March 18, 2025 • 48 mins
The Chelsea Hotel is one of New York City's landmarks for good reason. It's served as housing for bohemian creatives and addicts, and been through several iterations over its history, from divey residential to high-end hotel. Learn all about this legendary place today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Should Know. The Super Cool Edition another edition in our
ongoing New York saga to explain every single building or
theme or trend in the entire city of New York.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I feel like these are always me, so I'm sorry
if I'm foisting these.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, you love New York, I do.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you know the T shirt told me to.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh, I thought it was I Heart New York. Is
that what that means?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah? I get it now, but it's iHeart New York.
I didn't say you heart New York. I took it
all wrong. But now I love that city, so I
want to know more about it.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It is a very cool city, and this is a
cool place in the city's history. For a long part
of the city's history, actually the Chelsea Hotel, which little
known fact, is actually supposed to be called the Hotel Chelsea.
And I could not find where who first turned it around,
because surely it was a poet or a singer or
(01:18):
something writer. But at some point it got basically transversed
even though the official name is and always has been
since it was a hotel, that's the Hotel Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, it can be a little confusing. Same place, though,
so don't sweat it. So you can say either one.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
But wait, wait, wait, you want to talk confusing. Okay,
there's a Marriotte Renaissance Chelsea Hotel in the same neighborhood.
I mean I could see myself accidentally booking that and
being like, this place is a little more put together
than I expected.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, I mean, Chelsea is a neighborhood and every hotel
in there is a Hotel Chelsea. Yeah, a Chelsea Hotel. Rather.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I love Chelsea. I think that is one of my
favorite neighborhoods in New York, if not my favorite. We
stayed there a bunch of times when we went and
visited New York and Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, I like it as well, and I have stayed
at the Hotel Chelsea a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I have too. But yeah, yeah, but that actually answers
a question that I had. I was trying to figure
out where you came up with this as a topic.
I would have guessed the Taylor Swift song The Tortured
Poets department. Okay, because she mentions it in in there,
that's I guess, not where. That's not what inspired you
(02:37):
to do this.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
No club, Dylan. If anybody I got no, I mean
from staying there semi recently, and that's the great thing
about our job. I was like, Yeah, I wish I knew
a little bit more about this place, and here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, what'd you think of it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
At the hotel? Yeah, well, you know, as as you learn.
If you don't know that Chelsea Hotel was renovated over
the course of many, many many years after being closed
for those renovations, we'll get into all the ins and
outs of that. But I thought that it was a
top notch renovation that from what I've read, even though
it's a fancy pants place now, everything I've read says
(03:19):
that they did a very tasteful job. In fact, let
me read in fact, so I'm not just talking out
of my butt, but one of the people in the
New Yorker or something that wrote about it said it
presents itself subtly and doesn't scream. I've changed due largely
to the fact that the building was landmarked in nineteen
seventy seven, so many elements such as its facade and
(03:41):
famous stairwell cannot be changed in accordance with this landmark status.
Current owners instead have worked with it and around its
physical history, and the enhancements are fitting one hundred and
fifty eight rooms in fifteen room categories from two hundred
square feet, who's seventeen hundred square feet and there you go.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, yeah, and that's great that they did a good
job with it, because people all the way back to
the nineteen forties, with Edgar Lee Masters, the poet author
of Spoon River Anthology, who lived there for a while,
was worried about the gist of the Chelsea Hotel being
stripped away by new owners. And it's changed hands a
(04:26):
few times, but it's also stayed in really capable hands
for decades. And those capable hands, as will see, helped
give the Chelsea Hotel its own, like it's very famous vibe.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, and I should also say too that a lot
of people, I'm sure, think it's an abomination, and a
lot of times used the same people that were like,
you know, Times Square was better or New York was
better when it was a dirt bag city crumbling and
you were as likely to get mugged walking the streets,
or spray painted on if you stood still for too long,
(05:00):
as anything else.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, So, based on what we'll learn about what went
on in the Chelsea Hotel, I think it's very telling
how dangerous New York was at the time. That almost
to a person when they interviewed residents years later, they
say they felt safe in the Chelsea Hotel, and the
Chelsea Hotel was as crazy as a place could get.
(05:23):
And yet it just goes to show you how much
more dangerous it was outside of the Chelsea Hotel in
New York at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, it seemed to have a very familial quality to it. Yea,
and for good reason. So let's jump back to the
beginning when it was built. First of all, it's right
there at West twenty third Street in the Chelsea neighborhood,
and it started in eighteen eighty four as the Chelsea
Association Building, Nuts and Bolts. It is a twelve story building,
was one of the taller buildings in New York at
(05:50):
the time. It is a Victorian Gothic. It is a beautiful,
gorgeous building. If you look at it from across the street.
