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  • Borrowing Our WiFi

    Blogger Laura Lark gets more than she bargained for when she stops by the Hotel Chelsea lobby for the free WiFi.
    Am sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Chelsea (it’s the only place I can get WiFi), and the place is just so damned colorful I feel like I’m in a Jim Jarmusch film. First there’s this guy who’s apparently got an audition somewhere, and he wants everyone in earshot (and out of earshot) to know it, because he keeps shouting about all kinds of dumb shit, like reading scripts, and how John Travolta is a Scientologist and what bullshit that is.

  • Rita Barros – Saved by New York’s Bravest

    Rita Rita Barros must have landed at the Chelsea at a very young age because she has been here 21 years!  If you haven’t done so yet check out her book Fifteen Years: Chelsea Hotel.  You can see more of her work at http://www.ritabarros.com/
    Photo: Rita at home on the 10th floor.

    What do you do?
    I am a freelance photographer and right now I am also doing a Master’s Degree in Photography at NYU.

    How long have you lived at the Chelsea?
    I have been living here for the past 21 years.

    Why did you decide to move into the Chelsea?
    I really did not decide to move in. I stayed here with my ex – when we returned from a long trip to India and Nepal – while looking for an apartment in the city. But somehow we stopped looking and stayed here.

    Describe your initial interview with Mr. Bard?
    My ex was the one who dealt mostly with Mr. Bard who was very nice and funny.

    Do you think there is a creative energy in the Chelsea?
    There is a very laid back and friendly atmosphere that is somehow conductive to creative energy.

    How has living in the Chelsea affected your creative development?
    I photographed here for many years ( the book Fifteen Years: Chelsea Hotel), and  met incredibly interesting and accomplished people who have had, for sure, their impact in my development.

    What other creative people at the Chelsea or elsewhere have influenced your development?
    People like Arnold Weinstein at the Chelsea who was extremely generous with his time and ideas. The early books of Salman Rushdie, the purity of vision of Agnes Martin, Becket’s genius, the poetry of Koudelka’s images and the brilliant lightness of Fred Astaire.

    Who is the most famous person you’ve ever ridden in the Chelsea elevator with?
    I  would say Courtney Love.

    What’s the best/worst thing that has ever happened to you at the Chelsea?
    A big fire. By the time the firemen came and got me I thought I was already dead.

    Don’t miss next Thursday’s interview with the guy who paints in the lobby, David Combs.   He’s new around here and is filled with spit and fire.

  • Sexy Nude Model Visits The Chelsea

    Even though she didn’t have any coffe for her coffemaker Model/Blogger Genuine Jennie managed to survive the weekend in her 10th floor suite.

    Michael flew me in for the weekend. He finally got paid. Flew me up and got us the luxury suite at the Genuine Hotel Chelsea, which is my favorite hotel in NYC because alot of crazy but famous people have stayed or lived there, and last time we stayed there we ran into a famous actor (who is not as hot in person, and if he hadn’t been pointed out to me, I would never wanted to have sex with).
    The luxury suite was much better than the less expensive "suite" or whatever that we stayed in last time. This one actually had a coffee maker, though without any coffee. A robe from another hotel, which matched the mirrors in the living room. An     excellent view.  More pics are available on her site.

  • Sid’s Room

         Dee Dee Ramone moved around from room to room in the hotel.  He was always dissatisfied with whatever room he landed in, and after a year or two in one room he would move to another floor.  He told me that one time they had put him in a new room, and no sooner had he moved his few possessions in, than he began to feel uneasy.  Though he knew he hadn’t lived there before, he had a vague feeling of déjà vu.  He thought his unease would pass, but as the hours wore on he just couldn’t shake it.

                Finally, nodding off in bed late that night, it suddenly hit him, and he sat bolt upright with a shock of awareness.

                “It was Sid’s room!” Dee Dee told me.  “I knew him!  I lived here when he was here.  He was my friend!  I partied in that room.  I hung out in that room.”

