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Hotel Chelsea Blog

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  • All Tomorrow’s Parties – April 24 – 30, 2006

    Kb_1 Tuesday, April 25, 10:30 p.m.
    Susanne Bartsch and Kenny Kenny invite you to celebrate Kembra at Happy Valley Tuesdays. DJ Alexander Technique & Princess Superstar. donwstairs: DJ Ryan; Show: Kembra from the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Hosts: Sophia Lamar, Kim Aviance, Miranda Moondust, Andrea, Theodora, and Amanda LePore.
    14 East 27 St., NY NY

    Wednesday, April 26, 4:00 p.m.
    Nobel Prize-winning writer Derek Walcott will give a reading and discussion of his work.  A reception will follow the reading
    Point Park University, Lawrence Hall, Pittsburgh, PA

    Thursday, April 27,
    Psself An exhibit of Patti Smith’s work is on view until May 6 at the Glasgow International Art Festival. (Self Portrait shown)

    Friday, April 28, 10:00 – 4:00
    Andy Warhol and the Corporate World is on display until July 1.  The exhibit features his ad work and several commissioned portraits.
    Forbes Galleries, 52 Fifth Ave., NY NY

    Saturday, April 29, 9:00 PM
    Howl for 50 Years. A half century after its first publication by City Lights Books, poets and writers from many countries celebrate one of the founding documents of the global counterculture and honor Allen Ginsberg’s lifelong commitment to freedom of expression. (FREE)
    The New School Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th St, NY NY

    Sunday, April 30, 1:00 – 6:00 p.m.
    The Tribeca Open Artists Studio Tour offers a rare opportunity to visit the lofts and studios of Cjcollins20studio06 working artists.  Last year, we visited the loft of a painter who, upon learning that we lived at the Chelsea, confided in us that the Chelsea Hotel was where she had carried on a love affair for many years.  The year before, we met an interesting artist who never left his studio after 9/11.  He hid under his bed when they came to ask residents to leave because he was afraid that his landlord would take control of his rent-stablized studio if he left. C.J. Collins, whose work is pictured on the left, always has an interesting display, plus wine and snacks.

  • Chelsea Hotel Newsmakers

    The Villager reports on the opening of the Water Museum.  The opening, which coincided with the United Nations World Water Day, featured water-related art and interactive displays from several West Chelsea galleries.  The Water Museum is the brainchild of Asher Shomrone, who grew up here in the hotel.

    Acccording to resident fashioninista Sally Singer:
    "Fashionwise, it’s not a bad time to be pregnant," says Sally Singer, the fashion news director at Vogue.

    "For a lot of older women, the stiletto has been the governing idea of elegance," explains Vogue‘s fashion news editor Sally Singer, "but a slightly sturdier shoe would make some of them look hipper…"
    The David Barton Gym is one of the few places you can purchase your first tranny doll.

    The June issue of Travel + Leisure will feature Chelsea Hotel residents Michael Rips and Shelia Berger in an article about living in hotels. 

    Movie featuring Ethan Hawke will compete for the top prize at Cannes.

    Patti Smith reveals "…that not only does she carry a large-print bible whenever she travels, but in case it might need spiritual sustenance her guitar shares its case with an ancient leather bound copy of the holy book, too."

  • Hotel Carteret

    When people get thrown out of the Chelsea they sometimes land next door at the Carteret building.  And you can often find denizens of the Carteret hanging out in the lobby of the Chelsea as well.  The 164_1 Carteret does however have one amenity of which we all at the Chelsea are envious: a laundry room in the basement.  All we have is an overpriced night club with a doorman who won’t let us in anyway. If you didn’t score that brochure of the Hotel Chelsea which was available on e-bay last week maybe you can acquire this undated postcard of the Hotel Carteret. You can see the Hotel Chelsea to the right.

  • Begging for Change at the Chelsea Hotel

    Noted advocate Robert Egger, the founder of DC Central Kitchen and author of "Begging for Change," was recently a guest at the RobertbookHotel Chelsea. He had this to say about the hotel on his blog, "but I was staying at the Chelsea Hotel on my recent romp through NYC… it’s a real creative hole in the wall, and I do mean HOLE. But, if you ever stroll past 7th Avenue and w 23rd, walk a few yards down the road and take a gander at that old stack of bricks and imagine all those folks walking through her front doors."  In an interview with this blog he reveals, surprise, suprise, that he knows all about our little vortex!

