By German Tinti (special for Broadcast Chronicles)
Chelsea is a neighborhood of New York located in the west side on the island of Manhattan, south of Hell’s Kitchen and north of Greenwich Village. Towards the end of the 19th century it became the quintessential theater district, many of its neighbors were artists and Bohemia was a way of life.
In 1884, a huge red brick condominium, then the tallest in the city, opened at 222 East 23rd Street. Numerous actors, producers and writers who had job opportunities in the sector moved there.
When the theater movement moved to Broadway Avenue, the building became a hotel; and since then, with the poster of “Hotel Chelsea” A legend began to forge itself on its imposing front, crossed by thousands of stories, anecdotes and one or another sensational detective story.
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A fantastic administrator
When the property began to be managed by Stanley Bardo Chelsea became a refuge for writers, musicians, actors, merchants, prostitutes and simple castaways who found in its labyrinthine corridors and dark rooms an area of freedom difficult to find elsewhere in the city.
November 9, 1953 the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas He died in room number 100. According to witnesses, his last words were “I drank 18 whiskeys, it must be a record”. Years later, a Minnesota singer-songwriter who had changed his surname in homage to the British writer stayed at the same hotel and composed most of the songs on the album. “Blood on the tracks”. Yes, the Nobel Prize for Literature Bob Dylan also stayed there.
Andy’s movie
maybe it was Andy Warhol which awarded the hotel the category of popular site and mecca of the New York art scene. In what could be described as an act of voyeurism, Wharhol shot 12 moments to compose the film “Chelsea girls” which immediately acquired the category of “cult film”; like almost everything done by one of the fathers of pop art.
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Chelsea was also the scene of the beginning of the short and intense romance between Leonard Cohen y Janis Joplin. Legend has it that as he exited the elevator, Cohen ran into Janis, who asked him why. Kris Kristofferson. Quick and witty, Cohen replied: “I’m Kris Kristofferson” and ended up in a room together. Sounds too easy? Well, miracles happened in that place.
As a legacy of that relationship, Leonard Cohen composed “Chelsea Hotel Nro 2”that recreates that meeting: “You were famous, your heart was a legend / You still told me that you preferred handsome men / But for me you would make an exception / And clenching your fist for those who are like us / Who is oppressed by the figures of beauty / You have fixed, you said: well, it doesn’t matter / we’re ugly but we have the music “.
the pinnacle of surrealism
Writer Arthur Miller remained at Chelsea in 1961, after separating from Marilyn Monroe. In his memoirs he describes the hotel as “The pinnacle of surrealism, a place to take the elevator contained the possibility of exiting the marijuana smoke that filled the environment at the top”. Okay, it can happen in your own building today, but in 1961 it was pretty disruptive. “This hotel does not belong to America Miller wrote. no vacuum cleaners, no rules and no shame. It’s a spooky and upbeat chaos that predicts the future of fashion and at the same time gives you the feeling of an old haunt protecting your family. “.
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Stanley Bardo, the comprehensive administrator of the institute (he was until not so long ago), was permissive to the point of naivety; and respected the propensity for illegal substances of many of his guests (a trader remained on the fourth floor for several years who did not need to leave the building to do business): “I met Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and all that beat generation. I thought everyone had the right to do what they wanted as long as it wasn’t destructive to the hotel. “, declared years later. In its obituary, the New York Times referred to Bard as “the Robin Hood of the hosts”.
Patti and Roberto. Y Sid and Nancy
“I’m Patti Smith and this is Robert Mapplethorpe, photographer, and we have no money. But soon we will be famous and we can pay him” Patti told Bard in the early 1970s. The manager let them stay overnight. A few years later, Patti, who was ultimately right, paid tribute to Chelsea with a Mapplethorpe photo shoot in one of the hotel rooms. Of that session (which is now part of the collection of the Tate Museum in London) the cover of “Horses”the album that transformed Smith “the godmother of punk”.
“There is no artist who has lived in Chelsea who has not been captivated in some way by its charm.– wrote Patti “Children only”his autobiography published in 2010– living in that eccentric and cursed hotel gave us a sense of security and an exceptional education. The goodwill surrounding us showed that the fates were conspiring to help their enthusiastic creatures.
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The police report also reached Chelsea. On 12 October 1978, after a night of excess (like almost all his nights in recent years), Simon John Richie –better known as Sid Vicious– The bassist of the punk group Sex Pistols, found his partner in the bathroom of his room with a stab in the abdomen. The musician was immediately arrested and charged with murder. In his statement about him, he claimed he remembered nothing from the night of the crime and was released on bail pending trial, which he failed because four months later he died of a heroin overdose.
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The Chelsea Ghosts
Hotel logbooks are every autograph collector’s wet dream. After more than a decade closed, even for reforms; partly due to a conflict with permanent resident tenants who were trying to prevent the property from being sold to a hotel chain, Chelsea reopened their doors last year.
It is no longer the almost sordid refuge of artists, bohemians and drug addicts; the rates have risen to the height of its fame and there is no merchant on the fourth floor. But undoubtedly, its casual passengers don’t lose hope of coming across Charles Bukowski converse with Milo Formanhuh Jimi Hendrix jam with Dee Dee Ramone while “Diego Rivera, pencil in hand, draws Frida Kahlo naked” y Luc Besson takes hits with Jean Reno y Natalie Portman for “The perfect killer”.
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