Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

Edgar Lee Masters Rises From the Graves

As many of you already know, poet Edgar Lee Masters, was a former Chelsea Hotel resident.  His 1915 book, The Spoon River Anthology, is the story of the fictional town of Spoon River, and in it, the town’s residents are now dead and returning to tell their secrets and stories.

The Green-Wood Historic Fund in association with Variations Theater Group is producing The Spoon River Project outside in Brooklyn’s grand Green-Wood Cemetery. The shows take place after-dark and deep in the heart of Green-Wood’s 478 acres. On Saturday’s there are two shows, the second is at midnight!  Arrive at 11:30pm under the cloak of darkness for this special performance. And before it begins, you'll travel deep into the heart of Green-Wood for a tour of the Catacombs, an historic in-ground vault usually off-limits to the public.  Buy tickets and learn more here!

Chelsea Hotel Destructo-Porn : Herbert Huncke Room

Here’s what remains of Beat writer Herbert Huncke’s room.  Huncke, who inspired characters in Ginsberg’s Howl, Kerouac’s On the Road, and Burrough’s Junky, lived a hand-to-mouth existence in this rent stabilized room until his death.  He could have never afforded to live in NYC if the Chetrits of the world had had their way.  Underpaid, non-union demolition crews working with Joe and Meyer Chetrit,  Jonathan Chetrit, Gene Kaufman, and Ed Scheetz,  just to name a few of the characters involved , are taking rent-stabilized rooms off the books and destroying important chapters in New York history as they do so. 

The Union Rat is still in front of the Chelsea Hotel to protest this abuse.  Union reps are encouraging concerned citizens and supporters of the Chelsea Hotel to call Mayor Bloomberg and complain about the Chelsea Hotel situation.

Piri Thomas, Author of “Down These Mean Streets Dies” at 83

Piri Thomas, born John Peter Thomas in New York City's Harlem Hospital in1928, grew up poor in Spanish Harlem and wrote the now classic best-selling autobiography “Down these Mean Streets” about his childhood there.   Among his other works are: "Savior, Savior Hold My Hand", "Seven Long Times" and "Stories from El Barrio".   A true artist and social activist who worked with drug addicts, Piri is a former Chelsea Hotel resident and a friend of the late painter Herbert Gentry. 

Thomas married Betty Gross in the 1970s. This second marriage lasted until Betty's death in 1985. Betty Gross is the daughter of Mr. Joseph Gross, one of the three partners who bought the Hotel.  The other partners were David Bard and Julius Krauss.

Thomas’s last years were clouded by a legal dispute with his step-son, Chelsea Hotel minority shareholder David Elder.  Basically, Thomas was the beneficiary of a trust administered by Elder, granting Thomas the income from 16 shares (8%) of Chelsea Hotel stock. (The trust was established by Thomas’s wife and Elder’s mother, Betty Gross.)

In 2002, Elder withheld  $1.2 million dollars in hotel income from Thomas, claiming that the money was part of the principle of the shares.  Elder had a vested interest in doing so, since upon Thomas’ death the shares reverted to him.  While the courts ultimately decided in Thomas’ favor, the dispute went on for years and no doubt cost Thomas much in mental anguish and money to resolve.  The dispute can be seen as a kind of warm up round for the main event, which was Elder and Marlene Krauss’s hostile takeover of the Chelsea Hotel and subsequent ousting of long-time manager Stanley Bard. 

NY Times obit -

Death for Sale at the Chelsea Hotel

Lost our lease!  Everything must go!  Stanley was famous for renting the room where Madonna shot her Sex book to Material Girl-worshiping hipsters with stars in their eyes.  Lately, however, sex alone has not been paying the bills.  In response, general manager Arnold Tamasar has revealed a new marketing strategy: Celebrity Death Tourism.  (And maybe a little sex thrown in for good measure.)  
 For bargain basement prices, you can stay in the room where a drug-addled Sid Vicious killed a drug-befuddled Nancy Spungen—or at least a room with the couple’s infamous bathroom attached.  And if you can’t afford to go the whole hog, the hotel now sells Sid dolls at the front desk.  (Complete with tiny leather jacket, sure, but how about a tiny hypodermic needle?  You’ll have to ask the concierge.)  Wear your black fingernail polish and light a candle for the Romeo and Juliet of punk.

Substance-abusing punks not your cup of tea?  Ask to stay in the tiny room where Dylan Thomas collapsed after a night of hard drinking at the White Horse tavern.  Bet you can’t beat his record of 18 whiskeys!  Speaking of lovable alcoholics, Charles Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend bit the big one here as well—a suicide, double the fun!  (Don’t try this at home, kids!  Though really, don’t try it here either.)

If you don’t have time to spend the night (or simply fear for your safety and/or sanity), book a spot on the Big Apple Death tour, as the Chelsea Hotel is now on the itinerary.  You’ll travel in style, making the rounds of the city in a decommissioned (we hope) 1967 hearse.  The only problem with this option is, you’ll miss the famous ghosts of the Chelsea, who only come out at night!  -- Ed Hamilton

Read more about the Chelsea Hotel ghosts: The Severed Hand,  Thomas Wolfe ghost,  Floor-by-floor sightings,

William Burroughs Wishes a Merry Christmas to All of the Junkies at the Chelsea Hotel & Elsewhere Too

Thanks to Laki Vazakas for the Holiday reminder.

RIP Author Jim Carroll

From the comment section of Rolling Stone, by commentor Dennis Spencer.