It's just one of the one of New York's greatest
landmarks designed by architect Philip Is it Hubert or Hubert?
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm going to say Hubert, that's what I would say.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
All right, we'll go with that. And Hubert designed it
on the philosophy of a French philosopher that he was
a fan of named Charles. What is it? I think
fer Fourier, who was a utopian socialist and kind of
thought this concept of a co op of a community
should work in co ops called phalanxes, and that's what
(06:30):
the Chelsea started out as, was one of the first
housing co ops in New York City, where if you
live in a co op, then you own a share
of that building along with all the other owners, and
you also are responsible for the monies that help maintain
and keep up that building.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, it's all fun and games until you need a
new roof exactly. So Hubert actually followed Fourier's vision and
turned the Chelsea into not just the co op but
an attempted socialist utopian paradise where it wasn't just for
the wealthy like that it was I think, I don't
know if you said or not. It was one of
(07:05):
the tallest buildings in New York at the time, so
it was a very tony address when the building opened.
And yet he set apartments aside for some of the
people who had built the building, like some of the
electricians if there was such thing at the time, some
of the plumbers, some of the carpenters, like they had shares.
They were able to live in this co op because
(07:27):
there was room made for them, and there was also
room made for artists and musicians and writers. And the
point was for everybody to kind of rely on one another.
So if you needed plumbing help, you could pay your
plumber in you know, a painting or something like that,
if your plumber would accept it. Everybody was meant to
(07:48):
depend on everyone else and be kind of self sufficient
as a unit.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, uh, not so big into abstract, but yeah, sure,
I guess are you going places.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
To die?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Exactly? They're also in that very first iteration, and this
is very key. You mentioned artists, but there were the
top floor had fifteen artist studios up there, and that
really kind of carried on throughout the history of the
Chelsea until most recently. Yeah, that version of the Chelsea
was about around for about twenty one years. It went
bankrupt in nineteen oh five, some of those residents stuck around,
(08:26):
and then the rest became a hotel, and the Chelsea
for decades functioned as a place where you could stay
there as a hotel, you could stay there for a month,
you could stay there for a week, like weekly and
monthly rates, where you could be a resident and live there.
It's a very unique situation.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, And so the rooms also apparently were fairly cheap,
especially for a luxury place, a luxury building, so if
you were up and coming or starving artists, you could
still probably afford a place there. And because it was
created to house artists and talent of all different kinds,
(09:04):
it was automatically attractive. It just kind of became a
place where art was created, not just a place where
artists could live. There was a long time Chelsea resident
named Harry Smith who I saw described as the archetypal
Bohemian trickster figure, and he's just Chelsea Hotel through and
through from what I could tell. He said that the
(09:26):
hotel exuded atmospheric vibrations that attracted artists and also helped
produce great art. So like the building itself and the
vibe that was in it, led to better art than
maybe would have otherwise been produced, at least according to
Harry Smith, who was a trickster apparently, so he might
have been lying.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And also, you know, the human brain works in funny ways,
and once a place in gets her reputation is at
ego in there, and that in itself, you may think
you're being inspired just by being there, and that ends
up inspiring you. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think some people, though
I'm not going to name names, but I think over
time some artists who stayed there have wanted to kind
of capture what that hotel does and maybe bit off
a little more than they could chew.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think, I know you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think you should second to have a second thought
or too. If you're like, I'm going to make an
ode to the Chelsea Hotel where there's a song, a movie,
doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I know exactly what you're talking about. We're not talking
about Oh, Henry though, who stayed there a lot. For
Mark Twain who stayed there a lot, or Sarah Bernhard
who stayed there when she came to New York to perform.
Those were all like frequent guests in those early years there,
they were artists, you know, very famous artists at the time,
occupying those artist studios on the top floor. From the
(10:48):
very beginning. They even held some Titanic survivors in nineteen twelve.
That's where they went when they were when they were
brought in shivering in the cold.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, which is pretty cool that they opened their door
to them. I'm sure other hotels did too, but I
thought that was neat. Yeah, and we should say these
artists that were staying here, Oh, Henry was hiding from creditors. Yeah,
when he stayed there, John French Sloan, he was a
member of the Ashcan School of Art, which made its
name by showing some of the grittier, more dismal side
(11:19):
of New York life, which is totally contrary to the zeitgeist.
