Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

Wales Week in NY Celebrates Dylan Thomas

Wales Week in New York provides the perfect excuse to go get drunk at the White Horse Tavern.  Make your experience even more authentic, afterwards, come back to the Hotel Chelsea and drop dead.  Thursday, March 2, at 3:00 p.m.   The Dylan Thomas Prize in partnership with Penderyn Welsh Whisky will be hosting an evening of readings by US and Welsh writers. Karen Shoemaker - US-based, short fiction; Jo Mazelis – Welsh writer, short fiction.  More about Dylan Thomas.

William Burroughs, 2/5/1914

Wondering how to properly celebrate the birth of William Burroughs?  Shoot some heroin in the eighth floor bathroom at the Chelsea Hotel.  Or if that's too authentic for you, take a trip to the sanitized Beat Hotel in Desert Hot Springs California. An upscale, commercialized version of the original Beat Hotel in Paris, the Beat Hotel is an intimate hotel with eight guest rooms and a pool and spa.  And furnishings are actually from the "Beat" period.  (See, an actual typewriter! Apparently you have to bring your own bongo drums.)  Beginning this weekend the hotel kicks off the InterZone Beat Festival, an homage to the Beat Generation.  Highlights of the event include Beat-related photographs and a performance by Grant Hart, Huskur Du founder and long-time friend of Burroughs.

RIP Hugh Pearson

A few weeks back on this blog we mentioned a guy who jumped from the 10th floor stairwell and richocheted off of the rails and lived.  Well we were wrong about who it was.    While having drinks with a former resident Friday night, she recalled that the guy who jumped but lived had written a book about his namesake, Black Panter party leader Huey P. Newton.  Hugh Pearson, who had the guts to publish a warts and all biography of Newton, subsequently found himself excoriated by some members of both the black community and liberals and embraced by conservatives.  Sadly, Hugh was found dead, apparently a suicide, in his Brooklyn apartment only a few months ago. (Photo: The Villager)

Still no details on the guy who claimed to have jumped from the roof and lived in 1981.

Edgar Lee Masters 2006 Forecast

The Hotel Chelsea

Edgar Lee Masters

Anita! Soon this Chelsea Hotel
Will vanish before the city’s merchant greed,

Wreckers will wreck it, and in its stead

More lofty walls will swell

This old street’s populace.  Then who will know

About its ancient grandeur, marble stairs,

Its paintings, onyx-mantels, courts, the heirs

Of a time now long ago?

Who will then know that Mark Twain used to stroll

In the gorgeous dining-room, that princesses,

Poets and celebrated actresses

Lived here and made its soul;

In after years, so often made and unmade

By the changing generations, until today

It stands a tomb of happiness passed away,

Of an era long overlaid?

What loves were lived here, what despairs endured,

What children born here, and what mourners went

Out of its doors, what peace and what lament

These rooms knew, long obscured

Will be more lost when fifty years from hence

The place thereof will have no memory,

When men must hunt its picture, so to see

What it looked like amid this turbulence!

Few now remember even the noted names

That loved its hospitality in past years.

Who will remember me when wrecking shears

Clip like a leaf this room of troubled aims,

And make this window one with the sky’s space,

By which I sat looking into the court?

This table that I write on will not report

My dreams, gone by without a trace.

There will not be a seat for any ghost,

No room left for a musing ghost to smile

On kisses, vows, regrets, that for a while

Made life, and then were lost.

The blue-eyed woman who went out and in

The entrance door, time and the tooth thereof

Will take her, take the man who gave her love,

Both will be lost ere twenty years begin.

With purest love this woman was beloved;

With pain her lover looked upon her grief,

Her past, and strove to give her heart relief,

Himself by Life so moved.

All this will be but currents of the air

Veering and lost.  Tell me how souls can be

Such flames of suffering and of ecstasy,

Then fare as the winds fare?

Tell me how love that fills the human heart

With a sense of things eternal must submit

To what is eyeless, and is infinite,

And hears so soon the word ‘depart/”

Anita! You can perpetuate by thought

What we have lived, when this hotel is gone.

