Living with Legends

I. Lobby Mascots

Stanley Bard, our justly esteemed proprietor, always sees to it that his guests are well entertained.  In particular, he provides us with an unbroken series of inadvertent performance artists, appearing daily on that grand old stage known as the Chelsea Hotel lobby.

The first, in my residence, was Hiroya.  A fat Japanese man who dressed in red overalls (though later he got thin, and switched to a suit), Hiroya was a self-promoter par-excellence, in fact almost to the point of mania or psychosis.  He would accost anyone who came through the lobby, art critic, movie star, tourist, whoever, with wild boasts of his artistic greatness, and dogged attempts to lure them upstairs for a show of his paintings.  I suffered through many such shows myself, though I have to admit his work was rather powerful.  In the end it was his personality, rather than his art, that did him in.  (More about this in a future column.)  The desk people called him Annoy-ya.

After Hiroya’s untimely demise, we were treated for a time to stylings of The Angel.  Another Japanese man, The Angel dressed in drag, with feathered wings on his back.  He was usually attired all in white, but sometimes he would appear as a sinful red angel, or even as a black angel of death.  But no matter what color he wore, he was, essentially, a seedy angel.  Though at times he would wear a splendid long gown of a costume, topping it off with a bejeweled tiara, at other times, in keeping with the faded grandeur of the hotel, he allowed his costumes to deteriorate, the lace to get torn and dirty, the feathers of his wings to molt, like an angel fallen to earth.  The strangest thing was that The Angel got mad if you mentioned his appearance.  He just wanted to go around dressed as an angel; he didn’t want anyone to notice.  When it was hot, The Angel would sometimes just wear his frilly panties with a pair of wings on his back—maybe he got the idea from Victoria ’s Secret–and I think that was what finally ran him afoul of management and got him kicked out.

Then there was the long run of Blondie, a disheveled woman with Tourette’s syndrome who would stand out on the street in front of the hotel and make weird guttural noises, and who would generally flee if you approached her—several times she ran out into the street to escape me—though sometimes she would hold her ground and hiss at you, like a snake.  She refused to go into her room—demons lurking in there, apparently–and would sleep in the lobby, or in the hallways.  Periodically, Blondie would disappear for a week or two, apparently to get treatment, and then come back looking more bedraggled than ever.  Her sojourns abroad increased in frequency and duration, and then one day she returned no more.

We seemed to be heading downhill with that third one, I must admit—though some got their jollies by chasing after poor Blondie and running her up the stairs–but lately things are looking up, especially now that we have The Umpire in residence.

(Next week: The Umpire)

Ed Hamilton