Living with Legends

In March 2006 I came to New York for the first time to audition to Juilliard. I was finishing my music undergrad in Sweden, where I’m from. I booked tickets to stay in NY for a week. The first two nights I stayed at the worst place imaginable that I had booked from Sweden, not realizing what “really cheap”  in New York usually translates to. As I realized that, I went down to Chelsea Hotel that I had read about and found Mr. Bard behind the front desk. I introduced myself and asked for a room, he said “no problem” and gave me the price of $ 220/night. I was sad to say that it was a little more than I could afford which I told him upon which he asked how much I could afford. “What about half?” “No problem”. Those five nights were among the most memorable in my life, and the best conceivable introduction to the New York that I (on day three) fell in love with. The atmosphere had me mesmerized and I practiced better than ever. I tried to repay Mr. Bard for his generosity by playing in the lobby, but was forced to quit by some employee since people started to give me money.

I was accepted into Juilliard and I began my studies there the following fall and I’m graduating this spring. Many times I’ve walked by, not daring to go inside since I have no business there, but still longing to feel that certain smell, to see the wonderful architecture and to experience that vibe again. New York is now my home, hopefully for a long time if money allows.

Mattias Jacobsson

Here’s a rumor that we’ve heard:
"Today apparently employees of the hotel came in to get their checks and they weren’t signed so no one got paid.  Management didn’t call to tell people, so people came from the bronx, queens, and brooklyn to find that their checks weren’t ready.  Major foul on the part of BD.  Apparently it’s a new thing that Bernstein himself is supposed to sign the checks, but he’s out of town until Monday."

Surely someone else can sign the checks.  That’s just wrong to not pay people on time!

     Hey, are these kids making fun of us?  How dare they?!  Ah, they’re just having fun, and the real shame is that young artists like this can’t move in here anymore.  We need people like this who understand what the Chelsea is about, even if they don’t take it all that seriously – especially if they don’t.  Otherwise we’re just a bunch of Bohemian has-beens growing ever older as we stew in our own juices.  Stanley, to his eternal credit understood this better than anyone: you can’t have Bohemia without the young.    A large part of the vibrancy of the Hotel went out the door when Stanley left.
     Ellen Francis, the organizer of Art Night writes: "The afternoon of the Art Party I got in a somewhat stern, but professional disagreement with the new owner over why I refused to be put in a newly renovated suite."  Nobody wants the newly renovated suites.  People who come here want an old time hotel.

It’s a video of a monthly art night organized by Ellen Francis. On Jan. 17th it was held in room 822. Artists who attended include Kendra Grant Malone (poet/writer) Jake Sinclair (The Films – warner music), Ben Dickinson (music video director) Lennox (smuggler films producer), Emily Anderson (american craft magazine) Lauren Flax (iheartcomix records), Julian Gilbert (photographer / misshapes), Angie Sullivan (illustrator-domino records), Johnny D. (jonny lives)& Uptown (painter/rock n renew) Danzie (dj) and myself (fuse tv head of print/ all around art person).

I wish I may, I wish I might. . . As reported in a recent New York Observer article (Max Abelson, 1/28), our dark mistress Marlene Krauss seems to have forgotten her roots and decided to put on airs (heirs?), casting herself as an heiress to the vast Chelsea Hotel fortune.  In case you don’t know the story, her father was a plumber who worked with Stanley’s father and put up some of the money to buy the hotel in 1945.  So, well, gee, technically. . .
     Marlene seems to have forgotten her treasured Harvard MBA as well.  Maybe her PR campaign to cast herself as a Master of the Universe has run its course and now she’s going for a softer image, sort of a spoiled, rich layabout–“let them eat cake” and all.  Surely no one will bite (or chop) her head off for that.

            The Observer article, nominally about Marlene buying a new apartment, is definitely worth a peek, as it makes Marlene sound about as bright as Paris Hilton.  What will you do in your new solarium, Marlene?  “I’m planning to grow, like, organic vegetables up there.”  What’s your favorite color, Marlene? 

“. . .light greenish, it’s used a lot in, like, Japanese clay and stuff.”  Forget the Fairy Godmother, bring on the Wizard!  Somebody needs a brain!