Passing its site remember I was one

Who sought for peace and found it not.

Remember that I loved you, scarce could bear

My helplessness to give your spirit thrift –

Remember this as with the tide you drift,

Others will not remember, nor even care.

Literary Cooperation Among Former Chelsea Residents

Archivists at Harvard's Houghton Library recently discovered an unpublished short story in Gore Vidal's archives. When they called Vidal to ask about the story he replied, "'That doesn't sound like my kind of material, that sounds like Tennessee Williams's territory."'  As it turns out, Vidal was half-right. The story, which he eventually recalled having written, was based on an anecdote that Williams, a friend of his, used to tell at cocktail parties.

According to Vidal's biography, Vidal checked into the Chelsea Hotel with Jack Kerouac and "attacked" the beat poet "from behind," as a red neon light flickered through the shadeless window.  Perhaps that was a more memorable experience than writing a story based on a Tennessee Williams' anecdote.

Save Your E-mail Correspondence from the Mental Hospital

Because everybody will want to read it someday. That is, if you're a famous poet. A new anthology of former Hotel Chelsea resident/poet James Schuyler's letters is now available, Just The Thing: The Selected Letters of James Schuyler -- 1951-1991.  Below is an excerpt from the book. (Photo: Schuyler at his Chelsea apt.)

‘I am well. How are you? It is wonderful here,’ the first letter in this selection begins, and goes on: ‘I love it here; real mad fun. Especially the evening game of gin rummy before beddy-by (9.30); the 8 p.m. cup of cocoa.’ The letter was written on 15 November 1951, a few days after James Schuyler had been admitted to Bloomingdale Hospital, a mental institution in White Plains, New York. Schuyler still gets his semi-colons right, and his appetite for gossip is undiminished: ‘Is it still Connecticut, the dear deer, the steady lay, the unprivate walls?’ His correspondent, John Hohnsbeen, an art-dealer friend, was having an affair with the architect Philip Johnson, and the ‘unprivate walls’ are those of Johnson’s famous Glass House

Edgar Lee Masters - The Hotel Chelsea

This post is for the person(s) who continues to vist this blog because they are googling the phrase "Edgar Lee Masters Poem About the Demise of the Hotel Chelsea."  Here is a copy of the poem as printed in Florence Turner's book, At The Chelsea.  I'm not certain of the date the poem was written, but it does forecast a sad future for the Last Outpost of Bohemia.

The Hotel Chelsea

Edgar Lee Masters

Anita! Soon this Chelsea Hotel
Will vanish before the city’s merchant greed,

Wreckers will wreck it, and in its stead

More lofty walls will swell

This old street’s populace.  Then who will know

About its ancient grandeur, marble stairs,

Its paintings, onyx-mantels, courts, the heirs

Of a time now long ago?

Who will then know that Mark Twain used to stroll

In the gorgeous dining-room, that princesses,

Poets and celebrated actresses

Lived here and made its soul;

In after years, so often made and unmade

By the changing generations, until today

It stands a tomb of happiness passed away,

Of an era long overlaid?

What loves were lived here, what despairs endured,

What children born here, and what mourners went

Out of its doors, what peace and what lament

These rooms knew, long obscured

Will be more lost when fifty years from hence

The place thereof will have no memory,

When men must hunt its picture, so to see

What it looked like amid this turbulence!

Few now remember even the noted names

That loved its hospitality in past years.

Who will remember me when wrecking shears

Clip like a leaf this room of troubled aims,

And make this window one with the sky’s space,

By which I sat looking into the court?

This table that I write on will not report

My dreams, gone by without a trace.

There will not be a seat for any ghost,

No room left for a musing ghost to smile

On kisses, vows, regrets, that for a while

Made life, and then were lost.

The blue-eyed woman who went out and in

The entrance door, time and the tooth thereof

Will take her, take the man who gave her love,

Both will be lost ere twenty years begin.

With purest love this woman was beloved;

With pain her lover looked upon her grief,

Her past, and strove to give her heart relief,

Himself by Life so moved.