    What do you do? I run the DC Central Kitchen, which is a little like City Harvest in NY, but we added a job training angle. I was in NY to speak at a gathering that the Better Business Bureau had put together to discuss nonprofit accountability and impact.
    How’d you become involved in advocating against poverty? I ran both punk and jazz nightclubs in DC during the 80’s, when homeless folks really began to appear on the streets in numbers too big to ignore, so I volunteered to serve meals to folks that slept on the steam grates around the federal enclave. After my first night out, I wondered where the food came from (they bought it) and why we didn’t do anything to help people after we fed them, so I proposed that they collect the unserved food from restaurants, hotels and caterers, bring it to a central kitchen and train folks for jobs while they prepared meals for shelters, drug treatment centers, senior programs, etc…Nobody would do it, so I ended up starting the Kitchen back in 89…and the rest is, as they say, history.

    Was your most recent visit to the Chelsea your first?
    No…I stayed there in the early 80’s, when a group of us came up to NY for the premiere of Koyaanisqatsi.  God bless it, it hasn’t changed at all.

    Did it live up to your expectations?
    It did then, and it did again….there is only ONE Chelsea Hotel!!!!

    What inspired you to stay at the Chelsea?
    I needed a dose of the air you can only breathe there. A stay at the Chelsea is not without it’s rough edges, but the connection with bold thinkers, creative genius or just flat out fuck-ups is just too much to pass up, even if the stays are 10-20 or 30 years apart.

    Do you think that there is a creative energy at the Chelsea?
    There are three great vortexes in the US….Joshua Tree, Graceland and the Chelsea. No lifetime is complete without a pilgrimage to each.

    What’s the best/worst thing that happened to you at the Chelsea?
    They both happened at the same time…I was asked…”Hey, do you still sell crack” by a homeless guy as I walked out the door. It made me laugh out loud, but I always hate to see folks who are left out and living on the streets.

    Did you have any star-sightings?
    Moving too fast to check this time around. But there was a great punk kid with a wicked blue mohawk getting his mom to take his picture taken out front when I arrived. I bet he’ll be famous one day.

    What’s your favorite Chelsea Hotel story?
    Sid and Nancy….love kills.

  • Hotel Bloggers — Much Ado About Nothing

    Over at USA Today’s Hotel HotSheets blog, they point to the increasing number of corporate hotel blogs. Ever vigilant in following our competition, here are Eyedunnoa couple of blogs that USA Today missed — Hooters in Las Vegas and Isle of Eriska, a Scottish hotel.  Apparently we need to increase the number of stories that we write about junkies and roaches because USA Today writes that the Hotel Chelsea blog is generated by the hotel.  "Once the domain of journalists, travel writers and folks with a good chunk of time on their hands, the hotel blogosphere has had a few more entries lately, and these come from the hotels themselves. I told you about the Chelsea Hotel blog recently, but Apple Hotels in NYC has a blog now, focused on travel to and around Manhattan. It’s obviously not for a wide audience, but if you’re heading to NYC, it’s worth a look." (Source: USA Today Hotel Hotsheets)

    Also this week, an article in The Wall Street Journal reports that "Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. is the first major hotel company to make the leap into the blogosphere with a new Web log called TheLobby.com." 

  • My Name Is Earl At The Chelsea

    I was coming into the hotel the other day, when who should I run into checking in at the front desk but that EarlEarl guy from "My Name is Earl."  I nodded to him, and then I stood there waiting for the elevator, but I noticed that that Earl guy kept staring at me.  What, is he waiting for me to acknowledge him, I wondered, to ask, hey, aren’t you that Earl guy?  Maybe even ask for his autograph or something? Well, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.  The elevator came, and, with Earl still staring at me, I got on and went up.  It wasn’t until I got to about the third floor that I realized, hey, I know why he was staring at me: it’s because I’m carrying this 5 foot tall painting that I just found in the trash.  I’m sure he was thinking, wow, there’s one of those crazy Chelsea artists I’ve been hearing so much about; the bohemian weirdness is starting already.

