naming Stanley’s actual, known son.
              “No!  I know what David looks like!”

    “So did you give him a room?” I asked. 

    “Joe talked to him.  He was going to rent him one, but I guess he didn’t like the price, so he went away.”

    “I’m gonna call Joe right now and ask him about this!” Morgan exclaimed, snatching up the phone.

    I didn’t wait around to hear from Joe.  “Hard to believe you can’t even get a decent rate when you’re the owner’s son,” I said.  (Copyright 2006 Ed Hamilton)

  • All Tomorrow’s Parties: June 12 – 18, 2006

    Tuesday, June 13, 10:30 p.m.
    Susanne Bartsch & Kenny Kenny invite you to Happy Valley Tuesday.
    14 East 27th St. NY NY

    WednRufus_posteresday & Thursday, June 14 & 15, 8:00 p.m.
    Rufus Wainwright will revisit Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall. In an earlier interview Rufus talks about living at the Chelsea — "One of my best friends in the world lived there and still lives there, which is, his name is Zaldi. He’s not known that well in the music world, but in the fashion world, he’s very well known, he designs all of Gwen Steffani’s dresses and he’s this amazing character that’s very well known in New York. Also the Ramone that died was living there, the one that just died of an overdose, I can’t remember his name. Not Joey, he died after Joey. The one with the grey hair. He was there. The interesting way that I got into the hotel, was that I was living with Leonard Cohen’s daughter, Lorca in LA and we both came to New York together and we both stayed in the Chelsea, and she turned to me one day and said, ‘You know, my Dad lived here for a long time’, and I said, ‘Oh really’, and she said, ‘Maybe you should live here, we should go talk to the manager.’ So I went down with her and said, ‘This is Leonard’s daughter, her Dad lived here,’ and that was sort of an ‘in’ to get in…"   Carnegie Hall, 57th St., & 7th Ave., NY NY

    Wednesday, June 14, 7:00 p.m.
    Burlesque Room Productions offers an exclusive night at Serena Bar & Lounge. Party alongside with some of the most attractive women and men NYC has to offer. The infamous duo DJ THIS AND DJ THAT (The Loathesome couple) will be spinning originals throughout the night to get everyone going-80’s/Electronica/Ambient/Trip Hop.
    Serenas, Underneath The Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd NY NY

    Thursday, June 15, Two sets…7:30 and 10:00
    SUIT & Anders Bramsen will be taking part in the Little Fury Things Records show at Monkeytown.
    SUSuitabIT — Nathan Howe and Roland Toledo met while studying Urban Design/Landscape Architecture in Pennsylvania, while exchanging presentation techniques of glamorized landscapes. And that’s exactly what their music sounds like!  Anders Bramsen will be providing three short videos for SUIT.  Bramsen’s work spews forth from situations where personal isolation, surreal fantasies, adventures, violence and aggressive rawness conspire together.
    MonkeyTown, 58 N 3rd St, (btw. Kent & Wythe), Williamsburg, Brooklyn $5

    Tuesday – Friday 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Saturday 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
    Rmself_1 Robert Mapplethorpe/Andy Warhol: Celebrity Portraits gives us an opportunity to juxtapose the artists’ portraits of each other, as well as both artists’ images of celebrities such as Grace Jones, Keith Haring, Deborah Harry, Roy Lichtenstein, Francesco Clemente and Truman Capote.
    Sean Kelly Gallery, 528 West 29th St., NY NY

    Sunday, June 18, 7:00 p.m.
    Anders Bramsen’s short film "Le Mis Popote, (The Erroneous Earth Kitchen) will be screened.
    Galapagos Art Space, 70 North 6th St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

    If you have an event you would like featured please e-mail chelblog@yahoo.com

  • Who Jumped Down The Stairwell?

    Over on Flickr a recent visitor to the Hotel Chelsea recalls an intriguing conversation she had with one of our neighbors. don’t jump! that’s what the man said as i was taking this (photo). he lives at the chelsea. says two others have jumped. one was successful, the other not. ‘he was a murderer and went to jail’ said the man.

    We too have heard that there have been several people to jump down the stairwell over the years.  We’ve identified one, Hugh Pearson who lived.  We heard a rumor that the club kid Michael Alig, who murdered Angel Melendez, was either pushed or jumped over the stairwell.  He lived, of course, so maybe he’s the murderer.  If you have other guesses, send them in.

  • Stanley Bard Couldn’t Have Dreamed This One Up

    As you may know, our blog was profiled in The New York Times City Section this past Sunday. Teresa Klein from the Blog Business Summit was on top of the story, and called Stanley Bard to get his opinion on "Living with Legends."  Judging from his quote, we think Stanely is softening up on the notion of blogs and that he’ll offer to buy the blog any day now!  We’re reprinting the article below, with commentary where called for:

    The Hotel Chelsea bills itself as “a rest stop for rare individuals.” The idiosyncratic hotel, which has been home to Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, and Dylan Thomas among others, serves both long-term residents and short-term guests, and business is booming.

    “We’re the busiest small hotel in the city,” Chelsea manager and owner Stanley Bard told me. “The whole world knows about us.”  (Stanley isn’t kidding.  This blog has an international readership.  We’re especially big in Europe.)

    The hotel, which was built in 1884 as a cooperative apartment complex, entered the 21st century a year ago. That’s when long-term residents Debbie Martin and Ed Hamilton began working on Living with Legends, a blog about the Chelsea’s past and present. Now, that blog is bringing the hotel even more attention.