And so the artists were avant garde. Basically throughout the
entire history of the Chelsea Hotel, the artists working there
were like the vanguard of the avant garde.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, and like a bohemian. You'll hear those words throw
out a lot when the Chelsea Hotel is described or
its tendency over the years.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
They were Czechoslovakian to a person.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
During the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties. Thomas Wolfe
I was a frequentor there. In fact, he died. He
spent the last years of his life there in Room
eight twenty nine, writing things like you Can't Go Home Again.
And he died very young though, from tuberculosis, at the
age of thirty seven, and was known to kind of,
(12:09):
you know, paste the halls looking for inspiration or that
next paragrapher sentence.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, I saw that. Somebody said he ran out into
the street one night at like three am and shouted
that he'd written ten thousand words in one day. That's great,
that's pretty substantial. And Thomas Wolf also not to be
confused with Tom Wolf. No, No, he was an influence
in his own right. He influenced the Beats, mainly through
(12:34):
Jack Karawak. He influenced the new journalists, so ironically, Thomas
Wolf influenced Tom Wolf.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And in fact, there's a story that Fear and Loathing
from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and at the
Kentucky Derby that Hunter Thompson took that from a Thomas
Wolfe's story.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh okay, yeah, that's pretty cool. We saw him. It
done one on Hunter S. Thompson either.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Now he might be undue. You know how remember the
time we did that live shows the Worst Idea, where
we did how humor works and we realized part way
through in front of a live audience that explaining humor
is like the least funny thing you can do.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I don't remember that. Was that a like a tour
show or was that like for a it.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Was a podfest?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Was it really?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah? In La Here's bad.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I blocked that one out.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So you mentioned a lot of people have you know,
done their odes to the hotel, whether it's movies or
songs or whatever. Perhaps the first one was a guy
named Edgar Lee Masters lived there from thirty one to
forty four and wrote a poem called the Hotel Chelsea,
So he kind of got the ball rolling.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, and he's the guy I was saying earlier wrote
Spoon River Anthology that was yeah, worried about it being
about it losing its vibe.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Well, let's read this first couple of lines. Then. Don't
know who that is, but he's writing it to 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. Yeah, there you have it.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yep. So this was the forties. I'm guessing this was
nineteen forty three when it changed hands I think for
the first or second time and was finally turned into
the Hotel Chelsea. But he had very little to worry
about because it got even more avant garde after that.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, you know, it's kind of had its ups and
downs as far as how I mean nice it was.
I guess it fell in pretty hard times after World
War Two, but it was always you know, Dave described
it as gruff but lovable. I mean, it never lost
that charm. It seems like yea, even at its divious.
Dylan Thomas, the famous author, was a heavy drinker, as
(14:56):
I think everyone knows. He drank himself to death. They're
at the Chelsea and nineteen fifty three and they have
a plaque. They all applaques for everybody, but there's a
Dylan Thomas plaque. Dylan Thomas lived and wrote at the
Chelsea Hotel, and from here he sailed out to die.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah. I read that on the day that he fell
into a coma that eventually he died from he said,
I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record.
It's gotta be.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
So yeah, Dylan Thomas was one of the ones whose
death really kind of I don't quite know how to
put it, but there's there's certain aspects of the Chelsea
Hotel and tragic figures dying in it is part of that.
That's an aspect of it in and of itself, and
Dylan Thomas kind of set the tone for that, right.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, immortalized maybe.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Sure, so he became he helped make the Chelsea Hotel
famous in that respect by dying as a tragic figure there.
Other people are just kind of famous, and because they
stayed in the Chelsea Hotel it kind of gives it
a little more props. Like Jackson Pollock, he lived there
for a little while. Little known fact the CIA paid
(16:08):
his rent. No really, virgin No, I'm kidding, Virgil. Have
you ever heard the theory that the CIA was behind
the abstract expressionist movements to make the United States seem
more intellectual to the Soviets?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
No, but that makes that joke a very deep cut.
So I don't even feel bad this time. Okay for
falling for it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So there are other people too that you may not
have heard of that I hadn't heard of, that were
longtime residents that really kind of gave it like legitimacy.
There was a music critic and composer named Virgil Thompson
who was apparently just incredibly prolific. He lived there for
fifty years and died in Room nine twenty. Larry Rivers,
(16:49):
he's considered the godfather of pop art. He lived there
for about a decade. And when you put all this
together and then also bring in tours, because don't forget,
this is a hotel hell that some people are living
in for decades, but there's also people coming and going.
