Living with Legends

When we were in Washington, D.C.recently, we had breakfast with José Padua, his wife Heather, and their lovely and intelligent 3-year-old daughter Maggie.  José is a poet and former downtown fixture who got his start at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café back in the eighties.  He mentioned that his brother Pat was going to be in town the next weekend, staying at the Chelsea of all places, so we arranged to meet up with him.  Pat was eager to find out whether or not he had the Betty Boop room since he had read Tim Sullivan’s story and it freaked him out a little. We assured him that he was not in the Betty Boop room.

Is this the first time you’ve stayed at the Chelsea?  Yes it is.  It’s usually too expensive. This time I took advantage of the winter special, $165 for a single room.  Usually rooms start at $200.  I signed up for their e-mail list a long time ago and this is the first e-mail they ever sent out.

Tell us a little bit about yourself?  I live in D.C. and work at the Library of Congress. I work on a web site for the Music Division.   Before that I worked in their motion picture division for ten years.  I’m still involved in programming for their little repertory theatre.  That’s the part of the job that I find most rewarding.

How’d you get interested in photography?  I’ve been doing it on and off since college.  Because of the Flickr web site it’s been easier to see what other photographers are doing, and that’s renewed my interest. Digital photography has made me more interested in film again as well. I brought several different cameras with me to New York, including several toy cameras: I have a disposable camera that prints dog themed slogans on the photos — here’s an example.  My favorite is "I love my master" but my legal team advised me not to put up that picture.

I have another that prints patriotic slogans.  I whip one these out when I find an appropriate subject.  I also have an old brownie camera with a really soft lens that creates photos with a fuzzy, dreamlike quality.

Who are some of the photographers who have influenced you?  I really like William Eggleston.

Oh, did you know he used to live here at the Chelsea?  He was Viva’s boyfriend back in the Warhol years of the sixties.
No, I didn’t know that.  I always associate him with Memphis.  Another big influence is Henry Miller—not photography, but I really like his writing.  Did he ever stay here?

Not to my knowledge, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he had passed through here at some point.  He seems like a Chelsea sort of character.

Has the Chelsea lived up to your expectations? I really didn’t know what to expect.  I do really like my room, though.  The carpet is old and worn and you can really sense the history of the place.  I like the fact that I have a balcony that I can go out on, even though it’s really cold, and I’m right by the Chelsea sign.  I was kind of hoping it would blink on and off while I was lying in bed, but you really hardly notice it.  We’ll tell Stanley to work on that. 

Were you expecting to see any ghosts here?  I saw on you blog where the medium said it was the second most haunted place in New York after the Public Library, so I was kind of wondering.  In some parts of the hotel I do get a funny feeling as if something is there.  The hallway of Sid and Nancy’s room feels creepy, though maybe it’s just the power of suggestion.  I’m feeling kind of
creepy now since we’re discussing it.

What’s the best or worst thing that’s happened to you during your stay at the Chelsea?
The old building makes really funny sounds at night and it took me awhile to get used to that.  There’s one sound in particular that bothers me.  I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I finally decided it was th
e refrigerator—even though it doesn’t look that old.  Maybe it sounded like somebody popping a bottle of champagne and pouring out a glass. That’s a typical refrigerator sound, right?

Like everything here, appliances get weird quickly.  What other hotels have you stayed at in New York ?  I always look for something affordable. I like the Pickwick Arms on 51st between 2nd and 3rd.  It used to have an adjoining bathroom between two rooms, though I don’t think it’s like that anymore.  I stayed at the Gramercy Park before and I really liked it.  It was similar to the Chelsea.  Now I hear they’ve renovated it and made it into a luxury hotel.  I could never afford it now.  I stayed there a couple of times before they gussied it up.

Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?  Sure, the Chelsea has the kind of history that is bound to draw creative people to this place, so it’s a kind of self-perpetuating myth.

Pat asked us to recommend a good Cuban restaurant, so we sent him to the one down 8th Ave. (we didn’t remember the name) with the Cuban sandwiches in the cooler sticking out of the front.  Too bad Sam Chinita and La Chinita Linda are no longer around, we reflected.  After that Pat was going to a Bollywood movie on 59th Street.  And then, presumably, back to the  Chelsea to lie in bed and look at the sign and listen to the haunted refrigerator.