Living with Legends

     Before he came here, new manager Andrew Tilley ran the Paramount Hotel in Times Square.  Here are a few quotes (posted on Trip Advisor), from people who have stayed there:

     "Don’t go there!!!!!’
     "Trust me you do not want to stay here…it will ruin your trip."
     "Worst experience of my life."
     "I wouldn’t stay here again if it was free."
     "…nasty hotel."
    "The worst hotel."
    "The room looked like a backpacker’s hostel"

And best of all:
     "… even once I’d showered and walked into the bedroom I felt dirty again."

     Of course, as we mentioned in an earlier post, Tilley was trying to transform the place into a Hard Rock Hotel, (he failed) and so the complaints about construction noise relate to that.  There’s a lot of complaints about lack of services and rundown dirty rooms that — though less obviously — probably have something to do with this as well:  Perhaps the staff was too preoccupied with the transition to help guests, make sure rooms were clean, and of course there’s no sense in repairing anything.  But these are some of the issues we are going to have to deal with here if the minoirty shareholders ever kick in any money for the renovation.  — Ed Hamilton

According to historian Sherill Tippins, presently at work on a history of the Chelsea Hotel, the recent pyrotechnics of Andrew Tilley are part of a glorious tradition at the Chelsea.  Well, sort of anyway! 

While there is no written testimony of former inappropriate behavior with fireworks exploded out of Chelsea managers’ body cavities, there was an unexplained fire in 1878, in which the building that preceded the Chelsea, the Excelsior, burned to the ground. The building was owned by James Ingersoll, ambitious furniture maker and partner of William Tweed, who had recently gotten of out prison after having stolen at least $45 million from New York City as Tweed’s partner. The Excelsior housed a city armory, among other things, full of firearms and other explosive devices.

The fire started at the east end of the basement on a Sunday evening when only the watchman and his family were there. A passer-by saw flames in a window and ran to the corner drugstore to call the fire companies. The fire engines arrived minutes later, but too late:

The fire “burst through the roof with astonishing violence, and the churches on either side caught fire,” wrote a New York Times reporter. “The congregation gazed in awe at the crimson flames shone through their church’s Gothic windows and lined its closed entrances with a beautiful light. The flames burst through the top of the steeple, licking at the foot of the cross at the steeple’s apex and shooting green sparks from the copper lining high into the sky.”

The Excelsior’s rear wall fell, carrying with it the rear portions of several adjoining houses. “There goes the explosion! Look out!” A volley of blasts from the Eighth Regiment’s rifle cartridges filled the air. The east and west walls collapsed in a cloud of sparks. The flames leaped to an immense height, revealing the building’s skeleton in flames."

The “mammoth relic of the Tweed Ring” was now nothing more than a pile of burning rubble surrounded on all sides by fire. Suddenly, someone gasped, and pointed. The fallen bricks had opened a gap revealing the church next door. “In the midst of the flames stood a marble slab, imbedded in the side of a ruined wall,” wrote the Times reporter, “bearing the inscription, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’ It stood out in bold relief from a glowing background of flame, and was noticed by hundreds of spectators.”

No evidence of illicit basement fireworks play was never uncovered, but remnants of a burnt pair of trousers were found in the street around the collapsed building. And James Ingersoll was never seen again.

But obviously his spirit lives on! 

I’m sure by now Marlene Krauss has called Andrew Tilley at home to ask him if he’s been putting fireworks up his ass.  But hey, how are we supposed to know whether or not that’s him?  Though Tilley has been manager for a week, he’s been hiding himself away and virtually nobody has seen him.

So what we’d like to know is, is Tilley going to pull a Bernstein (named in honor of our most recent general manager) and just never come in to work and try to run the hotel by remote control?  That’s one of the reasons nobody would accept BD: they just swept in here and set up shop without introducing themselves to anybody.  It was very disrespectful, and even though of course we’re just a bunch of stupid artists here, most of us couldn’t help but feel a little bit offended.  And certainly this bad blood that BD created contributed to their untimely demise. 