"In 1978 I lived at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. One afternoon I heard a knock on my door. When I opened it there stood a tall, drugged- out looking, skinny guy about my age with stringy red hair. With  him were two other guys that were larger and even scarier looking than him.

With a fast talking New York accent and a desperate tone the red- headed one held up an LP and blasted into this rapid fire sales pitch:

“Listen, I know you don’t know me but my name is Jim Carroll and I have a band called The Jim Carroll Band and I am on Rolling Stones

Records and Tapes. I have a single coming out next month called “People Who Died”. I just this minute got back from England and what I have here in my hand is a copy of the new Rolling Stones album called
“Some Girls”.This the ONLY copy that exists in the United States. I haven’t even heard it. Nobody has heard it, not one single person in the U.S. has heard it, but YOU can be the first. My only question to
you is: Do you have a stereo?”

Now wait a second, yes I had a stereo, a very nice one as a matter of fact. More importantly I also had a fair amount of drugs in my room that took a whole day of hustling to get and I wasn’t about to let this trio of losers bust into my room and take my shit.

The album did look authentic though with the Rolling Stones logo and the red-head’s story had a ring of authenticity so I let them in.

As everyone knows the first song on the album is “Miss You” which begins that opening line “nah nah nah nanana” in falsetto. We all had a hard time figuring out if I had the turntable set at the right speed but of course I did. We then listened to both sides of this fabulous
album and it was of course, great.

On the way out Jim flipped a paper back book to me which of course was “Basketball Diaries” and said: “Check it out, this is the story of my life. One day you can say you met me.”

Now I am glad to say that I did.

[ROLLING STONE/"Basketball Diaries" author,Punk Icon Jim Carroll dead at 60]

The Second Time is Farce

Historian Sherill Tippins, whose history of the Chelsea, "The Dream Palace" is due out soon, wrote in to remind us that history reapeats itself:

Thomas Wolfe wrote this at the Chelsea Hotel. It's remarkably appropriate this week:

    "On October 24 [1929], in New York, in a marble-fronted building down in Wall Street, there was a sudden crash that was heard throughout the land. The dead and outworn husk of the America that had been had cracked and split right down the back, and the living, changing, suffering thing within--the real America...began now slowly to emerge. It came forth into the light of day, stunned, cramped, crippled by the bonds of its imprisonment, and for a long time it remained in a state of suspended animation, full of latent vitality, waiting, waiting patiently, for the next stage of its metamorphosis.
     "The leaders of the nation had fixed their gaze so long upon the illusions of a false prosperity that they had forgotten what America looked like. Now they saw it--saw its newness, its raw crudeness, and its strength--and turned their shuddering eyes away. 'Give us back our well-worn husk,' they said, 'where we were so snug and comfortable.' And then they tried word-magic. 'Conditions are fundamentally sound,' they said--by which they meant to reassure themselves that nothing now was really changed...
    "But they were wrong.  They did not know that you can't go home again. America had come to the end of something, and to the beginning of something else"
                                                                                  --Thomas Wolfe
                                                                                  "You Can't Go Home Again"

Arthur C. Clarke Dies at Age 90

We are sad to learn of the passing of former Chelsea Hotel resident Arthur C. Clarke.  Despite being ill at the time, Clarke graciously sent an e-mail to support the Bards back in June.  NPR and The New York Times have great coverage today.  (Thanks to Judith & Mary Anne for the tip.)
Other appreciations of Clarke: Teresa & Patrick Nielsen, Jeff Vandermeer, Peter Steinberg, Colleen Lindsay.

The Fabled Tiger Lady of the Chelsea?

The Chelsea Hotel of BD times is but a pale shadow of its former glory.  No cats in the halls?!  We’ve long heard rumors of an eccentric lady who kept a tiger in her apartment at the Chelsea way back in the 60s, but we tended to dismiss them as just too wild even for this primordial urban jungle.  But now, at last, the truth comes to light.  According to London’s Daily Telegraph, Theodora Keogh, granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt, and who died just recently at the ripe old age of 88, kept a margay, a South American “tiger cat” similar to an ocelot, while in residence at the Chelsea(1/29/08).

            As you might imagine, Theodora led a colorful life, carrying a knife and swimming nude as a young girl, joining a ballet company early on, running with the Paris Review crowd in the City of Love, and writing nine novels with such scandalous themes as: incest between twins, young girls being lured to bed by diseased sculptors, passing history exams by threatening to expose teachers as lesbians, street musicians falling in love with child criminals, rape, unspeakable things, and being stirred to perform marital duties by “. . .memories of a dark, swarthy Indian boy walking in the Place Vendome.”

            Theodora abandoned writing in 1962, and apparently moved to the Chelsea Hotel soon after.  The affair with the margay, however, did not end well: one night, when Theodora passed out dead drunk in her room at the Chelsea—18 whiskeys, anyone?--the ravening beast gnawed off one of her ears!

            We corresponded with Chelsea Hotel historian Sherrill Tippins about Theodora, and she was way ahead of us: she said that she had already contacted a biographer, who denied that the Tiger Lady had ever lived at the Chelsea Hotel, claiming instead that the margay incident had taken place in another building in the Chelsea neighborhood.  But we here at the Chelsea know better: in addition to the confirmation of the old rumors, what other building in Manhattan would allow ferocious jungle cats to range freely through its halls?!

