Living with Legends

Linda Troeller sent us these photos of a fire which occurred at about 1:30 a.m. Friday, May 26.  The photos were taken from the 9th floor of the Hotel Chelsea.  Who has more details?

            Susan and I toured the Y Building last Sunday, or at least part of it.  There was a design show in the 11-million-dollar loft condo on the seventh floor—you know, where they used to have the basketball courts and the running track, back in the good ol’ days.
            Since the ceiling was so high, they had split the space up into two levels.  Most of the design stuff looked to be on the second level, but since I really just cared about the living space, I started wandering around on the first level, through small rooms filled with junk.  Pretty soon a design girl came running after me: “Don’t go upstairs!  There’s a naked model up there!”
            “That won’t bother me,” I said.
            “Yes, but the model might not like it,” she said.
            Susan was already upstairs, so I figured they didn’t care what she did.  “I’ll just look around down here,” I said, as the girl went about her business.  I turned the corner and there was the model—not naked, as advertised, but wearing a thong and a bra.  “Excuse me,” I said, though she didn’t seem to mind.  I wish I would have thought to take a picture for the blog.
            At that moment the design girl came running after me again, this time really hysterical: “I meant downstairs!  Downstairs! Don’t go downstairs!”
            Well, ha ha! I thought.  “I wondered about that,” I said.
            The huge space was unfinished, with concrete floors, and they hadn’t cleaned up very well.  There was an exposed steel beam that someone had painted hot pink, and I thought that was a nice touch, about the only good thing about the space, which was split up in an unaesthetic way.  For so large a space, there weren’t even that many windows.
            I really didn’t pay much attention to the design show and none of the people in charge said anything to either Susan or myself about it.  The show didn’t seem to have a theme: just a bunch of disparate, uninteresting crap.  In the high-ceilinged main room on the first level there was a TV showing some kind of boring design images, and a few glass cases containing shiny baubles.
            A scratched-up Plexiglas balcony on the second level overlooked the lower level.  You mounted to the second level on a concrete staircase, and walked right into—the kitchen!  The kitchen was unusable, with vast distances between the requisite Sub-zero appliances, and sported a black lacquer counter that looked as if it was designed to sit thirty people.  I didn’t get it.  It had to have been some sort of ironic demonstration kitchen—though why they’d spend all that money on it is beyond me.  Off to the left of this mega-kitchen were plastic pools of blood and of pitch mounted on white platforms—to what effect I didn’t inquire, though I suppose it was meant to be art.  To the right of the kitchen was a filthy cubbyhole that must have been meant to be an office.  Oh, and lest I forget: lining the kitchen counter were red candles in red holders, and when you got close you saw that the holders were part of the candles, made of wax as well, that is.  Pretty clever, eh?  Trompe L’oeil and all that.  It was the high point of the show.
            Also upstairs, around to the front of the building, there was a dingy and depressing home theatre room, with dirty black couches that looked like they had been drug in off the street.  A narrow staircase with cheesy, wood-paneled walls (which had to be ironic, once again!) led to a cramped and uninteresting sleeping alcove, perhaps intended for a disaffected teen.  Or, better yet, to lock up a mother-in-law whom you really, really hate.
            In short, everything about the place was strangely impersonal, like a residence for robots or androids—and not even androids with good taste.  The space itself was starkly industrial, and reminded me of a disc
ount outlet mall on the order of, say, Filene’s Basement.  It turned out there were good views, but you really had to search for them: the windows were hidden, placed in the little rooms off the main room.  Anyone who moves in will obviously have to gut the whole place to have a chance of making it even remotely livable.  It’s been on the market for a while now, and so far no takers: I’m sure 11 million (plus, say, another few million or so for the necessary renovations) will get you a lot more elsewhere—like on Park Avenue or anywhere else in the world.  Oh yeah, you’d have to be one daffy-assed yuppie to buy this place.
            A back stairwell of rough concrete was filled with moldering food trash for several levels down.  The building should be up and running, but it seems nearly empty.  There was however, at least one resident, as evidenced by the backed-up newspapers in the trash-strewn basement lobby, through which the rich yuppies were apparently intended to scurry into the building like rats.  This one unsuspecting resident is probably looking for a better place.  If I paid 11 million, or even 1 million, I would demand to enter through the real lobby, which is currently home to the David Barton Gym.  All of which makes me suspect that this building is some sort of tax write-off or other scam.  (It also makes me wonder about all those new condo buildings on Sixth Avenue—are they likewise uninhabited?)  The board of the Y should be ashamed of themselves: screwing the community for this!  (Ah, but we’ve all been through that, and moved on.  Anyway, just for the record, may the flames of hell consume them.)
            When we were leaving the young design people made us sit down for a picture, which they subsequently put up on their website—probably to let us know that we will be tracked down and punished if we dare to write bad reviews.  They will probably desecrate our picture with Photoshop now, give me horns and a tail–or something even more obscene–if they are as immature as I am.