Tilley doesn’t seem to have done his homework on this place.  He probably thinks he can just lay back and pull a few dirty tricks to get rid of the pesky permanent tenets, and then he can run a nice, tidy boutique hotel like he’s always dreamed of doing.  Well, think again, Rocketman Tilley: we ain’t going nowhere.  If you want to be manager you’re going to have to stand up there at the front desk and take the good with the bad: the tourists who come in and rave about how great this place is, what a unique New York institution, and, conversely, the insane who will bug the shit out of you for every little thing that goes wrong around here.  Also if your going to be manager you have to deal with the press and right now they’re being sent to Glennon Travis’ voice mail: inquiring minds want to know.

It’s a dirty job, but it has to be done.  And so, once again, we suggest that you call a meeting of the Chelsea Hotel Tenants Association so you can introduce yourself and tell us all about your plans for the building.  To do otherwise is to breed further distrust and suspicion.  (And you’re already starting off with a buttload, brother!)

Marlene, you’d better get down here right away and get to the bottom of this, or else Tilley is not even going to last as long as BD! — Ed Hamilton

You have to click here to watch the shocking video!  Enjoy the fireworks!

via (Mirror.uk.com), The Florida Masochist, BBC, Daily Mail

Inspired by curbed.com and hotelchatter.com

Well, we just lost another member of our family due to escalating rents. Chelsea Healing, the acupuncture shop in the eastern most storefront of the hotel follows Capitol Fishing Tackle and Balabanis Tailor in being the latest casualty in the minority shareholders plan to remake the Chelsea Hotel in their own sickily image. Monday was apparently Chelsea Healings last day of operations; yesterday I saw workers packing boxes inside the storefront and moving them out to waiting vans. Luckily, they’ve found a place nearby, at 321 West 24th Street, so be sure to stop in and give them some business as a show of support. 

One of the reasons Marlene Krauss fired BD (as revealed in the court papers) was because she didn’t think they were moving quickly enough to force out the low-paying retail customers and replace them with, probably, a big box store. And Marlene certainly didn’t waste much time: BD has only been gone for two months, and already she has emptied two storefronts.

   Capitol Fishing Tackle Space, the largest storefront on the east side, has stood vacant for nearly two years. Now Dan’s Guitars stands as the last holdout on the east side of the building. And there it should remain, as hopefully even the otherwise clueless Marlene has caught on to the appeal of Dan’s Guitars. Situated in a storefront which has been a music shop of some kind since Stanley Bard’s childhood.
(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ursaminormd/2511701363/)

We don’t have all of the details yet, but David Elder’s New Assistant, Andrew Tilley, is apparently all set to unveil his new plan to “rehabilitate” the Chelsea. As a teaser, he has posted the schematics for the plan in the hotel lobby (no more dueling photo-books thank you very much). As you can see, he plans to renovate the façade significantly – landmarking be damned – and to get rid of that pesky El Quixote, despite their 75-year-lease. Though we had been hoping for a Starbucks, it seems Tilley has come up with an even better idea: an M & Ms Store! Tilley is used to working in Times Square, you see, when he could just pop around the corner at any time for a sugar fix. We’re hoping to get a big, strapping M & M Man Straddling the Chelsea sign, but plans may not have been finalized yet and I certainly don’t want to jinx it. I also hear that the WWF is looking at the former Capitol Fishing storefront.

Though undeniably a visionary of the first rank, you’ll notice that Tilley’s schematic also features crazy people screaming out the windows and threatening to jump from the roof. This reflects Tilley’s dawning realization that, while some things can be changed, others will always remain the same. — Ed Hamilton

Forget Stanley Bard.  Pity the mere mortal who is chosen to fill the voluminous shoes of the highly competent and supremely good-natured Glennon Travis, loved and respected by Chelsea Hotel denizens past and present. Who has been singled out to bear this immense burden?  The suspense is killing you isn’t it?

