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Here’s an example of how the minority share holders and BD Hotel are capitalizing on the Chelsea's historical spaces. (Please note that some of the videos and photos are Not Safe for Work or for your children.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8BS835fcVY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuyBflxufg
In March 2006 I came to New York for the first time to audition to Juilliard. I was finishing my music undergrad in Sweden, where I’m from. I booked tickets to stay in NY for a week. The first two nights I stayed at the worst place imaginable that I had booked from Sweden, not realizing what “really cheap” in New York usually translates to. As I realized that, I went down to Chelsea Hotel that I had read about and found Mr. Bard behind the front desk. I introduced myself and asked for a room, he said “no problem” and 
gave me the price of $ 220/night. I was sad to say that it was a little more than I could afford which I told him upon which he asked how much I could afford. “What about half?” “No problem”. Those five nights were among the most memorable in my life, and the best conceivable introduction to the New York that I (on day three) fell in love with. The atmosphere had me mesmerized and I practiced better than ever. I tried to repay Mr. Bard for his generosity by playing in the lobby, but was forced to quit by some employee since people started to give me money.
I was accepted into Juilliard and I began my studies there the following fall and I’m graduating this spring. Many times I’ve walked by, not daring to go inside since I have no business there, but still longing to feel that certain smell, to see the wonderful architecture and to experience that vibe again. New York is now my home, hopefully for a long time if money allows.
Mattias Jacobsson
I wish I may, I wish I might. . . As reported in a recent New York Observer article (Max Abelson, 1/28), our dark mistress Marlene Krauss seems to have forgotten her roots and decided to put on airs (heirs?), casting herself as an heiress to the vast Chelsea Hotel fortune. In case you don’t know the story, 
her father was a plumber who worked with Stanley’s father and put up some of the money to buy the hotel in 1945. So, well, gee, technically. . .
Marlene seems to have forgotten her treasured Harvard MBA as well. Maybe her PR campaign to cast herself as a Master of the Universe has run its course and now she’s going for a softer image, sort of a spoiled, rich layabout--“let them eat cake” and all. Surely no one will bite (or chop) her head off for that.
The Observer article, nominally about Marlene buying a new apartment, is definitely worth a peek, as it makes Marlene sound about as bright as Paris Hilton. What will you do in your new solarium, Marlene? “I’m planning to grow, like, organic vegetables up there.” What’s your favorite color, Marlene?
“. . .light greenish, it’s used a lot in, like, Japanese clay and stuff.” Forget the Fairy Godmother, bring on the Wizard! Somebody needs a brain!
Well, I don’t know about you, but I had more respect for the old Marlene--you know, the one who made a fortune selling baby monitors that broadcast brainwashing signals from outer space. Why don’t you just live in the Chelsea, Marlene? “Um, just because, you know, the apartments really weren’t big enough for me and my family.” Come on, Marlene, it’s a big building. You can have a whole floor. No, two floors. Throw those starving artists out in the street!
But it’s gratifying to know that if we work really hard here at the Chelsea we may someday rise to meet Marlene’s exacting standards: “It’s getting to look really nice. We’re fixing it up. I think it’s being run really, really well; it looks cleaner.” [Reality Check: they are not fixing the Chelsea up. The only thing BD “fixed” was the Grand Ballroom, partitioning it for office space—for which they received a $250 fine from the DOB for work done without a permit--and now they are tearing the partitions out.] I think Stanley Bard put it best when he said, "Since when are we all dirty around here?" -- Ed Hamilton
The good news just keeps getting better. It has come to our attention that our intrepid Director of Operations, Glennon Travis, unable to resist the siren song of Internet social communities, is now on facebook. In case you’ve forgotten, Glennon received a bit of good natured ribbing for his incredibly silly Myspace page, which he eventually had enough sense to take down, as it was an embarrassment both to himself and to the Chelsea Hotel. We trust that, for his latest online venture, he has dropped his “St. Louis beach bum and hip hotel junky” persona (or whatever the hell it was) for something a bit more dignified—or at least comprehensible. (“Money-grubbing slumlord” would give him something noble to aspire to, though “swashbuckling patron of the arts” would be better from a PR standpoint.) We can't bare to look at his profile since we don't want that Warren Zevon song stuck in our head for weeks. I’m sure one of our readers will send it to us eventually, in which case (baring the unlikely event that we have something important to worry about) we will generously share it with the Chelsea community.
A reader writes:
"Hey just read your most current blog post and thought I'd send some photos I took of the
firefighters Friday night. I had just returned from an evening exploring the east Village when I saw all the fire engines outside the hotel. The first thing that popped into my head was, 'Wow, this is just like Ed's story.'
Also-- strangely enough-- I was on the east elevator with the Jamaican maid and bellhop
(sorry don't know their names) when it got stuck between the 1st and 2nd floors. We pried the door open and got out before we got seriously stuck. It was still out of order when I checked out.