            Theodora died on January 5 of this year in North Carolina, where, reportedly, she had had to give up raising chickens because they kept getting eaten by coyotes.  (Yeah, I know, North Carolina doesn’t seem like a real big coyote state: no word on whether or not she was raising the coyotes herself.) -- Ed Hamilton

Poet's House Threatened

Poet Dylan Thomas' house in Wales has been beseiged by raving real estate vultures hell-bent on laying waste to the historic structure in a psychotic frenzy of greed that can be satisfied only when they have squeezed every last farthing from the rubble strown lot upon which not one single-celled organism is suffered to draw breath and not one red brick is allowed to rest upon another.  Oh, wait, that's the Chelsea.  But Thomas' house is up for auction, I meant to say.

Long-time Chelsea Hotel Resident Jakov Lind (1927-2007)

We are sad to learn of the passing of the great Jewish writer Jakov Lind, who, according to his obituary in the New York Sun (March 9, 07) lived at the Chelsea for 40 years, though he wisely spent part of his time in London and Spain.  There are photos of Lind in both the Claudio Edinger book, Chelsea Hotel and the Rita Barros book, Chelsea Hotel: Fifteen Years.  Lind is best known for his novels, Soul of Wood and Landscape in Concrete, although, as we learn from the Edinger book, he was also a painter and an anarchist. -- Ed Hamilton

The Chelsea as Vanishing Point: Jean Baudrillard RIP

French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard died earlier this week.  Rita Barros, who photographed Baudrillard and his wife, for her book, 15 Years: Chelsea Hotel, recalls her excitement at meeting Baudrillard in his Paris studio and preparing dinner for him here at the Chelsea. We're happy to learn that he didn't like "The Matrix," feeling that the film makers had misunderstood his ideas.  We just thought it was boring.

When I got to Paris on assignment to photograph Jean Baudrillard I was quite excited. I could finally discuss or at least ask him some questions that he had raised with books like Simulacra and Simulations. It was a warm afternoon and I vividly remember his small studio, books piled all over the place. He opened the door with a wide smile and announced that he was ready for the real image of himself. Time was short and the conversation got postponed to a later date.

Years later he called to say he was staying at the Chelsea so I made dinner for him, his wife and João Pedro a Portuguese common friend. He was very disappointed with the treatment of his ideas in the film “The Matrix” and wanted nothing to do with the whole hysteria.

The next trip to New York I got to photograph him in the hotel. He loved to stay here, better than a fancy place without a soul. “This hotel is a vanishing point of New York” he told me.

And now Baudrillard has vanished but his photo remains, a sign of the real for the real itself…..

Rita Barros

“It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself” Jean Baudrillard

Charles Bukowski: 8/16/20 - 3/9/94

  On the anniversary of his death, here's a rockin' tribute of sorts, by indie band, My Penis, to everybody's favorite drunken poet, Charles Bukowski.

Bukowski, as we've mentioned before, wasn't that impressed by his stay at the Chelsea. He didn't think it was much, but he figured maybe that was its charm. This from the man who checked into the hotel in just his socks because he got so drunk that he left his shoes on the plane.

Here, Bukowski reads his poem, "The Genuis of the Crowd"

Speaking of Bukowski, here's a shameless plug for a friend's book.  Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, written by Jeff Weddle and due out in the Summer, traces the development of Loujon which was one of the first presses to print Bukowski's work.  Copies of some of the letters that Bukowski sent to Lou and Jon from 1964 - 1972 are available online and make for interesting reading.

Mark Twain The Inventor Stops by the Chelsea

Recently, Google made it easier for users to search through 7 million patents dating back to 1776.  If your into that sort of thing here's what you might find: Samuel Clemens patent for improvement in scrapbooks, filed June 24, 1873.  So, now we know, Mark Twain is responsible for the "self-pasting" scrapbook.

 

If you are really industrious you can come up with a whole list of patents filed by former Hotel Chelsea residents and guests.  Didn't Arthur C. Clarke invent something?

Dee Dee Ramone's Manuscript Still Available

Here's a gift suggestion for the Ramone fan on your gift list. Today is the final day that you can bid on Dee Dee Ramone's unpublished autobiography manuscript.  The last time I checked the high bid was $659.57.   

I guess the bids are not going to reach the same level  ($155,401) as that 1966 acetate album by Nico and the Velvet Underground, which as it turns out was fake.  The bid, not the album.

Thanksgiving Prayer -- William Burroughs

Thanks for the American Dream....

Thomas Wolfe Postcards: A Ghost Story At The Hotel Chelsea

Novelist Susan Swan visited the Chelsea last summer, staying in Thomas Wolfe's old room (you remember Thomas: he wrote "You Can't Go Home Again" in room 829). She considers Wolfe a literary father-figure, and, as you can see from the following story, her stay at the Chelsea was for her a profoundly spiritual experience.
First Installment:
Thomas Wolfe doesn’t knock. Why bother? He’s home. I hear his tubercular cough as he lets himself in. He floats through the wood and on down the curving vestibule until he is right where he wanted to be. Of course I scream and clutch the sheets to my chest. "It’s just me…a shade of my former self" His ghastly head inclines back and forth and I realize he is laughing at his own joke. Then he says: "Something feels amiss." I follow his eyes and say, "They divided your rooms in two. A musician lives in the other half. But I’ve got the best section. See? The fireplace still works." "Nothing like a fire." He stares at the silent blaze of my log. "Only those synthetic things give me the willies."

