Hotel Chelsea Blog
Guess who’s tweetin now? Don’t be fooled by imitations. Figure it out, if you can. There is only one real live Chelsea Hotel twitter feed. You decide who you’d rather follow. Cavet Emperor. twitter.com/hotelchelsea
Why is this last one screaming at us? Maybe it’s really Marlene Krauss over there tweeting.
Performing on the NBC show Midnight Special in 1974 during the peak of his career.
So what's up with this video ABS? Since when does the Chelsea Hotel play second fiddle to the Eiffel Tower in a rap music video?
Nobody seems to be able to find the 1.2 million that David
Elder hid from author Piri Thomas. They
gutted Bob Dylan’s room looking for it, but it wasn’t there. Then they dug up the entire roof carting away the trees and soil and various potted plants and still there was neither hide nor hair of the pilfered cash. They even
looked behind Arthur Nash’s Bring Back the Bards sign. Zilch! Nada! We hear now that there’s a substantial reward being offered for the return of the money. So much so that Moore Associates are planning to excavate the Cellar space looking for it. We wish them luck!
Maybe Elder flushed it down that toilet he’s always posing with.
Remember last May when Marlene Krauss fired Richard Born and Ira Drukier from managing the Chelsea Hotel. Allegedly, one of the reasons she fired them was because General Manager David Bernstein was never around. So where the heck was he and what was he up to? The answer can now be revealed. He was busy setting up a blog for the Pod Hotel. Hey David, if you need any guest bloggers, we need jobs! By the way, writing about Marlene Krauss is great way to get readers. Unfortunately, you need to be a guest of the Pod Hotel to read the blog. Rats. Well, you can always follow the Pod on twitter.
Chelsea Hotel manager David Elder is now accepting paintings in exchange for stays at the famed Chelsea Hotel. And here we thought those people lined up on the sidewalk were waiting to get into the comedy club. It's a return to the good old days. Nadia Bertrand told Chelsea Now that she recently turned over two paintings to David Elder in exchange for a month long stay. "We'll take it as it goes in terms of if other people are interested," Elder told Chelsea Now. This should give the occupancy rates around here a big boost. We hear that the poets will still have to pay. (Photo of Nadia and her painting by Patrick Hedlund.)
Here's the end result of that video shoot a few months back where the crew took over the west wing of the 7th and 8th floors and filmed until 3:30 in the morning on a Sunday. What do you think? Was it worth losing a night's sleep over? You be the judge.
Melanie Fiona – Give It To Me Right
http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=57024788,t=1,mt=video
Some Chelsea Hotel guests decided to get into the spirit of banner hanging pioneered by tenant activist Arthur Nash. Here’s the result of their labors. We don’t know what this means since we don’t speak Italian but assume it’s something along the lines of “Fight the Power” or “Stick it to the Man”. In any event it disappeared within a few hours of our spotting it.
Chelsea Hotel ’s recently launched website featured a lovely photo of a fetching young woman sprawled upon the famous staircase. Having apparently either fallen or jumped or perhaps having just decided to take a rest. The sexist nature of this photo led some of our blog readers to take exception. For instance historian Sherill Tippins wrote in to say:
As someone at work on a history of Chelsea, whose founding philosopher is known for saying that a society can be judged by the way it treats its women, I can't tell you how ironic it is to see the image in that brochure of a woman stretched out in that sexually inviting way on the staircase. It's the quintessential image of commercial exploitation.
Decade after decade, the Chelsea's residents have worked through issues relating to women's place in society–from the first vagrant girl who was sent to Bellevue in 1884 for insisting that she had friends at the Chelsea, to the Victorian-era invalid, daughter of William Dean Howells, who died of lassitude, to John Sloan's wife, Dolly, a former prostitute saved by art, to Arthur Miller's Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol's Edie Sedgwick, Shirley Clarke, Patti Smith, and the many, many women who came to the Chelsea in the Seventies to liberate themselves.
And now, to end with this? I'm starting to feel more at home in the Second-Life Chelsea.
Strangely enough soon after this comment appeared the girl went missing. Where has the girl gone? Did they take her out in a body bag? Or was she simply a figment of our imagination all along. Perhaps she’s in the same Bohemian limbo as Piri’s money. Guess the Beaver House will stay downtown.
In answer to last week’s quiz: both the Hinckley Hilton and the Edison, New Jersey Benihana were designed by the architectural firm of William Tabler, who have now filed apermit application with the DOB to do $20,000 worth of work in the Capitol Fishing Tackle space. Well, I guess it’s about damn time, as the storefront has sat empty for almost three years now.
Our question for Mr. Tabler is, for $20,000, do you really need the aggravation? After all we’ve seen your website. You can work anywhere in the world. We’re not even talking about the inevitable pressure from well-organized tenant activists or the daily scrutiny of the media. Look at who your bosses will be. Though I’m sure Marlene Krauss was on her best behavior for your meeting, she’s a psychotic harpy who will have you by the balls in no time flat. Obviously you’ve not even met David Elder yet, or you would never have taken the job in the first place.
I guess you just neglected to do your research. Call hoteliers Richard Born and Ira Drukier and ask them if Marlene has paid them the $425,000 she owes them yet. Call author Piri Thomas and ask if he’s seen the $1.2 million that Elder owes him. Ask the other Chelsea Hotel shareholders if they’ve seen any of the increased profits that Marlene promised them for supporting the hostile takeover of the Hotel.
Perhaps you look at this relatively small job as a foot in the door, and think that eventually you’ll be hired to gut renovate the entire hotel. But do you think Marlene is going to be able to get a mortgage to pay you in this economy? There’s 40 or more outstanding lawsuits against the hotel! Marlene didn’t mention those, did she? I doubt that she mentioned that her prospects for obtaining a Certificate of No Harassment are rather remote as well, as Elder admitted in a DHCR hearing to hiring goons to assault a tenant. Thank your lucky stars that you haven’t signed on for anything bigger. — Ed Hamilton
Living with Legends 