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  • All Tomorrow’s Parties

    June 27,  3:00 – 11:00 p.m.April_1 Suite 303, the hair salon of the Chelsea Hotel, in conjunction with Chelsea Piers presents WORK IT OUT.   April (in the photo) and the babes of  Suite 303 will be giving free haircuts on the West Sundeck at Chelsea Piers from 3:00 to 11:00.  You can’t get addicted from just one free haircut. Entertainment by Scratcher, Damian Pierce, Jesus Speed, and DJ Mariano begins at 7:30.

    June 27, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
    Charlie Houston celebrates the release of his second novel “Six Bad Things.”  In his first novel, "Caught Stealing" Charlie had the bad guys hole up at the Chelsea, so I asked him why.  Charlie replies, " First off, the Chelsea has all this great punk cache.  It’s hard to create a fictional place that’s going to evoke Warhol, The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Sid Vicious and so on.  So why bother trying?  Also, I’m sure the security is all very up to date these days, but it still feels like a wild west kind of place.  The kind of place where a couple desperados on the run could hole up.  Short answer: the Chelsea is cool."
    Junno’s Bar     64 Downing just off Varick

    June 29, 7:00 p.m.

    The Kettle of Fish reading series features Sarah D. Bunting, Matt de la Pena, whose debut novel Ball Don’t Lie is forthcoming from Delacorte, and Bridgett M. Davis author of the novel, Shifting Through Neutral.

    59 Christopher Street

                             

    Mrboots Starting July 1, stop by the West of the Moon Gallery and enjoy the fine paintings of former resident Casebeer.  The opening reception will feature music by Joe Myers, another former resident (Troubled Notes from the Hotel Chelsea). 111 East Aspen, Flagstaff Arizona

  • A Reader from Australia Writes…

    I’m guilty of neglecting the visual artists.

    Brett Whiteley.  A very important Australian painter who lived at the Hotel in the early 70s.  He seems to be a bit neglected in Chelsea history.  A recent doco (documentary) shown here about his widow, Wendy, included Chelsea footage.  Here is a link to the transcript of the documentary.  Stanley Bard talks about the Whiteleys. The Whiteley’s may have lived with Vali, (Vali Myers ) I’m not sure- I hear different stories.  The Hotel has what is, I imagine, a very valuable Whiteley at reception. It is unusual in his body of work and seems a pre-cursor to his most collectible works.  The child that he and Wendy raised there, Arkie, was a very close friend until her bitterly unfair death about five years ago.  When you come visit I’ll take you to the Whiteley studios. http://www.brettwhiteley.org/

    Here is a transcript of an interview with

  • The 92nd St Y was snubbed too…

    Earlier I blogged about the Chelsea being snubbed by The New York Times Literary Map of Manhattan. Now the 92nd St. Y is feeling snubbed too.

    "The New York Times‘ interactive Literary Map of Manhattan—which cites places where “imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank and looked at ducks"—got a lot of play in the blog world a few weeks back, but we couldn’t help but notice a gap in its coverage: Where’s the 92nd Street Y?"

  • More Meltdown Coverage

    Author and former resident Joe Ambrose is in London covering Patti Smith’s Meltdown festival.

    "…Smith, as befits a woman whose remit is broad and attractive (seminal rock woman, authentic second wave Beat Generationer, anti-Bush polemicist), has chosen wisely. Amongst the many features of her Meltdown, she has brought the remnants of the LES/Chelsea Hotel/Nova Convention counterculture crowd to London in the form of Richard Hell, John Giorno, and Yoko Ono…"

    Additional Meltdown Reviews
    Patti Performs "Horses" in London
    Patti Has The Power
    It Was Ladies’ Night
    Hats Off to the Scream Queen
    William Would’ve Loved It
    Patti Smith/Steve Earle
    Some Give a Song, Some Give a Life…

  • Chelsea Girls

    The Guardian applauds Patti Smith’s Meltdown festival which ended with: "…Smith’s extraordinary reading of Burroughs’s moving, retrospective introduction to Queer; she ends up on her knees, bellowing disjointed phrases, punishing the clarinet. Spaced-out, almost shamanistic intensity. Burroughs would have approved. And just what Meltdowns are meant for…" 

    Sally Singer plays herself in Douglas Keeve’s new film Seamless, which follows the lives of three young fashion designers trying to impress Sally and other industry super stars with their design know-how. 

    The Green Bay Press Gazette recommends "Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women" for your summer reading list.  The book features two Chelsea girls: Warhol muse Brigid Berlin and nightlife queen Suzanne Barsch.   It’s worth looking inside the book just to read author Simon Doonan’s description of Suzanne’s Chelsea apartment.

  • 5 Authors Who Don’t Live at the Chelsea

    Five authors made the annual Forbe’s Celebrity 100 list: Dan Brown ($76.5 mil), J.K. Rowling ($59.1 mil), James Patterson ($27 mil), Nora Roberts ($28.8 mil), and Arthur Agatston ($16 mil).