My Feet Hit The Floor with a Smack
I was raised to be the master of any social occasion. My feet hit the floor with a smack. Still clutching my sheets, I throw him a groggy stare: "Do you want a Scotch?" Again in the darksomeness, the silvery head moves back and forth: Yesssss.

Extending My Hospitality
I come back with a drink tray, the ice cubes in the tall glasses, sloshing and jangling. "You’re awfully quiet," I say. "Please talk--it makes me uncomfortable when people stare." He accepts his glass politely and sits down in an armchair by the fire. I seat myself on a nearby stool. "Forgive me," he says in a very faint voice. He has been gaping at me, trying to decide if he finds me attractive.

Thomas Wolfe on Me
He thinks the distracted look on my face suggests the abstracted devotion of a young nun. He can imagine a cowl draping my head. It’s a very literary way of looking at me, as you might well imagine.

A Shade of his Former Self
Frankly, Thomas Wolfe hasn’t had much success lately with his own writing. Did he mention that? He can’t concentrate long enough to start the flow. It takes all his energy just to hold himself together. Increasingly, he feels like someone lightened of every tissue and synapse.

Faded Letters
Once his writing was synonymous with American prose. But today his books are an "undergraduate indulgence." He read that phrase somewhere and God, it stung. Today his name is so faded on the mattering map of American literature that it is no bigger than the bottom row on an ophthalmologist’s chart--the tiny letters that only those with perfect vision can see. Thomas Wolfe, not Tom, I say to young friends who haven’t read his novels.

His Size Thirteen Shoes
"Somebody came here last week and took away your shoes," I tell him. "They had to be yours. Size thirteen--a fan, I think." He sighs, the sound of his gratitude like a whoosh of traffic noise.

I, Too, Worry about my Reputation in American Letters
I, too, worry about my reputation in American letters. Especially now that my book had been savaged in the Times. Following a silence of 15 years, I had brought forth a new work and heard it dismissed as "inconsequential, plodding novel & neither original nor memorable. " Brittle & overwhelmingly self-pitying " had been some of the dismaying phrases. "At least they didn’t say I couldn’t write my way of a paper bag." Thomas Wolfe replies. "The only thing a writer needs to concern himself with is staying open to experience. If we aren’t vulnerable we can’t write."

Thomas Wolfe on the Writing Life
No one thinks about what happens to writers after they lose the attention of their public do they? Writers either peak early or last too long. And who, more than Thomas Wolfe, dares to argue? He was raised to win but now he says losing is the art writers need to master.

Chelsea Hospitality
When Thomas Wolfe was a resident, Purdell Kennedy, the bell captain, was his best friend. Purdell would bring him free coffee with a dab of Scotch every morning and say, "A little hair of the dog, boy?" Poor Purdell, dead and gone so long now. He loves the hotel’s façade of rufous brick--its spidery balustrades and Victorian gables. How many nights did he cover the floor of his suite with manuscript pages? And sweat-stained shirts, fortified by raw gin? One thousand four hundred and eighty? Or was it only six hundred and two? And now he’s back to finish his manuscript.

His Last Masterpiece
He left the Chelsea in the summer of 39, planning to return to put the final touches on his last masterpiece. Instead he fell ill in Baltimore from acute pulmonary tuberculosis. To give him relief, the doctor bored a hole into his skull and fluid had spurted three feet into the air. Those were his biographer’s very words. He couldn’t remember what went on in the operating room. Just his brother remarking, "You’re going to be fine, boy." "I hope so, Fred," he’d replied. And look what happened!

Thomas Wolfe on His Critics
I can still remember every word of my last review. …Placental material--long, whirling discharges of words unabsorbed in the novel, unrelated to the proper business of fiction & raw gobs of emotion, aimless and quite meaningless jabber…" Thomas Wolfe stops. He realizes he is getting distraught. And once he starts, he can’t help himself. He can recall every word. They all do. We all, he corrects himself. "If only that critic could hear me now! I don’t have a clue how I lost my biblical cadences," he says. "But after all these years I am turning into a modernist like Hemingway and Fitzgerald. They were enemies of mine, you know."
"Time transforms everyone," I reply. "No reason to think you will be any different."

Thomas Wolfe Plans to Fix the Critics
My next book will reassert my old prominence. It’s going to be a living diaogical--is that the right term? I shake my head. "Dialogical."…a living dialogical mural that fictionalizes the life of every man and woman in Eastern America. I will go back to my old Biblical cadences and put in every beauteous cranny of the world I love. Do you believe me? I put up my hand in protest. "I think you should know that I read one of your old journals last night and it made me cry." I’m sorry."Look, no need to be modest with me. I know the passage off by heart." I begin to quote: ‘No one owes the writer anything for writing…he may regret the stupidity or ignorance that keeps his work unknown, but he must accept it as one of the possible conditions under which he must work.’

Ah, Now He remembered
Ah, now he remembered. He wrote those words as a young man. When he didn’t know better. I see his eyes move to his old desk. Surely, now that I have welcomed him so hospitably, he can get on with his writing. At least, that’s what I think he’s thinking. "Don’t you want to hear the rest?" I ask aware his attention is straying."Oh god, no," he says. I give him a sympathetic look. "You know, I think you need to hear it. I take another gulp of her Scotch: "’No one asked the writer to write…let him expect nothing’”. My voice quivers slightly over the word nothing and then I compose myself. He extends his silvery hand for another Scotch and says, "Thank God, I am still a sentient being in some respects at least." (to be continued next halloween)
Susan Swan
Susan Swan is a novelist, journalist and one of York University's most prestigious public intellectuals. She is the author of six books of fiction including The Wives of Bath, a finalist for Ontario's Trillium and the Guardian Fiction Award in the UK.