Seems like the hotel was flexing its muscles this weekend."
"I stayed at Chelsea a few years back and while planning to come back for a quick visit, i found out about the horrors. Not much i can do from Sweden, but at least i can support you with something to print up.
Know that you have friends you don´t know."
Eskil
Eskil, we suggest that you do what others have done over the past few months and turn your outrage into a tee-shirt or a button to wear during your visit. Or, fly a banner from your balcony.
As if the hostile takeover of the Chelsea weren’t bad enough, now developers are going after another monument of the counterculture, this time the birthplace of Hip-Hop, 1520 Sedgwick Ave. on the outskirts 
of the Bronx, where D.J. Kool Herc spun records back in the early 70s. (NYT, Cityrooms Blog, "Tenants Might Buy Birthplace of HipHop" by Jennifer 8. Lee) Though not quite of the Chelsea’s significance, the building is still a monument to a part of New York’s life and legacy that’s being swept under the carpet for the sake of the almighty dollar. It’s also an outpost of affordable housing in a city that’s increasingly becoming merely a shopping mall for the super rich.
There are some other parallels to the Chelsea as well. The building is being bought by real estate mogul Mark Karasick for a reported $14 million, which is well beyond the $5-$6 million that housing advocates quoted in Lee’s article estimate it’s actually worth based on rental streams. It’s comparable to the mystery as to why BD Hotels, a company that buys hotels, would agree to simply manage the Chelsea, a 
no-win situation where all they accomplish is to make themselves look like scum for desecrating an iconic institution.
As Lee’s article makes clear, Karasick knows that there’s only two ways to make money off of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue: either to throw out the rent-stabilized tenants, or to flip the building for a profit. As for BD, the underlying motive is more difficult to fathom. They are charging less for rooms than Stanley was, and their claims of high occupancy are almost certainly exaggerated. We know of a few rooms that seem to have been warehoused for months after the long-term tenants vacated them. (Stanley would have cleaned them up and rented them in 24 hours, tops.) Add to that the huge increase in the size of the staff, and it’s hard to imagine that that this corporation is making more money than Stanley was. Probably BD is looking for 
some sort of eventual ownership role in the hotel. Are they trying to drive down the price by bankrupting
the hotel?
Whatever the particulars, there does seem to be some sort of financial scheme afoot. Remember, Born and Drukier don’t care to put in a hard day’s work and pull down a regular salary. These guys are after the big bucks. – Ed Hamilton
Jan. 14, 5:30 - 7:30
Opening reception for photographer Gary Schoichet 's exhibit "Infamous 5th Floor Men's Locker Room" at the former McBurney YMCA. Free, Wine & Cheese
McBurney YMCA, 125 West 14th Street, NY NY
Jan. 23, 8:00 & 10:00
Jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin will perform songs from her recent CD release, "A Morning in Paris." The CD has been receiving great reviews. For the first time ever, Sathima's daughter, the hip hop artist Jean Grae will perform as a guest artist with her mother. $15.00
Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Ave., (Between Grove & Bleecker) NY NY
Brendan At The Chelsea--a new play by Janet Behan uncovering the final days of Brendan Behan's stay at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. From the press release, "It’s Sixties New York, in that legendary 
bohemian bolt hole, The Chelsea Hotel. Arthur Miller is just across the hall, the sound of Ornette Coleman is drifting down from the penthouse and the symphony of 24th Street is rising up and in through the open window of Brendan Behan’s room… He’s broke, hung over and way past the delivery date of his latest book, the first line of which he has yet to write. He was told to stop drinking or he’d be dead in six months – that was two years ago…."
Starring Adrian Dunbar. Directed by Adrian Dunbar and Rosalind Scanlon.
Riverside Studios, London from 15 January 2008
The only historical fact listed on the Hotel Riverview’s web site is that the Titanic crew stayed there during the inquiry into that disaster (“detained” is how they phrase it, making it sound like the place was being used as a prison”). (The Chelsea Hotel housed some of the Titanic survivors as well.) But until just recently you could get a single room there for only $30.47 per night, plus hotel tax and a $5 key deposit. If you were willing to splurge you could get a room with a TV 
for $32.90. All that is set to end—along with, eventually, all semblance of affordable housing in Manhattan--now that hoteliers Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson have bought the place. So if you were thinking of moving there after you get kicked out of the Chelsea, think again, hapless Bohemian! The Riverview will be a boutique hotel as well!
The apparent lack of history is telling. Because the Riverview, on Jane Street in the West Village, is not so famous as the Chelsea (The building was originally the Seamen's Institute of the American Seamen's Friend Society) the scoundrels who bought the place are apparently moving full speed ahead to evict the long term tenants and discharge the hotel staff. (This is reported in Hotel Chatter, though someone wrote in to say they may keep some staff.) Whereas the media and public reacted with outrage at the possibility of a similar fate for the Chelsea, at the Riverview there will be no such relief in store.