All this will be but currents of the air

Veering and lost.  Tell me how souls can be

Such flames of suffering and of ecstasy,

Then fare as the winds fare?

Tell me how love that fills the human heart

With a sense of things eternal must submit

To what is eyeless, and is infinite,

And hears so soon the word ‘depart/”

Anita! You can perpetuate by thought

What we have lived, when this hotel is gone.

Passing its site remember I was one

Who sought for peace and found it not.

Remember that I loved you, scarce could bear

My helplessness to give your spirit thrift –

Remember this as with the tide you drift,

Others will not remember, nor even care.

A Tribute - Arnold Weinstein

The memorial service for long time Chelsea Hotel resident Arnold Weinstein  (6/10/27 - 9/4/05) has concluded. This is a quick snapshot of the program.

Bob Dishy and Peter Stadlen -- "The Wind in the Willows"

Paul Sills

Alice Playten and Scott Griffin
"The Wake Up Song" from Schlemiel The First

Robert Brustein -- Spoke of his and Arnold's time together at Yale.

Mary Testa and Laurence Rosenthal
"Central Park Goodbye" from The Party

Charles Prince -- Spoke of the spiritual bond he and Arnold shared.

Estelle Parsons, Andre de Shields and William Bolcom
"I've Got a Lot of Lawn to Mow" from A Wedding

John Guare -- Was Arnold the Last Bohemian?

William Bolcom and Joan Morris
"I'll Be By" from Casino Paradise
"Bright Red Singing" from The Party
"George" from Cabaret Songs

Bob Dishy and Peter Stadlen -- Red Eye of Love
"Don't you see, Wilmer, life isn't everything."  (Exit)  Red Eye of Love, Grove Press, 1962

William Bolcom played as those who had gathered to pay tribute to Arnold left the Walter Kerr.  In attendance:

Many Hotel Chelsea Dwellers
Our esteemed proprietor, Stanley Bard
Editor, The Nation, Victor Navasky
Writer, Sparkle Hayter

Remembering Virgil Thomson 11/25/1896 - 9/30/89

Composer Virgil Thomson was a long time resident of the Hotel Chelsea.  He resided here from 1934 until he died in 1989.

Out in Berkeley, CA, The Mark Morris Dancers are performing "Four Saints in Three Acts," which is set to a score composed by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein.   

Interviews from the Chelsea:
"The Saint Theresa Incident," from Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle.

Reflections of an American Composer

Hotel Chelsea -- The Last Years  (From: http://www.schirmer.com/composers/thomson/essay3.html

In 1934 Thomson became a resident at the Hotel Chelsea in New York, a Victorian building that opened in 1884. Many literary people -- Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams -- have lived there. Despite its regal elegance, it always had a slightly randy, seedy appearance.

Entering his apartment on the 9th floor, you walked into a past era which was very European, and which left contemporary obstreperous New York far below. Every object in it was a significant part of his history and revealed the cultural milieu of a man whose life for more than half a century was spent interacting with the international avant-garde, particularly the Paris of the 1920s. The enormous sitting room, because of pictures hung on its red and blue walls, made the apartment seem larger than it was. Book cases contained works of his friends old and new -- first editions of Stein, Cocteau, Cummings, Joyce, Gide, Faulkner, William Carlos Williams, James Merrill, Edward Albee, and Truman Capote. Photographs, periodicals of the 20s, paintings and sculpture by Maurice Grosser, Jean Arp, Florine Stettenheimer, Leonid Berman, Christian Berard, Yves Tanguy, Paul Tchelitchew, every one an irreplaceable visual memoir of a lasting friendship. A grand piano, a fireplace, his favorite armchair, and a large cupboard dominated the room. Conspicuous on the top of the cupboard was a set of Vuitton luggage. This was both a pretentious display of vanity and a constant reminder of his hasty retreat from France with Man Ray in 1940. That's all he could manage to take with him.

New York Times Obituary.