Her most recent novel, What Casanova Told Me, was nominated for the 2004 regional Commonwealth Prize and as a Globe and Mail, Now Magazine and Calgary Herald best book for 2004. (more information on the reception to that novel can be found here)

CHELSEA FAÇADE GETS EVEN MORE CROWDED

            This is the week we’ve all been waiting for.  A new plaque will be added to the front of the Chelsea Hotel.  The place will be crawling with media since another star is being added to the Walk of Fame. The recipient is filmmaker Shirley Clarke.

            Clarke, who died in 1997 at the age of 77, lived at the Chelsea in the sixties and seventies.  She is famous for her cinema verité depictions of street life, such as 1963’s Cool World, about street gangs in Harlem, and 1967’s Portrait of Jason, an interview with a black homosexual (I guess it sounded more shocking in those days).  Clarke will be the first woman to be honored with a plaque on the Chelsea.

            The big question now is, where are they going to mount the new plaque?  In case you haven’t looked at the facade of the hotel, there are already plaques honoring Thomas Wolfe, James Schuyler, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Arthur C. Clarke, and Virgil Thomson.  Besides these, there’s a general Chelsea Hotel plaque.  That’s a damn lot of hardware a hangin’, and there’s not much room left.  They may have to move or remove one of the plaques to give Shirley a spot.

            So, who to remove and who to add?  We did a Google trend analysis to find out who was the most popular among the possible nominees and those who already have plaques.  Arthur Miller should have a plaque, he blows everybody else away, followed by Dylan Thomas and then, way back, Arthur C. Clarke.  Thomas Wolfe and Brendan Behan get a few hits each, and apparently no one at all has heard of Edgar Lee Masters, author of The Spoon River Anthology. Sorry, Edgar Lee.
 

            

The next question is: who else deserves a plaque?  So many famous people have lived here that it’s difficult to decide.  I say William Burroughs, who wrote Naked Lunch here, but Debbie thinks there’s already enough writers.  Shirley Clarke is also the first visual artist to be so honored.  Among Visual artists, Larry Rivers is a good candidate.  There really should be more women and visual artists, so perhaps Stella Waitzkin, who, though not enormously famous, created perhaps the greatest of all the idiosyncratic Chelsea rooms with her polyster resin books and sculptures.  (One of our neighbors also thinks Stella is a good candidate.)

            Then, of course, there are the enormously famous, the real celebrities: Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edie Sedgwick.  Not to mention our beloved Gingie the dog, who wandered the corridors of this hotel for a decade or more until the cold hand of death snatched her from our midst.  (Please note that I am NOT attempting to compare Shirley Clarke to a dog.)

            Or perhaps we should just forget about all of these poseurs, tear down all the plaques that already clutter the facade, and just erect one enormous plaque to Sid and Nancy, the brightest of all the stars in the Chelsea pantheon.  Hell, maybe even a neon sign is in order.

           Who do you think deserves a plaque on the front of the Chelsea?

[There will also be a dinner and a showing of Clarke's movie, Ornette: Made in America on the evening of Sept. 20^th  at the National Arts Club.  Stanley Bard will give a talk before the film.]

Ghosts Walk The Corridors

For all you history buffs who read this blog, a 1984 interview with Stanley Bard, originally heard on CBS radio's BookBeat, is available online as a podcast.  Click here to play!  When asked why he thinks so many writers come to stay at the Chelsea, Stanley credits the buildings high ceilings and the sound-proof rooms.  Stanley also talks about Brendan Behan and how he was too big of a drunk to live anywhere else.  The interviewer briefly discusses the bronze plaques on the front of the hotel--all of which, we'd like to point out, are dedicated to male writers.  Fortunately, that situation will be recitified later this month when Stanley dedicates a brand new plaque.  (Not much room left, so we're curious as to where he'll put it.  Will a lesser star be thrust aside?)  Click on through to find who will be the first woman to receive a plaque here at the Chelsea.

For readers who prefer contemporary podcasts, check out Live from the Lobby.

A Tale of Two Dylans

A Welsh writer named Phil Bowen has written a play about a meeting between Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan in the Chelsea Hotel. Though initially produced in 2001 and 2002, it was of course a flop.  Now its been brought back for a run at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Wales. Through superior blogging skills we have managed to obtain an excerpt from the top-secret script.  Picture the two men seated in a dingy cockroach-with-teeth infested room at the world famous Chelsea Hotel:

Bob: How does it feel Dylan, you old tosspot, to be on your own, with no direction home, etc. etc….?

Dylan:  Well, not so hot, Bob, you royal asshole, but at least Death Shall Have no Dominion Over Me.

Bob: No, but 18 whiskeys did.  Looking back on your life, how many roads did you have to go down before they called you a man?
Dylan: A shit load, but I’m still not ready to go gently into that good night.

We can’t wait for the sequel, where Dee Dee Ramone instructs Mark Twain in the finer points of shooting smack.

Patti Smith Reflects

The great singer/songwriter and poet Patti Smith sent along her reflections on the month of August.  Patti lived in the Chelsea with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the early 70s.  She returned to the Chelsea and lived her for a time in the late 90s as well.

