Living with Legends

Hello from Louisville Kentucky. I'm the artist who didn't give my painting to Stanley Bard.  I see you have included this tidbit in your blog. I am proud to be a part of it. We talked before your reading at Ear X- Tacy last Thursday. I am really enjoying your excellent book 'Legends of the Chelsea Hotel", it brings back many memories. I lived in room 607 for a year, beginning in July of 1988, than returned to the Chelsea about 6 months later to live with a girl I had fallen for, she living on the 8th floor, in a large room with a kitchen and private bath, towards the back of the building. I read in your book where one of the illustrious Chelsea residents, was it Madonna, or Joplin, stayed in 822, and I wondered if that was the room where I stayed with my girlfriend, whose name was Audrey. Stanley liked me for my Midwestern attitudes, for my habit of paying the rent on time, for renovating my room at no cost, but he probably did not think the same of me after Audrey and I left the Chelsea for a Brooklyn apartment in Red Hook about 6 months after I moved in with Audrey, in the middle of the night (her idea). No telling if she ever paid her rent, like so many others mentioned in the book. But, she was born and raised in NYC, and she seemed to know something I didn't, at least about the Chelsea Hotel. If I remember, Stanley was rather fond of Audrey, in a fatherly way. I wonder if he remembers me. Again, it was a pleasure meeting you and Susan. sincerely, Bob Higgins  (Maybe Stanley Bard will write in and let us know if he remembers Bob.)

After the Flood, 1988, by Bob Higgins

Apparently Bellevue Hospital and the Chelsea Hotel have shared a number of former inmates: Eugene O’Neill, Edie Sedgwick, Charles Jackson, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and of course Sid Vicious.  We’ve always said that the Chelsea is the last stop before the nuthouse and a recent article in New York Magazine quips that “ Bellevue is the Chelsea of the insane,” but we of course take issue with that.  The Chelsea Hotel itself is the Chelsea of the insane.

We don't know if this refrigerator is coming or going, but it looks better than the one in our apartment.

Listen to Dave Van Tieghem as he literally plays the Chelsea Hotel. We hope Andrew Tilley doesn’t get after him for beatin up the furniture though he probably needs to buy some of that new boutique furniture for the room anyway. At the end of the video it seems like a resident must be knocking on the door telling him to shut up.

In Scott Stiffler’s Chelsea Now article about Andrew Tilley’s recent posting of eviction notices, Tilley is given the pull-quote to chastise us clueless Bohemians thusly: “It’s really quite simple: you live somewhere, you have to pay rent.”
    Wow, I'm so glad he cleared that up.  When I wrote about the matter a couple of weeks however, my point was that it was really low down of Tilley to spring these notices on tenants without warning the day after the bottom fell out of the stock market (no doubt resulting in huge losses to some of the very tenants who received the notices.) Macho Darwinian platitudes aside, from a social standpoint, the eve of a depression is hardly the time to be throwing people out in the street.

            Furthermore, it’s not to recover the small amount of money owed that Tilley put up these notices.  That wouldn’t make any sense, because the hotel would have to spend a huge sum in legal fees chasing after a few thousand dollars.  In fact Tilley would much rather the tenants in question didn’t pay.  That’s why he sprung these notices on people at a vulnerable time, when they may not have had ready cash at hand.  Tilley wants these residents out so he can convert their rent stabilized rooms to high priced hotel rooms that he can rent out by the night.

Let’s not miss the forest for the trees (or pretend to): while we are certainly concerned with the plight of individual tenants, the larger issue here is the preservation of affordable permanent housing in the Chelsea Hotel and in New York as a whole.  Our way of life is under assault by outsiders who are motivated purely by greed. 
        As Scott Griffin correctly points out in the article, Tilley has a bad habit of saying one thing and doing another.  He told tenants they would get a friendly reminder if they fell behind in the rent, and then, without warning, he goes and slaps legal notices on their doors.  He subsequently denies knowing anything about these notices until it's pointed out to him that he has signed each one.  Similarly, when Tilley says he only wants us out if we can't pay the rent, can we be blamed for thinking that he would like to kick us out whether we pay or not?  (Scott Stiffler incorrectly states that the amounts are not in dispute.  There are numerous over-charge claims pending and some of the folks who received notices may be among those who have over-charge claims pending.)
     At least Tilley seems to be coming to terms with the fact that his vaunted "renovation" will not be forthcoming anytime soon. — Ed Hamilton 

In a piece shot at the Chelsea Hotel by Anton Perich in 1977, one of the world's best dress maker Charles James, showcases some of his most famous gowns on model Matuschka.