Living with Legends

The new management team, BD Hotels, is universally loathed, and everybody wants Stanley back.  But how do we achieve this goal?  A large number of varied and diverse guerilla activities may – while perhaps not forcing their ouster – at least drive them out of their bloomin’ minds.  Use your creativity – after all, thats what we’re known for around here.  Here are a few suggestions – some of them sent in by readers – to start us all thinking in the right direction.  Let’s make them wish their greedy hides had never been born:

Start on the roof and carry a coffin down the stairs chanting loudly and out the door in a mock funeral for the hotel.

Got some chalk? Write GREED KILLS on the sidewalk outside, or whatever else seems suitable.

Stand behind the desk, and when they ask you to move pretend you are retarded and don’t understand.

Chain yourself to the Harry Truman bust.

No matter where you live, fly a banner from your balcony or window. We know that Mitchell Marks doesn’t mind having banners on the old Y building. Maybe our friend Cindy Gallop can step up to the plate!

In addition to the postcards being sent, buy flowers – they’re not expensive at the Korean grocers and you can sometimes get three small bouquets out of one big cheap one — and stick them in the railings outside the hotel, in the stairwell balustrade, wherever. Deliver them to the desk! Attach a big cheery card addressed to Marlene Krauss and David Elder, to Andre Bal-however you spell his name and Drukier, with the message of your choice.

Whatever protest is done, a banner, a postcards, a bouquet of flowers with a get well card, it should be photographed/videotaped, and posted online. Maybe your friends all tapdance? have them meet in the Hotel Chelsea lobby, and then tap dance out of there. Have a spontaneous art party in the lobby, and if any from the new order complain just explain that you’re waiting for a friend. If they kick you out, make sure it’s on video. Then post the videos on youtube and vimeo (with a link here). Photos can be posted on Google picasa or in the hotel chelsea flickr group

Celebrities: when in New York, stop by to give David Elder a piece of your mind.  Don’t forget to bring a film crew.

If you hear any of the suits say anything stupid or incriminating, report it immediately to the blog.  This will make them even more paranoid.

Send Postcards:
Stanley Bard
Chelsea Hotel
222 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011

Hard to believe I know, but some people just didn’t get that the two posts below are spoofs!

As you can imagine, a lot of people have been sending e-mails of support and I’ll be posting them throughout the week. Here’s one to get you started.

Say What You Want About Stanley Bard (He Never Sucked The Nipple of a Mugwump)

I heard a rumor that new management was staying in room — and as I am a warm fellow I trotted down to the –-th floor to greet them with a fruit basket and a bottle of moderately priced red wine.

The door creaked open at the first knock and what I saw inside was a nightmarish concoction of Lovecraft mythos and Burroughs imagery.  I tell you my first instinct was to close the door and never look back, but in the dark folds of a stained red bed sheet, illuminated by the sign’s neon glow, I saw a small baby crawling on what appeared to be discarded chicken bones.

I summoned the courage to move my stubborn legs, aware that the floor beneath me was unnaturally sticky, even for the Chelsea.  Maneuvering my way through a tangled web of chains hung like ribbons at a child’s birthday party, I approached the infant, now as still as a doll. Then the door slammed shut behind me.

I turned around and saw, to my utter horror, the headless body of David Elder.  I tell you now, as God is my witness, I thought that my heart would stop right there, but as I found out, there is something beyond fear, that is when your insides turn against you.  When I heard the voice of David Elder I felt the stomach acid sting at the back of my throat, but when I realized that it was not coming from the headless body but from the baby now tugging on my pant leg, I let forth a long volatile spew which very description would induce the same end.

"Are you a tenant?"  It… he asked, but before I could answer two more voices came from the darkness, "Are you an artist? We like artists"

It wasn’t until today when I looked on your blog that I knew who it was I saw when Baby Elder plugged in those tangled blue Christmas lights.  There, in a bib, his body shining, was Andre Balazs and his partner Ira Drukier.  They both looked to be sucking on the body of an old man whose whimpers sent an undulating chill up and down my spine.

Baby Elder, who seemed to be enjoying sitting in a pool of bones and vomit, spoke, "You see, we don’t want to get rid of all the artists.  We need you.  You are our food."  He licked his lips and crawled over to Andre’s lap.

"You’ll never get away with this!" I heard someone saying and then realized it was me.  "We’ll leave!  You can’t keep us here!"  I was beginning to feel my body again.

"Silly artist," said Baby Elder, "We won’t ever ‘keep’ you here." An ungodly moan came out of the old man and I could see, as his head rolled around, that he looked a lot like me.  Baby Elder let out a laugh.  "We can never keep you here if you want to stay."

I am writing in support of Stanley and David Bard whose management of the Hotel Chelsea has made it a famous New York institution known the world over. The last time I stayed there, I was interviewed in the lobby by a French journalist about the Chelsea’s contribution to the city’s cultural fabric. The journalist did her story because her paper admired the Chelsea and wanted to tell its story to her readers. Indeed, the Chelsea’s story needs to be told and retold, not just to French readers, but to Americans who don’t know about Stanley Bard’s heroic and largely unsung contribution to the arts in North America. He and his father before him respected the arts and ran their hotel so musicians, actors, artists and writers like myself could stay at a reasonable rate and create on its premises, and the list of work composed, drawn or written at the Chelsea is in many ways a portrait of North America’s arts in the twentieth century.

Forcing Stanley and his son David out of the Hotel Chelsea is a sad day for the arts in New York and the rest of the world too. It is also a dumb business decision, sincerely, Susan Swan (Toronto novelist)
(Photo: Susan and Thomas Wolfe having a chat!)

In addition to hanging banners, people are walking through the street fair taking place on 23rd Street today handing out fliers which read "Bring Back the Bards!"