August 9 full moon. This is the day Jerry Garcia died.  He was born on the first of August and passed away on the ninth, so it's nice to think of that span as Jerry week. It certainly seems that he well deserves a 9 day week. So it's winding to a close. I lit him a candle, listened to him singing Palm Sunday, and looked at his paintings in a big Jerry book.

August 2, the birthday of my sister Kimberly, was the anniversary of William Burroughs' passing.
While in my old house in Michigan I found my seventy year old bottle of Chartreuse squirreled away. I
bought it in the eighties with him in mind. We promised each other we'd share a drink one day, but we never got around  to it. I reread his Port of Saints and looked at a catalogue of his gun shot paintings. I traced my son and daughter's names  written in his hand on an old Christmas card.
Then I cracked open the Chartreuse and poured us each a shot. The green sugary liquid put me in mind of nineteenth century absinthe, so while I had my ritual drink with William, I kept in mind the likes of Paul Verlaine, Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud.

August 3, on the birthday of Beverly Lee, a member of the wondrous Shirelles, Arthur Lee passed away. I met him a long time ago. He was just a little older than me. He was soft spoken with a vague criminal air. Forever Changes left its mark. I was in Michigan when he died and I walked down to the end of my dead end street and sat on a bench beneath a weeping willow. It was at least one hundred degrees but I still had my trusty black coffee, steaming fresh from Seven Eleven. I played back Amoreagain and Orange Skies in my mind. These songs of Love are so deeply rooted I can hear them as clear as if they were wafting from a turntable.

My son's birthday rolled around. August 6 was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Over one hundred thousand people were massacred in that drop. Too many candles for one to light. I was back at my post on the bench looking out at Lake St. Clair. A huge Monarch brushed my cheek. I figured the butterfly, symbol of immortality, served to evoke them.

A few weeks ago I was in London. I visited a small bar painted green and lit with a green light. William used to frequent this joint some years ago. You can only enter through private subscription. I wasn't drinking. I was just visiting. It was three in the afternoon.  There were a few old-school characters nursing their whiskies. Suddenly, in the center of the friendly yet oppressive silence, one of them cried out "Syd Barrett is dead." This took me off guard. But the fellows spontaneously raised their glasses, issued a " here! here! Syd!" and then retreated into their private worlds. For that one moment they were of one mind. And I was with them, saluting someone I never knew. Someone who made music. Someone who loved Arthur Lee.

Today is my friend Betsy Lerner's birthday. It's the day the United States dropped an Atomic Bomb on Nagaski. It's the day Hermann Hesse died. The day Jerry died. I have returned to the city. Children are racing up and down my street. We humans keep in mind. That's what we do. Tonight is a full moon. Guess when it sets, I will get me a cup of black coffee, sit on the stoop, and contemplate the bombing of Qana, the miracle of love and Dark Star.

Patti Smith

Historian Unearths William Dean Howells' Rent Receipt

Sherill Tippins, the author of a forthcoming book on the history of the Hotel Chelsea, has been spending her time visiting the archives of famous former residents.  Among other interesting artifacts, she has been known to find old Hotel Chelsea rent receipts.  Recently she sent us a list of what apartments rented for at the Chelsea when it was first built (late 1800s), along with the conversion rate in today’s dollars:

A 3 to 4 room suite cost about $50-$100 per month, equaling about $1,000 to $2,000 in today's dollars.
An artist's duplex rented for about $100 per month, i.e., $2,000 today.
You could get one of the rambling, 10-12 room apartments for $167 to $250 per month, which translates to $3,000 to $5,000.

Tippins goes on to say, “These prices were considered outrageous, but the Chelsea was built in the midst of a real estate boom and everyone was worried that housing prices were pushing out the middle class. (Not to mention the artists.)  Aside from the fact that the apartments were new then--at the time of the prices I gave you--those rents were also a much smaller part of the renters' income, I think.  William Dean Howells' income was about $850 per month [his salary equaled about $200,000 per year today], so a $250 apartment would have cost less than a third of his monthly nut."

The writer/editor William Dean Howells wrote to his father, after he rented a place at the Chelsea, "I watch my money flow as a stuck pig its life-stream.  It's horrible to spend so much but I seem bound to it hand and foot." 
William Dean Howells: now there is a writer who you don’t typically associate with the Chelsea. After all, he's not listed on the hotel’s authoritative website. We were thrilled to learn of this connection, and mentioned it to one of our neighbors in passing, and he replied, “Too bad they don’t read him anymore.”   They’ll read him again now that they know he lived at the Chelsea!

Who is Seymour Stern?

Earlier this week I noticed that a photograph taken at the Chelsea Hotel in 1971 had been posted to Flickr.  So I sent an e-mail to the photographer, Mark Goldstein, and inquired about the photo.  Below is his reply.
These photos were taken in 1971 when I brought director Nicholas Ray to visit my friend Seymour Stern who lived at the Hotel Chelsea in NYC. Nick and I came down from SUNY Binghamton to see Alan Lomax and film a party of folk musicians and friends at his apartment in the city.  Seymour was an author and film critic who focused on the works and person of D.W. Griffith.

Seymour was also godfather to Nisi Jacobs, daughter of Ken and Flo Jacobs. I studied cinema under Ken who hosted visits by Seymour to SUNY Binghamton a number of times. I came to consider Seymour a friend and a mentor, often visiting him at the Hotel Chelsea when I was in NYC and frequenting a nearby automat for a bite with him.