  • The Stage (Continued)

    II. The Umpire

    There’s a middle-aged woman who hangs out in the Chelsea lobby and apparently can’t control her gestures.  (Maybe she has Tourette’s too; unfortunately, I’m not a psychiatrist.)  When you walk through the lobby she’ll let you know what she thinks of you through a series of hand signals: thumbs-down, up-yours, the finger, holding her nose: P-U.  Though she’s really more like a third base coach, giving the batter a series of signals, somebody once called her The Umpire, and the name stuck.  Though she usually expresses a rather negative opinion of people, sometimes The Umpire will actually give the safe sign, or the thumbs up, or even the OK sign.

                One day three tourists came into the lobby, three young women in pastels: two blonds, slightly heavy, and one brunette, thinner.  They were staying at the hotel, and had gone out for the day, but one of the women had lost her sunglasses, and now they had come back looking for them.  They looked around briefly near the chairs where they had been sitting earlier in the day.  But it wasn’t long before they noticed that The Umpire was sitting across the room wearing a pair of sunglasses that looked suspiciously like the ones that had been lost.  (They may very well have belonged to The Umpire, I can’t say for sure, but the tourist women thought otherwise.)  The women huddled and stood exchanging nervous glances, whispering amongst themselves.  They were intimidated by The Umpire, and were afraid to ask her about the sunglasses, because whenever they would look in her direction, she would give them the finger or make some other obscene gesture.  Finally, they decided to tell the manager.

                The Umpire had stood up and come over near the desk to wait for the elevator, so the manager didn’t have to go far.  He came out from behind the desk and asked her, “Are those your glasses?”

    The Umpire nodded up in down in reply.

    “You didn’t find those glasses sitting here in the lobby?”

    She nodded her head back and forth.

    The manager threw up his hands.  “Well, if she says they’re hers, there’s not much I can do.”

                As often happens, the elevator was taking a long time to arrive.  The three women, slightly dazed, stood there waiting for it with The Umpire.

    Finally, one of the women, the brunette, the one whose glasses had been stolen, couldn’t take it anymore.  “Why are we going back up to the room to look for the sun glasses?!” she said.  “We know where they are!  She’s wearing them!”

                The other women tried to shush her and calm her down  I think by now they had begun to realize that The Umpire was rather off.

    The brunette refused to be mollified.  “What?!  I’m just supposed to do nothing while she steals my glasses and then gives me the finger.  I’m just supposed to just lay down and take it?  I don’t think so!”  And she launched into her own series of gestures, imitating The Umpire: “Same to you!  Up yours too!  How you like them apples?”

    The Umpire shrugged her shoulders, unfazed.  She gave them a final flurry of signs, and then, as the elevator had by now arrived, stepped on and left the women standing there in the lobby.  (Next Week — A Threat)

    Ed Hamilton

  • To Do List – June 19 – 26

    Monday, June 20
    6:00 – 9:30
    OJmbbyrobertpening reception for painter Robert Lambert will be held in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Chelsea.  The Grand Ballroom was the home of artist Richard Bernstein until he died in 2002.

    The Last Time I Saw Jean Michel Basquait by Robert Lambert.


    Sunday, June 26
    36th Annual LGBT Pride March 12:00 pm.
    Celebrated Hotel Chelsea resident Storme DeLarverie  always retains a place of honor, along with other Stonewall Veterans, in a baby blue Cadillac near the front of the parade.  During her early career, Storme was the sole male impersonater of the legendary Jewel Box Revue.  And, she is credited with throwing one of the first punches during the Stonewall riots.
    Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street to its final destination in the West Village.   

  • Father’s Day Special

    It’s always nice to meet a kindred spirit who appreciates the literary history of the hotel.  In "A Literary Father’s Day at the Chelsea Hotel," Susan Swan celebrates her father, Thomas Wolfe, and the Chelsea.

    Thomas Wolfe, not Tom, I say to young friends who haven’t read his magnificent and uneven novels that closely follow his own life.  Wolfe was only one year older than my own father. Like my father, he was too young to enlist in the First World War. And like my father, Wolfe was a physical giant at six foot eight. After his death, the staff at the Chelsea found a pair of his size 13 shoes in the hotel basement. A member of the Thomas Wolfe Society quickly came and took them away. Wolfe’s writing still tends to invite such touching acts of homage.  The essay is online at the National Post.

  • Dancing to Texts by Arnold

    Tonight is the last chance you’ll have to catch the Christopher Caines Dance Company’s performance of "Tenebrae," which incorporates the work of Chelsea Resident Arnold Weinstein.

    The Christopher Caines Dance Company continues through Saturday night at St. Mark’s Church, Second Avenue at 10th Street, East Village.