Literary Hotel Envy

While other hotels are mere Chelsea wannabes, the Algonquin can give the Chelsea a run for her money in the literary department.  The Algonquin was home to literary great, Dorothy Parker. The seventh annual Dorothy Parker festival happens next week, and festival organizer Kevin Fitzpatrick has written an overview of Parker's encounters with the men of the Chelsea:

"Dorothy Parker was a resident of the Algonquin and Plaza hotels, but probably never at the Chelsea. Her residences extended as far south in Manhattan as 44th Street.  But she did venture downtown; indeed her tattoo was inked in a village shop; her friends Edmund Wilson, James Thurber, Andy White and Franklin P. Adams all lived below 23rd Street.  However, she did have a connection with at least four Chelsea Hotel all-star writers.

Thomas Wolfe -- Thomas Wolfe visited Mrs. Parker in Hollywood in September 1935.  "Dorothy Parker seems to like me," he told editor Max Perkins, "Swears she does, and last night told a room full of people that I was built on a heroic scale and that there was no one like me.  Maybe the old girl is laughing at me behind my back and making wicked jokes about me but I think she meant what she said.  She and her young husband are living in a magnificent imitation Colonial house...and the liquor and hospitality flows like the Mississippi -- I am going there again this afternoon."

Vladimir Nabokov -- In October 1958 Mrs. Parker tipped her pen to Nabokov upon the U.S. publication of Lolita.  She was a sometimes book critic for Esquire magazine, her last regular writing assignment.  "I do not think that Lolita is a filthy book," she wrote.  "I cannot regard it as pornography, either sheer, unrestrained, or any other kind.  It is the engrossing, anguished story of a man, a man of taste and culture, who can love only little girls..an anguished book, but sometimes wildly funny, as in the saga of his travels across and around the United States with her."

Arthur Miller -- The National Institue of Arts and Letters inducted Dorothy Parker into its memberhsip in 1958.  IT was the great literary achievement of her career.  She was also invited to Columbia University, where playwright Arthur Miller was speaking.  Mrs. Parker wanted to attend, not so much as to meet the great man of the theater, but to get an audience with his new wife, Marilyn Monroe.

O. Henry -- The first literary prize Dorothy Parker was awarded was the O.Henry award for best short story of the year, in 1929.  It was for her gem "Big Blond" -- a semi-autobiographical novella of love and loss.  Parker and O. Henry had another connection through New York World columnist Franklin P. Adams, a member of the Algonquin Round Table and mentor to Parker.   Adams and O. Henry (William Sydeny Porter) collaborated on a play.

The Lost Weekend

Sunday, September 18th, 4:00 p.m.  The Museum of Moving Images screens "The Lost Weekend."  "The Lost Weekend," stars Ray Milland and Jane Wyman and is based on the bestselling, autobiographical novel by former Hotel Chelsea resident Charles Jackson.

"The Lost Weekend," is the story of Don Birnman, who has the good fortune of getting a short story published in The Atlantic Monthly at the age of 19.  Don takes that to be a sign that he should quit college and move to NY and become a writer.  Unable to write another story, Don succumbs to writer’s block/alcoholism, familiar maladies here at the Hotel Chelsea.  After all, the Do Not Disturb signs here at the Chelsea read “Don’t Bother Me!” I’m writing the next great American novel.”

Two women are infatuated with Don:  his long suffering girlfriend (Time Magazine editor Henry Luce’s gal Friday) Helen St. James, and Gloria, the hooker who hangs out in P.J. Clarke's, Don’s favorite bar. (Unfortunately, they never show the inside of the men’s room, which I hear from reliable sources had the mother of all urinals before the bar was yupscaled a few years ago).  In classic Edith Head style, both women are exquisitely attired.  Gloria makes her entrance in a black sheath with a sexy, see-through, lacy top, and we first see Helen St. James at the Opera in a leopard skin coat.

Don goes for a quick drink at P.J. Clarke’s at 55th & 3^rd.  One drinks turns to two and then the next thing you know he's on a bender that ends with him trying to pawn his typewriter up and down Third Avenue. When he can't find a pawnshop open, he borrows money from Gloria, but at least she gets to keep her clothes.  He pawns Helen’s Leopard Skin Coat.