You can find more on Seymour Stern in the extensive article “Seymour Stern: American Film Critic, Guardian and Prophet” including Ira H. Gallen’s recap of his own visit to  Seymour’s room at the Chelsea.

You can find more on Nicholas Ray at the Internet Movie Database and the film we were working on in Binghamton, “We Can't Go Home Again”. Two of my photos of Nick were featured in the book “Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause” by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel published 10/05. Those two photos and a few others can be seen on the Amazon site . And more of my Nicholas Ray photos can be seen on Flickr.

Dee Dee's Novel is Optional

If you pay for TimesSelect, you can read Steven Kurutz's article "Literary New York," in which he gives a nod to the Hotel Chelsea's storied guest list of writers.  However, we cringed when we read that "Chelsea Hotel Horror" is the definitive literary work about the hotel.  If you have a better suggestion, bring it on.  I once asked Mr. Bard if he knew of any novels that had been set in the hotel and his answer was that the father-in-law in Saul Bellow's Herzog lived in the Chelsea.  I read Herzog and did not find that to be the case.  Bard and Jerry also gave a nod to Sparkle Hayter's Chelsea Girl Murders. Anyway, we stand by what we told Steven, tell your readers to check out the blog for a literary outpouring!

"One spot that boasts a rich literary and music history is the famed Hotel Chelsea (222 West 23rd Street, 212-243-3700; starting at $195; book at least three weeks in advance), which, believe it or not, was a home to writers long before Ethan Hawke moved in. Consider the past guest list: Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, William S. Burroughs, Arthur Miller. Unfortunately, these writers made little mention of the Chelsea in their work, leaving Dee Dee Ramone's "Chelsea Hotel Horror" as the definitive novel about the hotel. People-watching in the lobby is highly recommended; Mr. Ramone's novel is optional."   (The correct title of Dee Dee's book is Chelsea Horror Hotel.  Thanks to blogchelsea for the link.)

Mysterious Ink Stains

If you’re in Wales any time soon you can drop by the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and view their newest acquisition: a suit supposedly worn by Dylan while he was living at the Chelsea.  Not his suit, mind you, but a suit that he borrowed from the artist Jorge Fick and wore around for awhile.  How do they come to this conclusion?  Well, the suit has an ink  stain in the pants pocket. (Photos: Dylan Thomas & Jorge Fick)
         We recently met the writer Sherill Tippins (she's writing a history of the Chelsea) over drinks at the El Quijote, and to tell you the truth I don't think she would accept this evidence.
        Sherill would be checking that ink stain against the ink in all known samples of Dylan’s handwriting!  If they're making it up, she'll tell them what's real.  The Chelsea is all about myth.  I hope no one around here mistakes this place for reality.  Now that would be really insane.

Also of interest is the contention that Jorge Fick, rather than living at the Chelsea, merely stored his clothes here. I’m consumed with envy at this story – because we don’t even have a closet in which to hang our clothes. We’ve been after Stanley lately to let us use the hall closet—which doesn’t have much in it—but he probably entertains ideas of renting it out to a midget, or better yet to a gnome or a leprechaun, should one happen by.

Cynthia Hopkin’s Tsimtsum or Dylan Thomas' Last Whiskey Drunk

On Friday, April 21, we saw Tsimtsum, by Cynthia Hopkins, as part of the Sourcing Stravinsky program at the Dance Theatre Workshop. We didn't know in advance, but Tsimtsum turned out to have a connection to the Hotel Chelsea.

Hopkins came out on a dimly lighted stage, walking backwards dressed in a space suit, and asked us to imagine that she was Dylan Thomas drinking his last whiskey at the White Horse Tavern before falling from his barstool, never to regain consciousness, and dying.  She asked us to imagine that we were Dr. Cook, who I assume was Dylan’s physician, the one who pronounced his death due to what he called a severe insult to the brain. (Photo by Paula Court)  She said that right before his death, Thomas had met with Igor Stravinsky, and they had discussed composing an opera together.  This had never come about, but luckily, she, a being of an advanced race that had taken over earth after the extinction of mankind, had been able to reconstruct this opera by randomizing all of Dylan’s words, and combining them randomly with a random sample of all the notes Stravinsky had ever composed.  And now, she announced, she was going to perform that opera.

At some point she turned around, slipped out of her space suit, to reveal that she was indeed a superior being, complete with pig nose, flowerpot hairdo, and flowing gypsy robes with tiny airport bottles of Jack Daniels dangling from the fringes.  She danced slowly, purposefully, to music of her own composition.  Eerily, in a lilting voice, she sang about how the human race had committed suicide by blowing up the planet in a nuclear war.  The atmosphere of the earth had been burned off, the planet transformed into a fiery, uninhabitable desert, as the people were fried to a crisp and vaporized.  Or something like that.

All this was what Dylan contemplated in that final moment of his life as he was sliding from his barstool, on the way down to the floor.  Finally, the last whisky drunk, the earth, in cooling, reduced to a cold ashy ember, Dylan seemed to be transported back to his room at the Chelsea; he sat back in his comfy chair as the performance wound down. (Photos by Paula Court) Don’t worry, the alien assured us, though our race was dead, her people would look after the earth for us; they would just live underground for a few millennia until the planet came back to life.

I know it sounds kind of lame, but this was a much better show than my review would lead one to believe; it was a fascinating, riveting, haunting performance.  Read the NYTimes review. List of Cynthia's upcoming shows.  Buy In Memoriam: Dylan Thomas by Igor Stavinsky. Buy music by Cynthia's band, Gloria Deluxe.