And then you also throw in rich people who are
basically just trying to hang out with artists, even though
(17:11):
they have no artistic talent themselves. It's just the crowd
they want to hang with. You put all these people together,
and you've got like who you would see if you
went into the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, exactly, all right, we should take a break and
we'll come back and talk about David and Stanley Bard
right after this.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Okay, So I said earlier that the Chelsea Hotel was
in capable hands for decades, and those hands were initially
David Bard and then after that his son Stanley Bard,
and between the two of them they took Philip Hubert's
vision of this socialist utopia but really the really artsy
part of it, and just went to town. I saw
(18:16):
it described as Stanley curated who lived in the Chelsea Hotel.
It wasn't like, Hey, I've got some money, I want
to live here. You basically had to be vouched for
by another avant garde artist that probably already lived there.
That was a good way to get in.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, and this I found this funny little fact that
you know, how little things can change history. David in
nineteen forty three, the elder Bard, he got together with
some other investors to buy the hotel out of foreclosure.
And the reason he did that is because he was
a furrier who was allergic to fur and couldn't take
(18:58):
it anymore. So the reason the Chelsea Hotel, one of
the reasons that it kind of stayed that thing, is
because when David Bard took the reins in nineteen forty three,
he kept that spirit alive with the artist and like
taking a painting in lieu of rent. Had it gone
to just some money hungry, greedy people, it made have
completely changed in nineteen forty three, and we wouldn't even
(19:20):
be talking about it today. So had he not been
a fur or allergic to fur, it may have been
a completely different scene there. But he ran the hotel
until he died in sixty four, and like you said, Stanley,
his son took over. And Stanley Bard was great. He
was I've got a pretty fun like Apparently there was
(19:41):
never any like problem he couldn't handle. He was known
for being able to handle like whatever weirdness was going
on there at the time. And Arthur Miller, when he
was divorced from Marilyn Monroe, lived there for a period
of years and wrote a lot about the Chelsea Hotel.
And here's one good example about Stanley Bard called down
after being so frustrated with how disgusting his carpet was. Said,
(20:05):
for Christ's sake, Stanley, don't you have a vacuum cleaner
in the house? He said, of course, we have lots
of them. He said, well, why aren't they ever used?
He said, they're not used. Stanley, You know g d
Welly that you don't use them. I have never heard
such a thing. Why don't they use them? Or you're
asking me why they don't use them, Well, you're the
one who brought it up. Look, Stanley, just get a
vacuum cleaner up here, and let's just forget this conversation. Please, fine,
(20:27):
how are you otherwise? Truthfully, there is no otherwise. All
I am is a man waiting desperately for a vacuum cleaner.
And then Arthur Miller said, and then he would laugh,
grateful for another happy tenant. And that was like nothing
was like ever wrong. Right at the Chelsea people were
dying and being wheeled out of there in overdoses, and
he would make jokes at like, no, the cops were
(20:48):
here because they lived there, and the body bags and
the gurneys are just props.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah. So apparently Milosh Foreman a true bohemian. He lived
at Chelsea from I think for the early seventies, about
the first half of the seventies, and he asked Stanley
once if anyone had ever died, I believe, to basically
get him to admit yeah, yeah, because there were a
lot of deaths, whether it was by suicide, murder, mattress
(21:19):
fires overdoses. Yeah, and it was just well known that
there were a lot of deaths that happened in the
Chelsea Hotel. So Milos Foreman asked Stanley once if he
could think of anybody who ever died there, and he
could only come up with one person, and he was
a painter named al Fais Cole.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
He died in nineteen eighty eight, the oldest man in
the world at one hundred and twelve. He died at
the Chelsea Hotel. And that's the one person that Stanley
could think of. And the entire time that he was
running the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, and Stanley ran it for forty years after his
dad died. But like I said, his dad had the
same attitude. They asked David the elder Bard why he
didn't ever evict a tenant who apparently was playing the
drums and everyone was complaining and it was even driving
him nuts, And his answer was, I like people.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, yeah, it was cool, like you could get away
with from what I saw, You could get away basically
anything up to murder essentially, And Stanley would put up
with it because that was the rhythm that his father
had kind of laid out, and if you want to
cultivate an avant garde artist colony in the middle of
(22:29):
New York, you're going to have to do that, or
else just give up because it's not going to work otherwise.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah. I got to read this other Arthur Miller quote.
It's pretty good too. He said the Chelsea, and this is,
by the way, from the Chelsea Affect affect about the Bards.
He said, the Chelsea, whatever else it was, was a
house of infinite toleration. Yeah. This was the Bard's genius.
