Chelsea Sound Stage Continued
The good news is, the older guys who are actually in charge of these film crews are usually polite and respectful, and if you approach them with a problem they’ll usually take your concerns seriously--although you don’t see them all that much and I sometimes feel they are using the young Spielbergs to do their dirty work. The film crews will set up shop right in front of a door, apparently oblivious to the fact that people live behind them and will eventually need to get out. They yell and carry on, and run noisy machinery and blow the fuses. Their activities drove the Japanese artist Hiroya crazy, raving mad, and since the desk staff knew this—due to his incessant complaining--they made sure to send as many crews as possible to our floor.
One thing that all the crews inevitably do is to set up their lunch buffets on the trash bin. Bizarre, I know. Nearly inconceivable, I realize. But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. “Don’t you know that that’s the trash bin?” I asked a sleepy-eyed hipster one time. “There could be roaches crawling out of there, or even mice.” He just shrugged his shoulders, as if the matter didn’t interest him. (I think the general feeling among them—somewhat justified, I must admit--is that all the permanent residents are crazy.) I didn’t mention that people threw cat shit and dirty diapers in there too. The only thing I can think of is maybe they’ve neglected to bring tables and the trash bin is the only flat surface around, which they then turn to in desperation. In any event, this weird practice never fails to crack me up, and I always make sure to take out my trash at least once or twice while a crew is on our floor. “Hey! Hey!” somebody always yells, “That’s our food there!” as I open the lid to deposit my waste, careful not to disturb the steaming platters of delicacies. (Who’s crazy now, by the way? The Chelsea insanity is catching.)
The obvious question, which I heard the writer Jordan Atkinson ask a group of the young film hipsters one time, is, “Can’t you rent a Hollywood sound stage for this?” They made no response, but for one thing, they get tax breaks for shooting in New York. Besides that, they want the bohemian cache of the old hotel, and, in general, it’s a fun place to hang out. (They’ve opted to make “art” that sells, but they still want to think of themselves as starving artists, since that’s way cooler than selling out.) It’s OK, though; Stanley is hopefully charging them out the ass so he can keep the rents of the real artists low. He also likes the attention people pay to the hotel, and maybe it’s good advertising too. And perhaps some of young hipsters will stay on as guests or even residents, and, even as they join us in growing increasingly detached from reality, at least eventually learn not to eat their food out of the trash. Copyright 2006 Ed Hamilton (Next Week: Naked Models – The Upside of Film Crews)
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