    When I got to the eight floor I told a bohemina girl about my recent star sighting, but she seemed more interested in the painting.  (Ed Hamilton)

  • All Tomorrow’s Parties – April 17 – 23

    Monday, April 17, 8:00 pm
    4057_howlcover Celebrate National Poetry Month and the 50th Anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem "Howl" with Mark Doty, Ann Douglas, Margo Jefferson, Philip Lopate, Rick Moody, and Jason Shinder.
    Miller Theatre, Columbia University, 2960 Broadway NY NY

    Tuesday, April 18, 10:30 p.m.
    Susanne Bartsch & Kenny Kenny invite you to celebrate at Happy Valley Tuesdays.
    14 East 27 St. NY NY

    Thursday, April 20, Opening Reception
    Maywilson2May Wilson – the woman under whose bed Valerie Solanas stored the gun she used to shoot Andy Warhol – is one of the artists whose work is to be included in "Constellation".  Wilson was also the subject of a 1969 documentary – Woo Who? May Wilson.   A small full-color catalog accompanies "Constellation" with essays by Vince Aletti, Peter Frank, Sur Rodney (Sur), Robert M. Murdock and William S. Wilson. (via www.warholstars.org)
    Pavel Zoubok Gallery, 533 West 23rd St., NY NY


    Friday, April 21
    On display until May 20 at the Daniel Reich Gallery is SCOLI ACOSTA ‘…Day was to fall, as night was to break..’ Based on the play between dawn and dusk in the Terrence Mallik film Badlands (1973), Acosta’s …day was to fall as night was to break… portrays the American landscape in ways both metaphoric and realistic.
    DANIEL REICH GALLERY – 537 W 23 ST NY NY

    Saturday, April 22, 8:30 p.m.
    Z_bern Former Chelsea Hotel guest Dan Bern will be performing along with Kaki King.  If you’re lucky he’ll perform "Chelsea Hotel," one of my favorites.
    Carnegie Hall, 154 W. 57th St. NY NY

    If you have a relevant event that you would like featured in "All Tomorrow’s Parties," please e-mail the information to chelblog@yahoo.com.

  • A Lesson For This Sunday

    Click here to hear Derek Walcott read "A Lesson For This Sunday."  Walcott, for those of you who are out of the poetry loop, has received numerous awards and honors for his work including the Nobel Prize for Literature.  He’s also a former resident of the Hotel Chelsea.  If you’re in the Pittsburgh area mark your calendar.  Walcott will be reading at Point Park University on April 24.

  • An Unrepenant Chelseaphile

    It wasRs last Spring when we first met Robert and for a while it seemed like he was going to be one of those tourists who just never leaves.  And in a sense, he hasn’t left. He’s over in Australia blogging for the love of the Chelsea.  Except for the occasional party that lasted until dawn he was a great neighbor! We’re fairly certain he’ll pass through the Chelsea’s doors again.  If he’s lucky, he’ll be in time for the reoccurance of that god awful stench. 

    1. What do you do? That’s a cruel thing to ask a man having a mid-life crisis.   I am a writer, I guess. Most of my adult life has been spent partying, reading and collecting degrees. I’m the cliche of the eternally unfinished PhD. My specialty is political-history or, if you believe my supervisor, becoming distracted. My real interest is cultural history.

    2. When did you stay at the Chelsea?

    My first visit was a crazed five nights over New Year 2003-2004. It’s a long and humiliating story. A projected trip was brought forward the moment that a NY contact learned the closing date for Taboo [the doomed Boy George penned musical]. We scrambled and I arrived on borrowed money and borrowed time.

    That was the New Years Eve that NY went onto Orange Alert. My first time out of Australia and I make it to JFK for the biggest post S11 lockdown to that date. Of course, I had no idea that the military with machine guns everywhere were unusual or that the choppers patrolling the avenues were not exactly NY in ‘normal’ mode. I only found out when I worked out a way to make the television in my room work.

    My second visit was much more planned. I spent six weeks at the Chelsea and did the Tonys awards, the after ball and all the shows. It was absolutely the best six weeks of my life.

    I have never felt more welcome, comfortable or secure.

    3. What inspired you to stay at the Chelsea?

    I was called.

    I can’t cite a time that I became conscious that the Hotel existed. I started on things Warhol at age 14 and turned into a naughty punk kid not much later. The Chelsea just is. If I hadn’t been able to stay there I would have done things very differently, had a very different adventure. The main purpose was to live in the Chelsea way for as long as my little Aussie dollars could keep Stanley happy.

    4. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever ridden with in the elevator?

    Ethan avoided me! I was mortified. Rufus Wainwright went as far as leaving the country to avoid me.
    Jean Paul Gaultier joined me, destined for the Penthouse it seemed, for one ascenscion. Johnny Knoxville was a pleasant surprise but nothing was as exciting for me as Renee Ricard.