I thought to have achieved an operating chaos which at
(22:57):
the same time could be home to people who were
not crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, which I don't know who those people were.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I saw Matt as a Hatter used more times in
the oral history of the Chelsea Hotel than I ever
have anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, just about everybody there.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So my favorite Arthur Miller quote, by the way, is
these pretzels are making me thirsty. Y. It's a great one.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah. So let's jump into the sixties and seventies, because
that's when the Chelsea seemed like it had some of
its most notable events and residents, even if they were
part time my favorite guy. Bob Dylan stayed at the Chelsea,
stayed in room two eleven for about three years, you know,
off and on because he was going up to Woodstock
as well. But sixty one to sixty four is when
(23:47):
he was hanging out with Ginsburg and doing his thing.
He wrote most of, if not all, of Blonde on Blonde,
which is his seventh album, and very specifically in the
song Sarah, which was about his wife, his wife Sarah
that he married in sixty five. There's a great line
in that song storms are bruin in your eyes, No
(24:08):
different Sarah. Okay, this one is very skating, tough song.
Bob Dylan was the champion of the anti love song.
This is kind of one of them. But he said,
he writes about staying up for days in the Chelsea
Hotel writing a sad eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
So he references another song on the same Sarah.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, it's a song to his ex wife, And he said, basically,
I remember staying up for days writing sad eyed Lady
of the Lowlands for you.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, and no time is a good time for goodbye.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Have you seen the Dylan movie? Do you care about
that at all.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Nope, yeah, gotcha. So, but yeah, that was pretty seminar.
I mean, that's one of his biggest albums, right, And
I saw that at the time too, that Bob Dylan
and Andy Warhol went basically head to head over Edie Sedgwick,
who also stayed at the Chelsea Hotel. And apparently that
(25:04):
was the end of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick's Red
hot I don't know what you'd call it, not a romance,
just interaction of relationship. Sure, we'll just go with that,
but it was something other than that, and it lasted
less than a year. But apparently Andy Warhol was so
(25:25):
jealous that Edie Sedgwick had become totally obsessed with Bob Dylan,
who may or may not have returned her advances. It
just depends on who you ask. Bob Dylan says no that,
but Andy Warhol lost because Bob Dylan was at the time,
like basically the biggest person in like alternative culture, the
(25:47):
counterculture at the time, like even more than Andy Warhol was.
Like he was just huge, and it's kind of it's
kind of difficult to overstate what a big deal this
very big person living and working in the Chelsea Hotel.
Like what it did for the Chelsea Hotel's reputation.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, for sure. And it's also mind blowing to know
while Bob Dylan's up there in room two eleven literally
typing out one of the seminal albums of all time,
at the same time, Arthur C. Clark is adapting the
screenplay for two thousand and one A Space Odyssey on
a different floor, in a different room, So like these
kind of creative you know, and Andy Warhol is in
(26:28):
there shooting parts of Chelsea Girls. Like stuff was really
really happening. It didn't earn its reputation just it wasn't
overblown at all, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Right now, Another really famous thing that happened around that
time was from Edie Sedgwick. She set her mattress on fire.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, and on purpose.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I think was it on purpose because this was not
her first department fire.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, I think it was on purpose.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay, So it's possible this is a very turbulent time
for her. Yea, she could have been heartbroken over Bob Dylan.
She could have been upset Andy Warhol had turned his
back on her. I know the previous apartment fire in
a different building was because she had shot up a
speedball and the cigarette fell out of her mouth and
onto her mattress and set her her house on fire.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's kind of on purpose too, I guess.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So, yeah, but that kind of leads me to something.
There's something that just doesn't show up in the histories.
I mean here or there. It kind of comes up,
but I think it's really understated the effect that had
on the community that developed in the Chelsea Hotel from
the entire time that the building was open. And that
has drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs. Like so everybody
(27:42):
from Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress, to Bob Dylan and beyond.
I wouldn't put it beyond Ethan.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Hawk, he lived there for a while.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, So I mean the club kids, like with the
Capital C and the Capitol K in the eighties and nineties,
like some of them lived there and they were definitely
doing drugs. They're like it was just a really big
part of the experience of living at the Chelsea Hotel.
It was like essentially one of the muses that was
(28:14):
walking around the halls of that building all the time.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, for sure. I mean Gabby Hoffman, the actor. She
was raised there from birth till she was eleven years old.