Suffering from DT’s near the end of the bender, Don consults the bartender at P.J. Clarke’s about how his proposed autobiographical novel should end, the bartender advises Don that the character should kill himself.  He helpfully recommends several options: either get his gun out of hoc, or, if he doesn’t have enough money for that spend $1 for a trip to the top of the Empire State building and jump.

The movie won four Oscars.  Actor (Ray Milland); Director (Billy Wilder); Best Motion Picture; and Screenwriting.  Nothing for Edith Head this time.  She wasn’t even nominated. Oh well, can’t win them all.

Sadly, on Sept 22, 1968, Charles Jackson, at the age of 65, took an overdose of sleeping pills in the Chelsea Hotel.

Naked Lunch To Be Republished

The Naked Lunch, which Burroughs worked on while living at the Hotel Chelsea is going to be released in a new edition later this year. 

The Naked Lunch is being republished, in a new edition by Burrough's biographer Barry Miles and his friend and manager James Grauerholz (the novel was first edited, with famously haphazard haste, by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Ansen in Tangiers). In December, Viking will publish Evil River, a new volume of autobiographical writings by Burroughs. And next month sees the opening at the Riflemaker gallery in London of a three-part exhibition devoted pre-eminently to Burroughs's art. How apt that the gun-loving writer should get a show in what was once an old Georgian gun shop. (Source: The Guardian, August 24, 2005)

Dylan Thomas' Ghost

For the record, I don't believe in ghosts, but if they do exist, I happen to think that Dylan Thomas' ghost would rather be haunting the Chelsea than Austin University.

"Ugly, Lovely Night" is a film by Binda Singh which tells the tale of an American student who meets Thomas' ghost at Swansea University (near Thomas' birthplace). After filming in Wales, the cast and crew will shoot some scenes at Austin University in Texas, home to one of the largest collections of the writer's work.

Why go to Austin, Texas, Binda Singh?  Come on by the Chelsea, where Dylan tossed back a few before heading down to the White Horse Tavern to have 18 more whiskeys before dying.  According to Juiceenews, you can feel the ghosts walking down the halls behind you.

Virgil Thomson's Secret Coq au vin Recipe

Last Friday (August 19), Hotel Chelsea resident and composer Gerald Busby, premiered a large scale piece interspersing monologues (“Who to Thank” and “Tomorrow’s Butter”) and music (Rhapsody for Cello, Nocturne for Piano, Hop In, and Bullet Proof Bikini) as part of the ComposersCollaborative’s Serial Underground.

In an intimate and informal setting at the Cornelia Street Café, The Monologuing Composer took the audience on a tour that began in Tyler, Texas and wound its way to the Chelsea Hotel. Gerald shared amusing stories about the major influences on his career including: his mother, his English teacher, Baptist minister Angel Martinez, his German piano teacher, Mildred Baker (another former Chelsea Resident), leather bars, and finally Virgil Thomson.

To hear Gerald tell it, his relationship with Virgil was more like an apprenticeship than a relationship.  The two obviously had something in common, besides music, and that was the love of good food.  Gerald has worked as a cook at some of New York’s finest restaurants and according to Gerald, Virgil had a very refined palate.

Gerald recalled Virgil calling him on the house phone and in his nasal voice request that Gerald, “run me up a Crème Brule, Philip Johnson and his wife are coming over for dinner.” (A reference to the architect and his partner I presume.)

One of the many food highlights of the evening was when Gerald shared Virgil Thomson’s coq au vin recipe.  Here it is, handed down from Virgil to Gerald and now to you!

1. Cut up the chicken into eighths.
2. Braise chicken with a rendering of beef suet.
3. Add a cup of shallots and a cup of your best Burgundy.  Simmer until done.
4. Serve with the rest of the Burgundy.

Afterwards, the audience was buzzing.  “The recipe sounds so simple and delicious, but what exactly is beef suet?” a theatre critic in attendance asked. Unfortunately, there were no foodies in this crowd of avant garde music lovers who could answer his question. After much discussion amongst ourselves we felt pretty confident that it was some sort of FAT.   Needless to say, we all went home hungry!  Later, I looked in the dictionary and discovered Beef Suet is raw beef or mutton fat, especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys. Word on the street is that Gerald has a cookbook project in the works.

