Firebugs

I came home last Friday night (April 15) to find hundreds of firefighters rushing into the hotel. My neighbors had gathered in the lobby and were bonding with the tourists around this unplanned entertainment.  The tourists wondered if they would get a discount for the inconvenience.  Not on your life we assured them.  You’ll pay double for the pleasure of surviving a fire in the bohemian theme hotel.   

While rushing the water hoses up the stairs to the ninth floor, New York’s bravest were met by a ballet dancer on his way down the stairs.  The firemen told him to get off of the stairs.  He replied, with a flourish of his hand, “Fuck you, take the service elevator.”

Fires are big at the Chelsea.  Yevgency Yevtushenko’s poem “Soot,” describes a fire that the poet experienced at the hotel in 1977.  I awoke to find soot “like black worms, crawling in the cracks on all floors.”   Again in the 70’s Warhol superstar Edie set fire to her place when the oven exploded while she was trying to bake a sweet potato.