William Burroughs' Cabin For Sale And It Includes The Original Outhouse Too!

If you can’t get a permanent room at the Chelsea, don’t kill yourself yet.  William Burroughs’ old cabin in Kansas is for sale on E-Bay.  Its been surrounded with wooden decks and in every other possible way yuppified, and would no doubt be unrecognizable to Burroughs today.  But at least it still has the basement where old Bill used to store his windsurf boards!  It comes complete with a (no doubt exhaustive) William Burroughs book collection, and is priced to move at $159,950.  Oh, and homeowner’s dues are a rock bottom $15.00 for which you get hamburgers and hotdogs at the annual cookout.  No word yet on the local cost of the obligatory heroin.  (This far out in the sticks you might have to settle for OxyCotin, “hillbilly heroin.”  If so, it may be best to stay in NY, close to your reliable sources.)
The wealthy sellers – who have probably never even tried heroin! – have even given the cabin a cutesy nickname.  They call it “Mugwump Heaven.” (via Luxist)

In other dead-author’s-homes-for-sale news, the Dorothy Parker Society reports that Parker’s former home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania is on the market.  What Fresh Hell Is This!

Poetry Powers Her Posturing

Lipstick academic Camille Paglia has come out with a new “book” in which she critiques the forty-three greatest poems in English literature.  Excuse me, but didn’t her fellow blowhard Harold Bloom come out with something similar a few years back?  Something about the hundred works of literature that all literate humans must read?  Then, as now, the stated purpose is to educate the unwashed masses as to the timeless values of literature/poetry.  Then, as now, the real purpose is to incite controversy among academics and intellectuals.  Or maybe it’s just to turn lecture notes into cash.

Paglia wants people to get worked up over the fact that their favorite poems and/or poets were left off the list.  I’m playing into her hands, I know, but OK, I’ll bite.  She neglects several Chelsea poets, including: Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and Bob Dylan.  Leonard Cohen fails to make her list because, apparently, she believes his work to be unknown in the U.S.  (So, no “Famous Blue Raincoat.”)  She does include Joni Mitchell, though not of course “Chelsea Morning”, but rather “Woodstock”.

I guess I shouldn’t be complaining, since at least one Chelsea poet makes the list, but it just seems rather odd: Joni Mitchell rather than Ginsberg?  “Woodstock” rather than “Howl”?

“Woodstock” is a pretty good song, one of my favorites, actually, but great poetry?  Get real, Camille.  Here are the first few lines of “Howl”:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving

hysterical naked,

Dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking for

an angry fix...

Paglia describes this poem as “...garish, stagey, hammy.”  As opposed to:

            We are stardust, we are golden,

            We are billion year old carbon.

            And we’ve got to get ourselves

            Back to the garden.

I’m missing something, apparently.  I guess you had to have been there.

(Paglia’s book, Break Blow Burn, actually came out last year, reputedly sparking controversy, but I just didn’t notice until now.) (Source:Tronto Star)

It's All About The Snakes

Just like we said last week, everybody remembers the snakes!  Peter Sanford interviews Rebecca Miller about her film, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, which is opening in the UK this week.  The article briefly mentions the Chelsea.
Rebecca's childhood was, in her recollection, 'very normal' - loving parents, growing up on a farm, going to school, no limos or first-class flights. But it took place in a context that was anything but normal. So a visiting Henri Cartier-Bresson would read to her as a baby next to the Roxbury pond from the memoirs of an 18th-century French courtier. And for part of it, she lived with her parents in suite 614 at the fashionably rundown Chelsea Hotel in New York, home also to Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer and 'a man with a very large snake who lived upstairs'. 

Our Paris Correspondent Posts an Exclusive from London

The Chelsea blog’s sparkling Paris correspondent takes us behind the scenes to the Resurrection Blues opening night after party.  She apologizes for the lack of photos, but she was too busy partying.  Seeing how that’s the case, all is forgiven.

Transatlantic glitterati came out in strength to see and support former Hotel Chelsea resident Arthur Miller's play Resurrection Blues at its debut at the Old Vic in London March 3.

Among those who attended the performance and the party afterwards were Maggie Smith, Daniel Day Lewis, Aidan Quinn, Katherine Helmond, Richard E. Grant, Emma Thompson, Emily Watson, Greta Scaachi and Charles Dance, in addition to the old Vic artistic director Kevin Spacey and the play's stars Maximillian Schell, Neve Campbell,  Matthew Modine, James Fox, Jane Adams and Peter Macdonald.  The Altmans, Bob and Kathryn, left the party after a few hours to board a private jet to LA, where Bob was to receive his Lifetime Achievement Oscar on Sunday.

Producer, and long-time Hotel Chelsea resident, Scott Griffin, who was entrusted with this play by Arthur Miller before his death, had a large contingent of fans and friends in attendance.  Pals from North America and Europe travelled to London and included opera singers Lauren Flanagan and Catherine Malifitani, renowned doctor. Marcia Gordon, actress Katherine Helmond, philanthropist Mary Kaplan, writer Maggie Paley and the Chelsea Hotel's Caroline Hansberry.  Caroline's Partner, Sir David Remfry, was unable to attend, but hosted a dinner for Scott and a few friends at the legendary Chelsea Arts Club in London.

The absence of Arnold Weinstein and, of course, Arthur Miller, who died within months of each other in 2005, was profound.