Well, the wait is over, Chelsea Happy Campers.  We’ve heard the new guy starts today.  He’s a chap named Eustace – er I mean Andrew Tilley, who hails from England, attended Kelly College, and worked at, among other places, the Hyatt Carlton Tower in London and the Balmoral in Edinburgh.  Well, bliney mates, here’s a bloke who should class up the joint.

Silly Tilley. The big question for me is why you would be crazy enough to take this job. Have you bothered to take a look at this blog? How about reading the court papers in the recent arbitration filing (BD NY vs. Chelsea 23rd Street Corp). You’re dealing with some real snakes here in Marlene Krauss and her faithful servant David Elder. They fired both Stanley Bard, who had been managing the hotel for 50 years, and BD, one of the top hotel firms in New York. Think you can do better? If you thought you were sick of Elder already, just wait: he’s gonna be dogging your ass around this hotel, giving you all kinds of senseless orders and interfering with every move you make (read the court papers). Having worked at hotels in Kuwait and Dubai however, perhaps you’re at home under such oligarchic, oppressive regimes.
     Which brings us to the equally intriguing question of why Marlene would hire this guy? Sure, Piccadilly Tilley is the king of the gimmick, masterminding such promotional offers as free gasoline and free theatre tickets and room rates that match the temperature outside while at the Paramount Hotel in Times Square. And no doubt Marlene was impressed that Rockabilly Tilley was hired to transform the Paramount into a Hard Rock Hotel, as that is probably the sort of lame-ass fate she envisions for the Chelsea. On the other hand, as I gather from recent comments on Trip Advisor, he wasn’t able to accomplish that transition. Though a press release says the hotel was “rebranded” in 2007, guests still think they’re at the Paramount, and complain that the rooms are old and dirty and poorly maintained. Sound familiar? I guess for this job, despite the “Help Wanted” sign on the front of the hotel, there just weren’t that many applicants.
     But really, Tilley, all jokes aside: Welcome to the World Famous Chelsea Hotel. If you’re really serious about managing the place – as opposed to evicting us all and gutting the building – we’d like to invite you to introduce yourself and discuss your plans at a meeting of the Tenants Association. I’m sure everyone would love to hear what you have to say! Though he’s no Stanley or David Bard, there’s at least one thing in Tilley’s favor: he has no Myspace page – yet! — Ed Hamilton

This is the question raised by a blog reader from Norway:

"After reading about the conflicts at the hotel, I have a very simple question. I was planning to stay three nights at Chelsea in July, but my impression is that this will mean putting money into the hands of greedy barbarians. Am I right? And if so, could you recommend a better alternative?"

Add your recommendations to the comments section!

It has come to our attention that some residents of the Chelsea Hotel may not have been receiving their mail in a timely and appropriate manner, perhaps as a punitive measure for being late on their rent.  We had heard rumors to this effect before, but never anything definitive until now. 

In the case we know about, the Chelsea Hotel management – now under the direction of David Elder – had a apparently been intercepting the mail of a resident, and, instead of putting it in the residents box, giving it back to the mail man, and, we assume telling him that the resident no longer lived here.  This was in apparent retaliation to a dispute (we won’t go into details) that the resident was having with management. 

The way the resident found out that his or her mail was being intercepted, was that he or she asked a credit card company to send him or her a new card and when it was never received, the resident called and they said it had been returned to sender.  The resident subsequently called the postal inspector, explained the situation, and said, “I don’t want to make a big deal about it if it’s only this one time.”

The postal worker who the resident talked to replied, “One time is a felony,” and assured the resident the matter would be investigated fully. Anyone with a similar complaint – or anyone who suspects that their mail is being withheld or tampered with in anyway – should call the postal inspector at 877-876-2455 and select option 3.