What is the Chelsea Hotel Style? My girlfriend and I have been discussing this question lately, and failing miserably to come up with a definitive answer. Some of our residents look like they just stepped out of a fashion magazine, while others wear black leather and tattoo themselves heavily. One woman has blue hair, and another guy wears a rumpled suit and manages—whether by design or accident–to look exactly like Dylan Thomas. Some dress up, some dress like slobs. And some people, like me, just wear t-shirts and khakis like we’ve worn since college. Though it may be true, it seems strangely unsatisfactory, a cop out in fact, to just say it’s whatever you want to wear. There must be some unifying theme.
Keeping this in mind, I was out in the hall by the garbage looking through some magazines that somebody had thrown out, when, looking up, I saw a man walk past me and go into the Madonna Sex Room with a roll of toilet paper looped onto his belt. I did a double take: what the hell? I thought my 
eyes must be deceiving me. While I was standing there wandering about it, the man came back out of the room. He was a young hipster cat, with sideburns and a trucker hat, stove-pipe jeans, and, sure enough, strapped onto his hip by a black, silver-studded belt, the toilet paper. A fashion accessory? I had to find out, and so I followed him out to the elevators. “Looks like you come prepared,” I said, indicating the roll.
“Hell yeah, dude,” the hipster said. “I’ve been to this hotel before.”
We may not have quite found the answer yet, but perhaps, by keeping our eyes open as we root through the trash, further valuable clues may some day present themselves. (Copyright Ed Hamilton 2006)