(I can add a little bit more to the Riverview’s history. In addition to playing host to any number of penniless writers and artists, the Riverview has a less tenuous connection to the arts: it’s the former home of the Jane Street Theatre. I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch there, and also Eddie Izzard—a former Chelsea Hotel resident back in the 90s.)
Oh, did I mention that Goode and MacPherson are associated with BD partners Richard Born and Ira Drukier? The fearsome foursome joined fiendish forces to bring us the nauseating Maritime Hotel in the Meat Packing District. -- Ed Hamilton
This month’s Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art features an article on the painter and 
former Chelsea Hotel resident Ching Ho Cheng (January 2008, by Jonathan Goodman). Two of the pictures of Cheng’s work (The Cloud and Alchemical Process ) that appear in the issue were taken at the Chelsea.
Some of the longer term residents of the Chelsea will certainly still remember Cheng. A friend of former Chelsea luminaries such as painter and good witch Vali Myers and poet and photographer Ira Cohen, Cheng traveled widely in Europe, but always returned to the Chelsea while in New York. Born in 1946, Cheng came with his family to New York at the age of five when they fled the communist revolution. He studied painting and sculpture at Cooper Union and had his first New York solo show at the Gloria Cortella Gallery. A fixture on the downtown arts scene of the 60s and 70s, Cheng was friendly with such stars as David Bowie, Lou Reed and the members of the Rolling Stones.
As discussed in the Yishu article, Cheng had an eclectic style reflective of the wide open nature of the time in which he came of age. From his early psychedelic works, some perhaps drug-inspired, he progressed to gouache works of “painted light”, and then on to more abstract works involving techniques of purposely tearing and oxidizing paper to introduce notes of chance and spontaneity into his work. (Of particular note for fans of the Chelsea are Cheng’s series of gouache paintings, seemingly abstracts, that in reality depict various representations of the window frame in his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel.)
Viewing himself as an outsider and a creative rebel, Cheng drew on Tibetan Mysticism and the art 
of ancient and aboriginal cultures. I’ll bet he had some pretty good conversations along these lines with Vali and Ira as well!
(Another interesting factoid is that Cheng helped underground filmmaker Rosa Von Praunheim shoot his film Tally Brown, New York, about Warhol superstar Tally Brown here at the Chelsea. I was unaware of the Chelsea connection of this brilliant, unorthodox filmmaker.)
Sadly, at the height of his creative powers, Cheng died in 1989. His work lives on, however, as does his memory in the collective consciousness of the Chelsea.
[Thanks to Cheng’s sister, Sybao Cheng-Wilson, for providing us with a copy of the Yishu article, as well as further details about this remarkable Chelsea Hotel artist. Most of the details about Cheng’s art are pulled from Goodman’s article. To learn more about Ching Ho Cheng and his life and art check out his website at www.chinghocheng.com. Copies of Yishu are available at the Asia Society.]
Vali Myer painting of herself and Ching Ho Cheng
A tribute to our favorite tackle shop, Capitol—an early casualty in the war between the Chelsea Hotel and the BD usurpers—appears in last Sunday’s issue of The Independent. Thanks to Keith Elliott 
for keeping the issue in the news, and for pointing out that Capitol’s customers might just as well include tattooed weirdoes and 6-feet women—no doubt from the Chelsea—as actual anglers. (The weirdest was no doubt the Sultan of Brunei—I wonder if he stopped in to ask Stanley about the rates.) I’m also glad to see that he notes that Capitol has successfully relocated—to a spot near Macy’s at 132 West 36 Street>—hopefully putting this whole distasteful Chelsea nonsense behind them. Good for them. Too bad the rest of us can’t do the same.
Elliot does make a couple of mistakes, however. For one, he says that the acupuncture shop, as well as other unnamed shops, were forced out. Actually, the acupuncture shop is still there; the only two storefronts that are vacant were both part of Capitol, which is thus far the only store that has actually been forced out. (We have heard plenty of rumors, however, as to what BD plans for the other spaces—acupuncture, guitar and tattoo parlors don’t seem to figure in their plans. But we are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best.) -- Ed Hamilton
Here’s the new Hotel Chelsea business card. I guess it’s supposed to represent the sign on the façade of the building, but it really looks more like a tombstone to me. (The actual sign is of course not shaped like an oblisk.) It’s a fitting epitaph for the death of culture in New York. But after all this is only wishful thinking on the part of BD Hotels because we’re all still alive and kicking here at the Chelsea Hotel. It will take more than a poorly designed business card to finish us off.
Below is the old Hotel Chelsea business card, basic, but at least a bit classier than the new one.
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