The Mailbag

Despite the beautiful, sunny weather here in Oakland, CA, my spirits are low.  I have just heard about th e firing of the Bards from the board of the Chelsea Hotel.  A dark day indeed.  My husband and I are both artists, and recently stayed at the Chelsea for the first time.  We felt so welcome there, met a long-time resident, and reveled in the art and history on display throughout the building.  The Chelsea is a very special place because although it has its own aura of cool, it does not reek of the exclusivity and shallow hipster vibe so common throughout the “boutique” hotel concept.  The efforts of the Bard family have kept the creative atmosphere of this icon/landmark/HOME of so many artists and musicians alive, despite the gentrification of the neighborhood.

The thought of turning the Chelsea into another Marmont or Maritime breaks my heart.  It is a family threatened with being torn asunder.  Please keep it whole, especially for those full-time residents, as well as us visiting artists, so we may continue to come back to our home away from home.  (Photo: Gothamist)

Allyson Hollingsworth
Oakland, CA
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Hi,
Just wanted you to know that I am a huge supporter of the Chelsea Hotel and am sickened by the recent change in management. I actually just visited the hotel yesterday, and Mr. Bard was very welcoming.

It's my absolute goal to call the hotel home at some point, and I can only hope that the new management group doesn't drastically change the place that you already call home.

If my support can help in any way, please let me know. Thanks, and good  luck!

Robin Reetz
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Mr. Hamilton,

I'm minorly (okay, majorly, bizzarely) obsessed with the Chelsea.  Perhaps it's better to label it as "love" rather than "obsession".  I started getting my haircut there just to have an excuse to go, though I'm still kind of too chicken to hang out in the lobby not knowing anyone.  It's been kind of a pipe dream of mine to live there at some point, and I'm trying to deal with the fact that this dream is slowly atrophying due to the recent changing of the guard (even though I read that the board insisted on not accepting any new long term tenants two years ago, but we'll pretend like I could have managed it somehow).  Like everyone's been saying, this recent change is more than just a matter of business; it calls into question whether or not this world really values artists and thinkers anymore.  This terrifies me as an aspiring writer, makes me wonder whether it's really worth it to fight the good fight, whether or not anyone out there will help those of us in the arts in our inevitable times of need. 

Blah blah blah, things you already know.  Anyway, I'm basically writing to ask if you think it would be inappropriate to get involved in the guerilla campaign to save the hotel?  I've already written Mr. Bard a letter, which I will mail today, but as a non-resident, a mere admirer, would it be in poor taste to try to do something more?  (This is sort of rhetorical, but thanks for humoring me.)

Hope all is well, love to the blog,
Kelsey
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MY GOD THAT’S JUST DREADFUL…Hope that you guys are all ok and they don’t change it…we can live in hope. long live the bard
Lisa Kreemers
Visual Art Teacher
Yolla District High School

Newcasle -Gateshead

Dear Stanley,

The first reading at Morden Tower Poetry took place on June 16th 1964.  And Last night  several Bards gathered together to drink a toast to  all the poets who have read there.

We would have drunk a toast to you Stanley if we had known it was your Birthday too .

I am very sorry  to read those words "Stanley Bard is no longer in Charge of the Chelsea" for on a purely personal level I have always wanted to spend some time there, and I think it would be  a kind of ecological disaster for the writers if things changed. Not just for writers who live there but those of us who towards it as  .Not just because writers need places to stay but I believe  its really important for writers to have places where they can  soak up the atmosphere of those  who have gone before us. Not in some staid academic setting but in a kind of  poet friendly atmosphere. On a much minor levelI cannot for instance  leave this quite uncomfortable flat in Gateshead from where I live and organise poetry readings in Morden Tower because with all of kinds of vibrations and memories of all the poets who have stayed here one time and another  I suppose  its  a kind of mini Chelsea Hotel.

I love visiting the Living with Legends site and have always wanted to share the story of my one very short  visit to New York.  On one very  snowy day  in February 1971.   Robert Bly took my family on a great tour of the interesting sights. We breakfasted in the Empire State Building; visited the Stock Exchange which was unbelievable and which very recentley had had  new glass panes installed after Gerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman had  demonstrated  a little bit of political performance art.

We  were then greatly  fortified by a nice  lunch at El Quijot  at the Chelsea  it was an incredibly friendly place everybody seemed to know Robert and we ceremoniously  drank to the memory of  Dylan, before racing  off to Tom's afternoon reading at Columbia

After that we thought tea at the Algonquin would be a nice ending to the afternoon but they would not let us in because Robert wasn't  wearing a tie, which seemed a rather excessive piece of apparel seeing that he was wearing his custmary  massive poncho! But we  humoured them after all we  wanted to sit where Dorothea had sat and drink to her memory so we all went out and bought  ties even  one for the baby.

I was married to Tom Pickard  then and Andy Wylie had arranged a reading  for Tom at Harvard and when we got America  there were invitations from all of the poets who had visited us in England. So in  the evening Tom went off to St Mark's to read and I stayed home with the kids and Maretta in Allen Ginsberg's flat. Allen was in Wasington heavily involved with his  investigations of the CIA and William Colby.

The door of his very modest flat was fortified with all kinds of locks and bars which was a bit like locking the door after the horse had bolted - the horse being all the recording equipment he had borrowed from Paul McCartney to record the Blake songs.

That night I slept in a bed recentley vacated by Gregory Corso and as I write this I'm thinking my god yes we slept in the beds of the beat generation -because they had slept in ours in the U.K.

When Laurence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso were having breakfast with us  back in the sixties  Gregory wrote on a piece of paper " Gan to the Tower and dig yersel man " which is a combination of geordie and beat lingo. We were really fascinated with  each others dialect.

Alas we never met Kerouac but  Allen Ginsberg read here and stayed here in this in this flat in Gateshead several times as did Ted Berrigan, Alice Notely,  Ed Dorn, Bob Creeley, Bobbie Hawkins, Anne Waldman,  Jerome Rothenberg, Victor Bockris, Bobbie Kinnell, Karl Rakosi,  Kenneth Koch,  Oh and I wish I could say that Patti Smith had read in the Morden Tower  but  last month I did manage to catch her  stunning performance with her band at the Sage Gateshead ( or as she described the Sage  from the view at the top of the Keep  - the Golden Peanut )-  Now  that was a life changing event  in the Newcastle -Gateshead experience.

Newcastle upon Tyne made another link with The Chelsea last month when Alt Vynl a great little music shop off Westgate Road  put on an exhibition of paintings inspired by the work of Harry Smith.

Nice One Alt Vynl !

Keep on trukking Chelsea Hotel!

Connie Pickard

www.mordentower.org