    Does Boy George count given that he was my guest?

    5. What’s your favorite Hotel Chelsea story?
    Every single thing that has happened since the building was conceived.  It is one story with a lot of threads.

    During my stay, the night that the people in Stars Wars costumes invaded the foyer en masse counts for the absolute unlikeliness of it all. One might expect a lot at Hotel Chelsea but Darth Vader fetishists caught me well off-guard. 

    I think that I drank a small former Soviet state worth of vodka the weekend that the burlesque dancers were in.

    I took immense pleasure watching the painter in the lobby slowly recreate the place. Some of the most special moments were quite simple, a visit from Libby the cat or having a day in bed to recover from 3 nights non-stop in SF by pretending to be Janis Joplin, so messed up that I could only call the deli. We just don’t have that kind of luxury here.  [or authentic onion roll!]

    I sat and watched Manhattan until dawn in my window-bay one morning.  Several hours passed easily just taking it in.

    The best story to tell about the place is the one about Dee Dee Ramone’s book, published at my blog. Some people just smile and wonder if I’ve had my medication changed again. Those who matter understand.

    6. What’s the best/worst thing that happened to you at the Chelsea?  Apart from the dumpster on Level 8, you mean? best: I learned what it is that makes me a worthwhile person  worst: having to leave

    7. What in the world inspired you to launch 23rd & 7th: For the Love of the Hotel Chelsea?

    It happened!

    I half blogged the trip but I was having too much fun to be thorough. Nearly a year later, things worth sharing still occur to me. I’m an unrepentant information junkie, I might as well share my scavengings. 

    Hotel Chelsea makes a good linking theme for my blog. It is quite reasonable to say that most of my great obsessions have a connection back to 222w23. Back as far as Lily Langtree, indeed as far back as the anarchists who first conceived the building as a co-op, it has been home to people who figure large in my life. Being an emeritus punk-rocker with an Andy Warhol obsession and a love for twentieth century American drama makes the place hard to avoid. Only GB Shaw remains ‘untied’ at this stage. The people who have passed through that hotel extend through philosophers who have shaped me to the artists who have interpreted my world and the little known revolutionaries who I am proud to claim as cultural ancestors.

    Establishing the blog when I came home has given me somewhere to test all the things I learned in NY, mostly stuff about believing in me. Slowly but most surely I have started to think of myself as ‘a writer’ again. The blog keeps me engaged with the Hotel in a way that is productive and it keeps me in touch with other Chelseaphiles. I sometimes fear killing my readers with Liza Minnelli news but no fatalities have been reported yet….

    The Chelsea Effect -which is real- has settled and I’m working on a small play. The goal is to find the almost lost language of working class Australia, my people.

    My business card says dilettante, cultural critic, burden on the health-care system and consultant. I’m thinking about replacing consultant with ‘life-coach’.

  • Come On Over Jen — We Could Use Some More Bloggers Around Here

    Jen Chung, the editor of Gothamist, has always dreamed of living at the Chelsea.  Well we wish she Chung would move in too and then we would do a big blog merger — underwritten bCarlsony Stanley Bard of course!    (Ooops, wrong Jen. Again, that’s what happens when you blog under the influence.  Here’s Jen Carlson the Gothamist dreamer.)

    Gothamist also points out a real problem:  the hotel is just too damn expensive.  If you’re a young, struggling writer or artist –unless you have a trust fund – there’s no way in hell you can afford to live here.  This of course goes against the century-old tradition of the Chelsea.  How else do you think all those famous people came to live here? Most of them weren’t famous when they moved in.  As one of our most illustrious residents recently said to me, “Looks like we’re at the tail end of the comet here.”  That’s why we started the blog, to try to preserve some of the contemporary going ons around here before we’re all overrun by yuppies. (Hell, I don’t even know any yuppies who can afford this place anymore.)

    Jen also dreams of blogging from Leonard Cohen’s room for a day.  We think that room is already occupied, but we suggest that she blog from the lobby.  (Free WiFi and the chance to hobnob with Lobbypol_2  eccentric locals.) Plus, it’s the heart of the hotel – in the exact same way the little girl’s room is the heart of the house in the Poltergeist movies.  We would blog from there ourselves, but we’re afraid of being sucked into the vortex of madness and never again emerging with our sanity intact.  Good luck on that! (Let us know if you decide to do it, and we’ll come down and meet you.)