Enough about food. You can purchase Gerald’s CD online.

There Was a Debate?

In Lawrence, Kansas, the city commissioners debated and ultimately decided to place William Burrough's home on the register of historic places.

Burroughs was also fond of the Chelsea, which served as his first stop when he returned from Europe in 1964.  In an essay in Claudio Edigner's book Burroughs wrote, “Every room in this hotel is different.  You can find rooms from almost any period you want – the twenties, the thirties—or anonymous air-conditioned rooms that could be from anywhere.” 

Forget ambiance, those anonymous air-conditioned rooms are highly prized as the temperature reaches into the 90s.

The Bunker vs Chelsea?

Nothing is True Everything is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, is being billed as the first-ever biography of the painter, poet, piper who died in 1986.  In the 1960's Brion spent some time at the Chelsea carrying on a love affair with John Giorno in room 703 among other things.   John Geiger, the book's author, regrets that he has never stayed at the Chelsea, "but last few trips have bettered it: crashed at the Bunker!"

Excerpted with permission From: Nothing Is True Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin, John Geiger, The Disinformation Company, 2005.

Gysin and Giorno were drunk or stoned, or both, and shared an immediate, extreme attraction. Gysin asked the young man to call on him at the Chelsea Hotel, and a few days later they became lovers. Giorno felt emotionally and intellectually attached. At twenty-eight, he was just coming into his own creatively, and he considered Gysin a "great teacher," not only in terms of art but the spirit. Said Giorno: “Before I met them I was just this dumb American. At that time in spring of 1965 I took my first 34 LSD trips with Brion Gysin at the Hotel Chelsea in Room 703. I was in my mid-twenties but it didn’t matter, I was like a 14 year old. I had come out of the 1950’s. My mind was blown in the context of those LSD trips, which we took one or two times every week. The Chelsea was the only safe place for us to do that. I was living on 9th Street and Brion lived in the Chelsea in this nice big room. At those times [on LSD] you don’t want to be outside. We were lovers so we fucked all the time as well. Brion was not a Buddhist or Hindu but he was doing his own sort of meditation that he never told me about, some kind of magic. On those acid trips I would also sit. The mind being a wild elephant, we’d both sit on the bed in meditation, resting our minds. They were my first experiences with real meditation in terms of trying to deal with my mind.”

Gysin had not abandoned the practical application of magic, either. He always had a good supply of hash and, at the Chelsea Hotel, even received a slab in the mail. It had been sent from France, and was so badly packed that the hash had eaten through the walls of the flimsy wrapping paper. Rather incredibly, it had simply been re-sealed by a customs agent, and sent on to him. Burroughs was deeply impressed with this demonstration of practical magic, and the fact that, as he put it, "some Johnson had put it back in and sealed it with tape." To Burroughs, a Johnson is someone who refuses to join in when everyone else is on their way to the Commissariat to denounce a neighbor.

Brion Gysin, March 1957.

Larry Brown July 9, 1951 - November 24, 2004

Novelist Larry Brown would have celebrated his 54th birthday today.  In honor of his birthday, I'm going to share some advice I received from Brown nearly 14 years ago.  First, some background.

After money had been stolen from my apartment, the building manager instructed me to file a report with the police.  The money had been stolen from inside of a copy of Brown's book, BIG BAD LOVE, which is where I had placed it for safekeeping.  When the cops arrived to investigate the complaint, their first question was "Is this pornography?"  Anyone who has read the book will know that the collection of stories feature male protagonists of the beer-drinking, pick-up driving persuasion.  Just the way I like'em I might add.

I shared with Brown the cop's impression of his book.  In return, I received this advice from Brown.