    “I don’t know whether I want blogs or logs or what I’ve got here,” said Bard. “I just want nice people to come and stay at this hotel.” (That’s what Stanley said to us recently: "I want some nice people to volunteer for a rent increase." Seriously, though, a lot of the nice people who stay here have blogs, and an even larger number read them.  Tourist’s blogs have been a rich source of material for us.)

    And while the venue is absolutely turning a profit, it’s not a marketing plan that makes it so successful. It’s the dedicated following, the characters and the history that keep people coming back. That’s why a blog is perfect for an establishment such as this.

    And in this case, it’s probably even better for the Chelsea that the blog isn’t an official piece of the hotel’s business puzzle. Bard couldn’t have dreamed up a better marketing plan if he’d tried. After all, it’s the residents that make the Chelsea unique in all the world. (You got that right! That’s what attracts people to the hotel: the fact that it’s not a boring Holiday Inn.  Anyone coming to the Chelsea looking for standard accommodations is bound to be disappointed.)  (via blogbusinesssummit)

  • Valerie Solanas Back at the Chelsea, Sort of

    Last year, on June 8, we interviewed Swedish author Sara Stridsberg.  Sara was passing through the Saravalerie 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 Valerie and retyping the Manifesto.

    Betinna, one of our neighbors, told us that Sara’s book about Valerie is Dromfakultetennow available. A couple of Sara’s friends recently stayed at the Chelsea and brought Betinna a copy of the book as a gift from the author. According to Betinna, the book has a chapter about the Chelsea.  Now, if  only we could find someone to translate for us.

    Here’s the interview.
    What do you do?
    I´m a writer and Malin Arnell is a visual artist. Right now we´re travelling in the footsteps of Valerie Solanas to celebrate her work.

    Why did you choose to visit the Chelsea?
    We´re staying at Chelsea hotel to retype her manifesto since she wrote it there 30 years ago.

    Why did you choose to write a novel about Valerie Solanas?
    The reason why I choose to write this novel about her is not clear to me. It started when I translated the manifesto into Swedish. I think that I was touched by the huge gap between the manifesto and her life, and also moved by the fundamental lack of connections with the "real" world in her life…  All I wanted to do was to to talk to her… the bitchy brilliant baglady…

    What is your favorite Chelsea Hotel story?
    That must be Valerie writing her brilliant manifesto in the hotel and being a pain in everybody´s ass in the lobby. She taught us everything about not being "Daddy´s Girls", even if we still very much are Daddy´s Girls.

  • Andrei Codrescu Visits the Chelsea

    Andreicodrescu_50Well 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 the blog.  Andrei’s Exquisite Corpse, a peerless journal of edgy and experimental writing, was one of the first magazines to publish Ed’s work, way back in 1993.

    CHELSEA HOTEL NOTES
    By Andrei Codrescu

         It was sleeting and evening was falling on West 23rd Street when Laura and I stepped out on the balcony of the Chelsea Hotel for a smoke. You can’t smoke in New York anymore, but this is the Chelsea where poets die, Syd Vicious killed his girlfriend, the walls are covered by paintings artists left instead of payment, and smoke is what connects the stories.
         We watched a lit window on the second floor across the street. Old people kept arriving intoGreen  the frame, hanging up their coats and checking out their hair in an invisible mirror. A woman passed a comb quickly through a close-cropped silver top.
         “What do you s’ppose is going on?”     asked Laura
         “Communist party meeting,” I said
         I don’t know what made me say it, maybe the way the elders hung their coats, briskly, or the unaffected, efficient vanity.
         “They look well dressed, maybe it’s a meeting of the theosophical society,”     speculated Laura, “Rudolph Steiner people, maybe.”  (Photo – The Communist Building)
        So I had to find out. I put on my coat and dove through traffic. I walked right in the front door, went up the stairs — and found a loud meeting hall full of close-jammed tables. There was a huge buffet and full bar, and a guy in Santa hat. A banner over a small stage said NO WAR FOR OIL. I walked up to a table covered with various items payable by “donation,” things like buttons of raised fists, and tee-shirts, one of which depicted Che Guevara and another the Young Communist League logo, "80 years of struggle" followed by a website address. Bingo. The Young Communist League was hosting a late Christmas dinner for old communists. They elders were having a mighty good time, arguing all the way from the buffet line to the table, keeping up what I imagine was a conversation that had started sometime in the 19th century – at about the same time the Chelsea Hotel began hosting bohemians.
         “Theosophists, nothing,” I told Laura, showing her a tee-shirt.
         She was impressed. We scanned the street. The YMCA on the corner (where Truman Capote set the start of “Answered Prayers,”    ) a dry cleaners, a tailor (“alterations”), a candy store, a fancy furniture designer, an organic juice bar, an old-fashioned beauty parlor. This was the heart of old Chelsea, the Chelsea still here, being quickly surrounded by the new, ultra-chic art scene escaping from the prices of Soho real estate. It was the ten or so seconds between worlds, the old one hanging up its coat, the new one putting up its feet. Old commies and bohemians never say die, except when they do, and then they only do it literally. The conversation keeps going. Some of the elders looked like they’d fought in the Spanish Civil War and some of the Chelsea Hotel residents were surely veterans of the culture wars – a lot of casualties but no letup in the utopia biz.
        The wintry street telescoped through history like a metaphysical strudel. Outside the meeting hall, some of the elders were smoking.

    All Things Considered, Feb. 3, 2003.