Her mom was Viva, who was another one of Warhol's superstars,
and little Gaby Hoffman from Sleepless in Seattle. You know,
she's a grown lady, you know, middle aged woman now
and has talked a lot about it. She loved living there,
(28:38):
but you know, she was stepping over people, you know,
passed out with hair and needles in their arms, and
you know, on her roller skates and just you know,
kind of a crazy life. But to her, it was
just like, yeah, I just lived in this sort of
legendary divy apartment building. Like there was a gazillion non
famous ones in New York, this one just happened to
be famous. Did see where her mom Viva? Eventually, I
(29:01):
don't think it was ever published, but she wrote a
book because writers always like very chicully say that like
Gabby Hoffman was sort of the Chelsea Hotels answer to
Eloise the children's book. And apparently her mom wrote a
book called Gabby at the Chelsea. But I don't think
I would try to find out think it was ever released.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
That's cute. I would love to see that. Yeah, how
about some more famous stuff that happened there.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Huh Yeah, like Liaison's Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen. That's
a big one.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah. He wrote about that in Chelsea Hotel number two,
one of his songs, very famous song. So they were
together from sixty eight to seventy when Janis died. I
don't know if they were like an item or if
they just, you know, liked hanging out.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
If you know, sure, I think I know Jimi.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
But regardless, they were just a famous couple from there. Yeah,
that's not the right word. I'm having trouble pulling words
out of the air. Another couple that you could probably
call more of a couple was Patty Smith and Robert Maplethorpe.
They moved into the Chelsea They were totally broke at
the time. Patty Smith became like the poet of the
(30:11):
punk scene. Robert Maplethorpe famously became the devil incarnate with his.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Photos, provocative pictures, that's.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
One way to put it. Sure of BDSM culture and
gay culture in the eighties, and like almost got the
National Endowments for the Arts canceled, Although I think it's
unfair to say it was him. Jesse Helms almost got
the NEA canceled, and it was Robert Maplethorpe was just
making art and Jesse Helms just did not think a
(30:44):
bullwhip coming out of a man's rectum was art.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
That's right. I had that book. I haven't read yet.
It's on the shelf with a bunch of other rock
and roll books that I have yet to get to.
But the Jesse Helms story no exactly what a rock
and roll Patty Smith's book that she wrote about her
time with maple Thorpe, I think it's called Just Kids
that I'm looking forward to getting into. But boy, can
(31:11):
I tell a quick Patti Smith Bob Dylan story. Is
there nothing to do with the Chelsea Hotel?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Well, you know what I'm gonna say, it does I'll
say she told him here. If you're a Dylan fanuel
like this, you can just check out for a second.
But on Bob Dylan's very famous Rolling Thunder tour that
he took up in seventy five seventy six, some people
look at that as like some peak Dylan live performance,
unbelievable stuff. But he has a performance of his song
(31:38):
isis one of his great songs after the record is
off the record Desire where it's just one of the
great live performances of anyone ever is his performance on
Rolling Thunder of Isis and he doesn't play the guitar
and he's just standing there and he didn't do that
a lot. And he Patty Smith is the one who
encouraged him. He said, Bob, you should, you should do
Isis without the guitar. And he said, Patty, I don't
(32:01):
know what to do with my hands, and she said,
make them into fists.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So did he yell, heck, yeah, you did, okay?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
And Patti Smith that wrote also about the Chelsea a
lot in the restaurant there. It's not officially part of it,
but it's connected. You can get to it through the hotel.
Al Quixote underwent a lot of renovations to reopen. It
was a pretty big dive of a place back then,
but it was cheap food and it was Spanish food,
(32:33):
and so people ate there, even though apparently the food
wasn't good. I saw it described was it. The piea
could have been consistency of yesterday's oatmeal. The taste of
the sangria might be best described as purple but before
the Woodstock Music Festival, Patty Smith went to the Chelsea
or was living there, I guess, And she said, I
walked into Alcahoti's Bar one afternoon in nineteen sixty nine
(32:55):
to find musicians everywhere, sitting before tables laid with mounds
of shrimp and green so payea, pictures of sin gree
and bottles of tequila. Jefferson airplane was there, so was
Janis Joplin and her band Jimmy Hendrix sat by the door. Like,
can you like just walking into a restaurant and seeing
something like that happening? Incredible?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, you'd be like, I don't really care about any
these people, No I do.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I love Jimmy Hendrix, and clearly I love at least
Jefferson Starship.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Right, you were like, one day you don't know it yet,
you're gonna write a song called Sarah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And I spent at least one summer just listening to
Dennis Joplin's greatest hits over and over again, so I
could be down with that scene.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Man, Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll
be right back and we'll finish up on the Chelsea Hotel, right,
for this. All Right, we talked about people dying at
(34:10):
the Chelsea, so we should probably talk more specifically about
this because it seemed to happen a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Right, Yeah, there were people who jumped out of windows.