Halloween, 1991
I'm much distressed and chagrinned to find out that BIG BAD LOVE attracted pilfering worker-thieves and enticed them to violate your bookshelf.  Those big bad boys need a big bad spanking.  I'm further distressed to discover that the D.C. police department thought it might be pornographic.  You shoulda told'im you had DIRTY WORK too.  I guess maybe the landlady might be right. (she suggested that I hide my money in the Bible)  Next time tape it under your microwave.  They'll never think to look there.
all best, signed Larry Brown

Brown's stories were later made into a movie starring Debra Winger.  The cops never found my missing money.  About a month later I got a call from the video rental store saying that I had several tapes overdue.  The thief had been using my video card to rent porno movies.  The cops were on the right track after all.

Cult Fiction

The Rough Guide To Cult Fiction, is billed as a guide to over 200 cult authors including genre benders, beats, gurus, drunks, junkies, sinners, and surrealists. According to the editor, in the entry for Herbert Huncke the book discusses how he spent his last years in the Chelsea financially supported by the Grateful Dead.  Photo: Huncke in his room at the Chelsea © Laki Vazakas

Other Chelsea authors who made the Cult Book:
Charles Bukowski -- Stayed in 1010, Janis Joplin's room, when he came to town to read at St. Mark's on the Bowery.
Arthur C. Clarke -- On Sept. 29, 2004, a new plaque was added to the front of the Hotel Chelsea, to commemorate that Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey,” while living in room 1008 at the hotel.
Leonard Cohen -- Do I really need to spell out what went down with Leonard & Janis?
Allen Ginsberg -- In 1973, Ginsberg recorded songs & poems on a Wallensack tape recorder in Harry Smith's room on the Third floor.  Many of these were later released by the Smithsonian Institution on the Folkways label.
Brion Gysin -- Took a few hits of acid with his pal John Giorino in room 703 and they both lived to tell about it.

The Cult Guide also covers Sarah Bernhardt's little known fictional efforts. Perhaps the next time, they'll include the famous picture of her asleep in a coffin in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel.  Source: Turn West on 23rd: A Toast to New York's Old Chelsea.

Bohemians Get Thirsty

Celebrate the holiday weekend. Join the legions of Bohemians and literary figures who have hoisted a glass at El Quijote. The El Q is conveniently located in the Hotel Chelsea.

Pulitzer Prize winning American poet John Berryman finds the cafeteria like vibe of the watering hole unwelcoming.

Artist Robert Filliou enjoys a beer and conversation with William Burroughs.

Painter Julian Schnabel declares his greatness.

Dylan Thomas stops in for a pick me up before heading over to the White Horse.

Boxer Jose Torres grants an interview to journalist Jack Newfield.

The Toxic Bachelor gets a lecture from his mother.

The detective meets his co-conspirator in F. Paul Wilson's Legacies.

According to Dee Dee Ramone, "they drink rubbing alcohol in"  El Quijote.
Tasha discovers drugs in her drink at El Q in Sara Davidson's Loose Change.
Valerie Solanas of I Shot Andy Warhol fame enjoys a cold one there.

The 92nd St Y was snubbed too...

Earlier I blogged about the Chelsea being snubbed by The New York Times Literary Map of Manhattan. Now the 92nd St. Y is feeling snubbed too.

"The New York Times‘ interactive Literary Map of Manhattan—which cites places where “imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank and looked at ducks"—got a lot of play in the blog world a few weeks back, but we couldn’t help but notice a gap in its coverage: Where’s the 92nd Street Y?"

Tools You Can Use

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division is a wonderful resource for locating images.

Was this 1938 photo of  Thomas Wolfe taken in the Chelsea? The date coincides with Wolfe’s tenure at the hotel. The LOC was unable to find any documentation regarding the location of the setting.  The photographer, Carl Van Vechten, was noted for his photographs of writers and celebrities.  Photographs of Sherwood Anderson (Chelsea Author) such as the one below taken in Central Park, are also part of Van Vechten’s collection.

This same database search revealed that photographer Arnold Genthe, renowned for his photos of Chinatown in San Francisco, was a resident of the Chelsea.

Resurrecting Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas is being brought back to life in the form of a 3D moving image created using his death mask. The image does capture a certain pickled quality.