Well, I don’t know about you, but I had more respect for the old Marlene–you know, the one who made a fortune selling baby monitors that broadcast brainwashing signals from outer space.  Why don’t you just live in the Chelsea, Marlene?  “Um, just because, you know, the apartments really weren’t big enough for me and my family.”  Come on, Marlene, it’s a big building.  You can have a whole floor.  No, two floors.  Throw those starving artists out in the street!

            But it’s gratifying to know that if we work really hard here at the Chelsea we may someday rise to meet Marlene’s exacting standards: “It’s getting to look really nice.  We’re fixing it up.  I think it’s being run really, really well; it looks cleaner.”  [Reality Check: they are not fixing the Chelsea up.  The only thing BD “fixed” was the Grand Ballroom, partitioning it for office space—for which they received a $250 fine from the DOB for work done without a permit–and now they are tearing the partitions out.]  I think Stanley Bard put it best when he said, "Since when are we all dirty around here?" — Ed Hamilton

The good news just keeps getting better.  It has come to our attention that our intrepid Director of Operations, Glennon Travis, unable to resist the siren song of Internet social communities, is now on facebook.  In case you’ve forgotten, Glennon received a bit of good natured ribbing for his incredibly silly Myspace page, which he eventually had enough sense to take down, as it was an embarrassment both to himself and to the Chelsea Hotel.  We trust that, for his latest online venture, he has dropped his “St. Louis beach bum and hip hotel junky” persona (or whatever the hell it was) for something a bit more dignified—or at least comprehensible.  (“Money-grubbing slumlord” would give him something noble to aspire to, though “swashbuckling patron of the arts” would be better from a PR standpoint.)  We can’t bare to look at his profile since we don’t want that Warren Zevon song stuck in our head for weeks. I’m sure one of our readers will send it to us eventually, in which case (baring the unlikely event that we have something important to worry about) we will generously share it with the Chelsea community.

A reader writes:
"Hey just read your most current blog post and thought I’d send some photos I took of the
firefighters Friday night.  I had just returned from an evening exploring the east Village when I saw all the fire engines outside the hotel.  The first thing that popped into my head was, ‘Wow, this is just like Ed’s story.’ 

Also– strangely enough– I was on the east elevator with the Jamaican maid and bellhop
(sorry don’t know their names) when it got stuck between the 1st and 2nd floors.  We pried the door open and got out before we got seriously stuck.  It was still out of order when I checked out. 
Seems like the hotel was flexing its muscles this weekend."
 

Things started off with a bang Friday evening as dozens of firefighters tromped through the lobby to battle what turned out to be a false alarm on one of the floors above.  Sid’s ghost was unusually active stopping the elevator on the first floor to get on or off with some regularity.  There was another ghost sighting as well by a young visitor who we hope will write in soon and give us all of the details.  To top it all off, there was a film crew shooting a “soft core porn TV show” (their words not ours).  And only one elevator was working for most of the weekend.
We’ve got a video of Friday night’s mayhem courtesy of a geeky tourist which should be online soon.  So check back. Correction — the geeky tourist now reports that he deleted the video.  Oh well.

      Stanley has a long history of renting this place out to film crews, but now it seems we really are a sound-stage. Check out the new “production” section on the hotel’s official web site.
     Hard to believe BD is touting our “distinctive rooms and striking architecture” since they were all set to gut the place before the media firestorm torched their little party. They also make the “on-site engineering team” sound like film technicians or something.
     And of course the section fails to mention the real talent: there are actors, writers, hair-dressers and wardrobe specialists in residence, and even a director and a producer or two if you left yours back in Hollywood.
     Finally, anyone who’s read my book knows all about the special “craft services” tables permanently set up on the halls of most floors. Ed Hamilton

"I stayed at Chelsea a few years back and while planning to come back for a quick visit, i found out about the horrors.  Not much i can do from Sweden, but at least i can support you with something to print up.
Know that you have friends you don´t know."
Eskil
Eskil, we suggest that you do what others have done over the past few months and turn your outrage into a tee-shirt or a button to wear during your visit.  Or, fly a banner from your balcony.