Our illustrious proprietor Stanley Bard paid a visit to the hotel last Thursday, and apparently
decided to take the opportunity to do some house cleaning. I was across the street dining at the Pita Hut when I noticed several of my Bohemian comrades from the Chelsea going through the boxes of trash that had accumulated on 23rd Street by that evening. Never one to pass on any opportunity to get something for free, I quickly scarfed down the rest of my sandwich and dodged traffic in a beeline to the rubbish pile. My fellow scavengers were rummaging through boxes of old art books – most of which seem to be in foreign language – and speculating as to who could have discarded such treasures. What we eventually discovered was that most of the books contained a section on the Chelsea Hotel! The books and magazine had apparently been given by their authors to Stanley over the years. Since the early trash-picking bird get the worm, most of the better books had been snatched up before I arrived. But here’s a representative sample of the leftovers, in what I take to be Italian and Japanese.
Hopefully Stanley hasn’t thrown out the rest of his archives. I searched in vain for a box of old rent receipts; Alas. -- Ed Hamilton
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