  R - Tennessee Williams attending 1953 funeral service for Dylan Thomas.

Dumpster Diving

The recent unearthing of an unpublished play by Jack Kerouac and an unpublished poem by the then student Tennessee Williams has inspired me to be less annoyed by my boyfriend’s obsession with rooting through the trash at the Chelsea.  Here are his "literary" finds todate:

• Outtakes and/or duplicates from Doris Chases’ video The Chelsea.
• A poster autographed by beat writer Herbert Huncke.  The poster contains an excerpt from Huncke’s work, "The Hospital Again."  (Fair Condition.)
• Charles James’ drafting table. More about the table later.
• A Pink Guitar.
• A badly torn bunny painting by graffiti artist Hiroya.
• Art historian Helen Johnson's chair and magazine collection.  The collection consists of copies of People and Ebony from the 1970s. More about this later.
• Reams of bad poetry.
• Many sketches and paintings by various artists.
• An unfinished novel about the hotel.

Nabokov was a Thief?

Maud Newton has an interesting post about the controversy surrounding the authenticity of former Chelsea author Nabokov's Lolita.  Maurice Girodias, the publisher of Lolita, and many other important books, also lived at the Chelsea.  An article published in The Nation in 2004 suggests that Girodias may have been Valerie Solanas' original target, afterall he was her publisher and a lot of people want to shoot their publisher, but since he wasn't at home, she decided to go to the Factory and shoot Andy Warhol instead.

"...Solanas was thrilled by her status as a soon-to-be-published writer, but it wasn't long before she began obsessing about the seemingly restrictive legal boilerplate of Girodias's contract.

On June 3, 1968, Solanas stopped by Girodias's office or his room at the Chelsea Hotel, depending on the source. She carried a gun in a paper bag. Girodias was out that day, so she proceeded to the Factory. There she shot Warhol in the chest three times. (And the art critic Mario Amayo as well--no one ever seems to remember the poor guy.) She aimed the gun next at Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, who uttered a line that could have been lifted from one of Warhol's deadpan films: "Oh, there's the elevator. Why don't you get on, Valerie?" She did. That evening, she turned herself in..."

Everybody Is an Authority

The Chicago Tribune sheds light on the death of Dylan Thomas courtesy of a waiter at the White Horse Tavern. 
"No one, for example, seems to know exactly what happened to Dylan Thomas on that July night in 1953 when the poet stepped out of the White Horse Tavern at Hudson Ave. and 11th Street and dropped dead.
Some accounts say Thomas downed 18 or 19 whiskeys at the bar and declared, "I believe that's the record" just before he succumbed.
Others claim he died of undiagnosed diabetes.
"He didn't die here; he died in his room at the Chelsea Hotel," a young White Horse Tavern server says.  She spoke with absolute certainty."

Most biographies that I have read indicate that Thomas died at St. Vincent's hospital after consuming all of that whiskey and falling into a diabetic coma.

If you are in NYC you can catch the one man show "Do Not Go Gentle."

His writing is childlike, surprising on occasion

In a recent review, Robin Schroffel of the Edmonton Sun calls Legend of a Rock Star: The Last Testament of Dee Dee Ramone, "heart-wrenching."

$10.00 for typewriter ribbon?

I’ve added some rather interesting links to the site lately. For example, an image of a check written by Thomas Wolfe to the Hotel Chelsea on May 7, 1938 in the amount of $10.00.  I can’t read the notation on the check, but I don’t think it was for rent.    I e-mailed the proprietor of the site that is selling the check to inquire how they came to own this “extremely scarce” item.  So far, no comment.

Ten dollars didn’t go very far in NYC in 1938.  Two days later Wolfe cashed another check for $10.00.  “Check: The Chase National Bank, 48th St. Branch, N.Y.C., May 9, 1938, $10.00; to Hotel Chelsea” is listed as part of the Alexander D. Wainwright collection at the Princeton University library. 

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.

Anniversary of Nabokov's b-day

Former Chelsea resident and author of the notorious Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, was born on this day in 1899.