                But it wasn’t really Sid’s room, because Dee Dee would have noticed that at once and would’ve never agreed to move in.  What had happened was that after Nancy was killed in the room,

    and after Sid committed suicide, the owner, Stanley Bard, hadn’t wanted the room to become a shrine for morbid punks.  He’d had it carved up into sections, distributing these among several other rooms.  Sid’s room, properly speaking, doesn’t exist anymore.  But Dee Dee had got a window.  And the play of the shadows in the corner, in the half-light of the moon and the streetlights, had been something that the renovations had failed to alter, something that had remained constant over time.
                In a panic, Dee Dee fled the room, refusing to stay there another minute, and demanding to be moved to another room immediately.  They didn’t have any rooms open on such short notice—or perhaps, as Dee Dee thought, they just wanted to torment him–and so Dee Dee ended up drinking coffee in an all-night diner until morning.

                “I knew him!” Dee Dee repeated.  “I knew them both.  They were my friends.  I used to visit Sid there, him and Nancy.  We sat in that room together and got drunk and played the guitar.”  Even in the retelling, Dee Dee shuddered, and seemed genuinely terrified by the incident.  “I told Stanley, how could you do that to me!? (Copyright 2006 Ed Hamilton)  Read more "Slice of Life" columns.
    Oct. 12 is the anniversary of the death of Nancy Spungen.

  • All Tomorrow’s Parties – Oct 10 – 16

    Monday, October 10th, 6:30 p.m.
    Coliseum Books and Writers House will host a reception and reading to celebrate the launch of Judy Sheehan’s "And Baby Makes Two: A Novel."  I heard Sheehan read at the Kettle of Fish series in July and she was very entertaining. Plus, it’s a party!
    Colilseum Books, 11 West 42nd St., NY NY

    Tuesday, October 11th, 8:00 p.m.
    Vesapsmile Vestal McIntyre reads a new short story, "A Much Slower Decline." The reception following will feature an accordion performance by Victor Prieto. When I asked Vestal if he had ever been to the Hotel Chelsea, he said something along the lines of, "I’ve walked by and noticed that the building has nice balconies. No, I’ve never been inside the Chelsea.  Why don’t you invite me over for dinner and then I’ll have a story to share with your readers."  Another writer who has never stepped foot in the door.  Where do they get their inspiration?
    The National Arts Club, 15  Gramercy Park South, NY NY

    Wednesday, October 12th
    43nancyspungen Heroin and hunting knives do not mix. Stay in your room and listen to a seance via the Hotel Chelsea Podcast.   Or read, Trouble in Room 100, I Don’t Want to Live This Life,  Sid Vicious: Rock n Roll Star,  Left of the Loop,

    The Smoking Gun offers court, police and medical examiner records including Sid’s voluntary confession.  An eye-witness report from man of the moment, Jeff Daniels.
    JD: I moved here September 1, 1976, I came through the Holland Tunnel at 2 PM that afternoon and that’s an anniversary I celebrate religiously. I was 21, and I became a professional actor when I drove through that tunnel. I lived initially with Marshall Mason, the artistic director of Circle Rep. Then I moved right next to the Hotel Chelsea. I literally lived on the 10th floor and looked out and saw them carry Sid Vicious out. I was very active and involved with the [former] Circle Repertory Theater in Sheridan Square.

    Friday, October 14th, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
    STANFORD STEGNER FELLOWS READINGS Participants: TOBIAS WOLFF Reading from his memoir "In Pharaoh’s Army," and his short story "Bullet in the Brain"; JULIE ORRINGER  Reading "Care" from her short-story collection "How to Breathe Underwater"; RYAN HARTY
    Reading "When the Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down" from his short-story collection "Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona"
    The New York Society for Ethical Culture
    2 West 64th Street (at Central Park West) NY, NY

    Sunday, October 16th, 8:00 p.m.
    Josh Ritter is in town. It’ll be worth your money ( $20.00) just to hear his version of "Chelsea Hotel."
    Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, 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

  • You Read It Here First

    In Saturday’s issue of the Guardian Ethan Hawke talks about moving out of the Chelsea.
    Last month, Ethan Hawke moved out of the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan. He’d been living in the former home of Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller and Sid Vicious for two years, having moved in amid the very public dissolution of his marriage to the actor Uma Thurman. Since then, their two children, Maya and Roan, have split their time between the Chelsea and Thurman’s home. "My daughter is like the Eloise of the place [the storybook character who is everybody’s best friend at the New York Plaza Hotel]. She knows everybody. I think – I hope – that this will be a magical place for her in memory." A few days before the moving vans come, we are standing in the lobby, where a large, somewhat alarming sculpture of a very pink woman on a swing hangs from the ceiling.