Remember it was a twelve story building and this was
nothing new. People. There was a there's a rumor of
a ghost of a woman who supposedly lived. There was
an artist who was upset with herself and cut off
her hand and then threw herself out the window. And
this would have been in the first couple decades of
(34:39):
the twentieth century. But it didn't stop with her. It
just kept going and going and going. And then even
if someone didn't die by suicide or it wasn't murdered
or their place wasn't set on fire, just the day
to day grimy grittiness of it of heroin addicts like
shooting up in the bathrooms or sex workers like washing
(35:00):
their underwear in the bathrooms. That was another quote from
the Oral History of All Places that Vanity Fairhead on
the Chelsea Hotel, Like there was just a definite dark
side to it, which was just kind of underscores what
I was saying before. The people were like and I
felt so safe there, and it was like, what was
it like outside of this building? If this was what
(35:21):
it was like inside, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, that's a good point. There was a very notorious
death there, depending on who you ask. Said Vicious murdered
his girlfriend Nancy Spongeen there in room one hundred in
October of nineteen seventy eight. We can't say for sure
because he denied it to his last days, which was
(35:46):
before he went to court. He died of a heroin
overdose before he was able to go to trial for that.
But what we do know it's it. Nancy Spongeen was
stabbed to death there.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah. There's a a biographer author named Phil stre Man
or Strongman. I would call myself Phil Strongman if that
were my name. But he wrote a punk nonfiction book,
I guess called Pretty Vacant, and he points to rockets
Red Glare, who was a bodyguard for the Sex Pistols
(36:17):
at the time, who was the last person known to
have seen Nancy Spongent alive. And there was also supposedly
a bunch of money cash in the apartment that couldn't
be accounted for after her body was discovered. So he
makes a pretty good case. Apparently also Rockets Red Lair
was admitted to it later on to some people, So
(36:38):
who knows, But I don't think it was sid vicious.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, I know Rockets Red glare from a lot of
those early Jim Jarmish movies. Interesting dude, Rufus Wainwright lived
there in two thousand to work on a record, and
there's a pretty funny story there where he was. He
called down to the front and asked that they could
send up a quart of milk, and apparently the bellman
(37:03):
arrived with a tray full of just tons and tons
of drugs because milk, beknownst to Rufus, was the code
word at the Chelsea four drugs.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, because he was the only person in the history
of the hotel who actually wanted milk at one point.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
And you mentioned Ethan Hawk or that's about say old friend.
We don't have nothing to do with him, you know.
I love Ethan Hawk. I think he's a great passionate,
artistic dude. But he lived there for three years when
he was sort of I don't know think he was
fully divorced, but was when he was with Uma Thurman.
They were kind of on the rocks. Yeah, and he
made the movie Chelsea Walls in two thousand and one,
(37:42):
which is a series of short films about a day
in the life of people at the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
So you know something about him. I've become more and
more of a fan over the years. I think he's
really kind of grown into his talent.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's I like the guy a lot,
and I like his daughter, and I like I think
I am a big fan of that family. Yeah. Who's
his daughter, Maya Hawk? She's an actor.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
No, I don't know, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Up and coming. She's on Stranger Things is probably what
most people know are from these days.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Oh okay, so what else, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And she looks just like Uma. Oh really Yeah, it's
really funny. I mean a little bit of Ethan in there,
but she's got Imma's mannerisms and voice. It's pretty cool. Nice.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
So you mentioned that the Chelsea Hotel underwent renovations for
a long time, over a decade. From what I saw,
the whole thing started when Stanley Bard was forced out
back in two thousand and seven or eight. I saw
both Remember that his father, David Bard, had purchased the
(38:48):
Chelsea with two other families, two other men. Well, their
errors were basically like, you are not making money here,
like he was very Stanley was very famous for accepting
art in lieu of rain if you were hard, you know,
down on your luck, but you were an artist, like
he would just you know, look the other way for
a few months. Like he was not running it like
(39:08):
a business, and he was very open about that. So
apparently the airs of the other two owners were like,
you need to get out. We have two thirds of
a vote and you're out. And that was when things
just kind of, yeah, big bummer. Things just started to
change because a few years after that they sold it
to some investors. I think that was in twenty eleven.
(39:31):
They sold it for eighty million dollars. The investors came in,
fired all of the staff because they were union, and
brought in non union workers. They did away with basically
everything that was cool and intangible about the place, and
they also took down all the art, Like one of
the things Stanley did was hang art by the artists
(39:51):
who'd lived there all throughout the place, it was just
laden with art. They took all of it off the walls,
put it in storage. Apparently some that was, and Stanley's
that wasn't. The hotels too. The Larry Rivers Foundation is
suing to get one of his paintings back that they
say was just on loan, and from that point on
it just became kind of ham fisted and not very
(40:13):
pleasant for the people who lived there in the Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, it's very controversial renovation because, like you said, there's
still people living there. Some of those residents held out
and fought it and for as long as they could.
