Living with Legends

Here’s a tourist who recently sprung for one of our palatial renovated rooms–and she was not disappointed!  Notice how she’s totally down with the funky odors in the halls, unlike some people we know.  Well, we hope she found the creative inspiration that she was looking for here amongst the "still kicking creaks"–whatever, or whomever, the hell she means by that.

I refuse to stay at hotel chains in NY when there are an infinite number of more interesting places to be that are really no more expensive.  On my last trip I decided I needed creative inspiration so I booked a room at Hotel Chelsea, historic host to folks like Jasper Johns, Joan Didion, Dee Dee Ramone, and Janis Joplin (the list is infinite).  Chelsea, but considering the borg-like ethics of Manhattan developers, I was grateful for the lived in smell and the still kicking creaks.  Besides, only the halls smell like everybody’s homes rolled into one (people do still live there after all).  The hotel rooms smelled like hotel rooms.

Online reviews and stories from friends who have suspiciously vague recollections of parties there had me a little worried—no coffee makers in the room because they can be used to cook meth (who knew?).  But the hotel website won me over. I especially like the resident blog, which is like eavesdropping on conversations in the hall. 

You’re never denied the reality of living in an old building at the….

Holly Bower represents a piece of the Chelsea’s artistic and activist heritage. She was the first woman still photographer to be admitted into the photographer’s union.  Filmmaker Seppo Korpippa, (who, by the way, has the same Finnish publisher as Charles Bukowski) tells us how the footage below came about:

I met photographer Holly Bower in Chelsea Hotel in november 1990. I was in New York with the group pf people form Finnish cultural buraucrats. We visited museums, Carnegie Hall, Martha Graham Dance School… After some days I got enough and took a taxi to Chelsea Hotel. One bird form the group wanted to come with me. We met Holly at the downstairs restaurant El Quojote. She invited us to her apartment and we were having good time. I think that it was the best part of the trip.

Seppo Korpipaa

James Altucher lived in the Chelsea for three years, beginning in 1995 (the same year we moved in).  When he was getting ready to move in, his grandmother cautioned him not to mention that his grandfather had stayed here in 1929 and trashed his room in a pillow fight (Financial Times, March 6, 07).  She was worried that somebody might try to charge James for the damage!
     James dismisses his grandmother’s concerns, and while at first we might be tempted to go along with him here, on further reflection it is perhaps imprudent to reject the wise counsel of the elderly.  Perhaps, after all, the grandmother has heard tell of our illustrious proprietor.  In any event, she’s right: Stanley probably would have tried to charge him.
       And what’s all this nonsense about a pillow fight?  Sounds like the sanitized version of the story.  I suspect that flappers and bootleg liquor came into play at some point during the evening’s festivities.  Surely James’ grandfather was gallivanting through our hallowed halls with a lamp shade on his head, at the very least!  That’s the Chelsea Spirit, Grampa! — Ed Hamilton

Nobel prize winning poet Derek Walcott has a new compilation out, Selected Poems. Derek was on NPR last week.

Painter and pool shark Phillip Taaffe is profiled in The New York Times.

A bunch of the people from the Chelsea are featured in the travel section of today’s London Times.

We knew that you had to pay a fee to do a photo shoot around here, but hey can’t they make an exception for a dominatrix?

Known as a bohemian hotel with each room being different and with a lot of character. I thought such a free wheeling establishment wouldn’t mind if we took a few shoots of a fetish video and some photos. Wow was I wrong. They were big ole meanies.

But I did get some shots in before we were booted.