    First reported by the Hotel Chelsea blog on September 22.

  • News Round-Up

    A reader forwarded me this link to an Op/Ed piece by Hotel Chelsea Resident Michael Rips.
    So Much for Freedom, NYTimes, Oct 2, 2005.

    Sally Singer comments on the Russian style invasion and the influence of Dolce and Gabbana.

    In case you’re wondering what happened to "formerly in the basement of the Hotel Chelsea Serena," she has moved on to the more glamorous environs of the meating packing district.

  • He’s Heading Our Way…

    Thanks for the heads-up blogger the Chrystal Palace.  He sounds like one of our typical "Hotel Chelsea obsessed" tourists.

    The day to leave for New York is getting closer. We leave Sunday morning. I can’t believe I’m going to be staying in the Hotel Chelsea. After all these years of being obsessed with that place and wandering the halls and sitting in the lobby, I’m finally going to spend the night there, well..several nights. I’m going to be there the anniversary of the death of Nancy Spungen. It’ll either be magickal, or I’ll feel nothing, and it’ll be closure. I guess I should be glad if there’s even closure, but I think I might be disappointed. I’ve asked for the 6th floor near where Dee Dee lived all that time. I hope I get it. I want to be near the sign. I’ll have my own photographs of this place and not photos of other peoples’ where I feel I can’t really make art with those. So I’ll have my own. There’s a long story that goes with this hotel. Me, a dream, and a fortune teller. It’s eerie, more eerie than even I could come up with I think. I still don’t know what any of it means. Maybe this will close it. Although, I thought it was closed back in ’84.

  • Bob Dylan Was The Perfect Tenant

    A nice story about Bob Dylan in the October 6, 2005 issue of The Toronto Star (subscription required) quotes our esteemed proprietor, Stanley Bard.  Seems that Bob was the perfect tenant. I bet he even paid his rent on time.

    The Chelsea is full of art made by grateful tenants, and its management is clearly proud that it has housed the likes of writer Mark Twain, Eugene O’Neill and Thomas Wolfe. Chelsea owner Stanley Bard, 71, fondly remembers the years Bob Dylan lived here in the 1960s.

    Bard smiles when he talks of Dylan, who didn’t paint on his walls like Janis Joplin, blare his guitar at night like Jimi Hendrix, have scores of groupies like the Grateful Dead, or find a stabbed body on his bathroom floor, like Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols.

    Much of Dylan’s stay at the Chelsea was a sad and introspective time, as his marriage to his first wife Sara was ending.

    "He stayed to himself and he was a gentleman," Bard recalls.

  • Tourists Have More Fun

    Stepheneast Plus, they take pictures.   From Stephen Art-East‘s blog.
    It’s not to all tastes, and we’ve definately stayed in smarter hotels for less in California and been surrounded by rock stars, and Florida as well come to think of it, but the shabbyness of the Chelsea is all part of the deal. If you want the maid to come at a convenient time everyday, need a dvd player, mini-bar, club sandwiches delivered to your room and smart decor, don’t go to the Chelsea. There are like-minded souls aplenty however and always someone taking photos on the stairs, tourists hanging out, artists painting pictures in the lobby and long-time hotel residents chatting in the lifts. The room was fine, and very big. The curtains were bust and I don’t think it had been painted since 1982. I enjoyed the exchanges with other guests, generally brief and on the way up to the room.

    The staff have clearly been there years and enjoy their ramshackle clientele. The other thing you won’t find at the Chelsea is a overly false, sickly sweet welcome. The check-in staff will be friendly, crack a joke to see if you’ve got a sense of humour, throw you your keys and let you get on with it. We were invited to a party on the roof (by some residents staggering down from there), but as neither of them were the hosts we decided to give it a miss. They said ‘don’t worry, no-one will know you’ve not been invited directly’, and they were probably right. It’s that sort of place.