Some other residents were mad at those residents because they
were like, we're just living into under construction because it's
taking forever. Because you're fighting this like it's going to happen.
(40:39):
Just give up so we can at least get this
finished and live in normal life again. So it really,
you know, it depends on your perspective. There's a really,
really good documentary that I highly recommend called Dreaming Walls
from twenty twenty two where they go inside a lot
of these original residence apartments see what they're like. There
are also some good books about this. From what I
(41:01):
found as of now, I think there's about forty of
them still there. Original residence in those apartments and when
you stay there. You're walking down the hall to your
room and all the doors look the same, and then
you'll come across the door that's not the same, and
that's an original resident.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, which is pretty cool that they're still there. They're
also rent controlled, I believe, which is how they're sure.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, and it is one of those things where I
really like staying there, but I feel like, man, I
bet these people hate people like me that like staying
here is walking around I know, and like, you know,
with my nine year old daughter, who's not Gabby Hoffman.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Right, she's not on roller skates, she's not an uncle Buck.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
I know. So have very mixed feelings about the whole
thing about like if staying there support that kind of
action in general or.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Well, you know, you bring that up. I thought that too,
you mean, and I say there a couple of times
over the years we did the most avant garde thing
you can do. We stayed at the Chelsea Hotel when
we went to see comedian Tom Rhodes at the Gotham
Comedy Club next door.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oh that's very close.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, he's super undergone. But I mean, I totally get
that feeling that you're talking about where it's just like
this was something and now is this the like the
dulled up version, like kind of the fake disneyfied version
of what it used to be? And that leads me
to a question that I had throughout researching this, Chuck,
(42:30):
where is whatever the Chelsea Hotel was? Now? Where is it?
I don't think it's in New York anymore. I don't
think it's something like that can survive in New York
because it's just gotten so wealthy and wealthy and wealthy
and wealthiness is not really it doesn't really jibe with
what the Chelsea Hotel was. And it's heyday, So like
(42:52):
where is it? Is it somewhere else in the world?
Is it in Kansas? Like where did this go? I
really want to know who's doing really interesting cool work
these days? Where can you find it? Or is it
just not around?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
I know, I'm with you. And also the notion of
like it's a pretty easy target, but like you know,
I bet the Holiday and Express and Times Square kicked
out some residents for whatever building they took over. You know, like,
is there any hotel group on the earth that isn't
gross and did things like that in these dense cities?
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah. I mean, look what happened to San Francisco, Like
it lost a lot of it's Oh yeah, I don't
want to say luster, because it wasn't luster that made
it so charming, but it lost some of its jam.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah for sure. But you know, El Quixotie is awesome now.
They've got some really good chefs that work there. You know,
A big shout out to John Paccini, he's the general
manager there. He's the stuff you should know, listener. He's
always been very kind to me, so big shout out
to him, and he's just he's done a great job.
And the pie is good now. And I've had some
(44:00):
really great experiences in that restaurant and in that hotel.
The lobby bar there is amazing, Like it's a truly
great place to go have a drink. And if you
if you stay there, you can get in. But if
you don't stay there, you can still go get a
drink there. I would recommend it. So I don't know,
it's It's definitely makes me question things. But like I said,
is there a place in New York where original residents
(44:22):
weren't screwed over in some way or another to make
way for some new expensive thing.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Oh. I mean also not just like people living there,
I mean like the art, the tho oh yeah, the
artistic vibe that was there where total because it's not
like no, I you.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Know, I know, I know, And a lot of those
forty residents or some of them are still artists making
art there.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, for sure, they just got to.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
I don't know if that documentary was accurate, but I
think that the residents either aren't allowed to use the
main entrance or maybe they just prefer not to.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I could see either one. Actually I really could too. Actually,
well that's it for the Chelsea Hotel. We could keep
going on and on and on, but I feel like
this is a good place to stop, don't you.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Uh yeah. I mean, let's quickly mention that there were
some very famous things auctioned off. Some of the famous doors.
Bob Dylan storer was auctioned off. I think either Leonard
Cohen or Janis Joplin store was auctioned and that iconic sign,
as best I can figure, was renovated. But part of
that renovation included replacing the letters, and those original letters
(45:33):
were sold off.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Cool. Thank you for figuring that out, because I could
not make heads or tails of how the sign was restored,
but then they auctioned off the sign.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, I think just pieces of the original. You know,
you got to see on both sides and H and
E on both sides, and you know, I think you
found even that they had them wired so you could
put it in your your loft and light it up.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Pretty awesome, pretty cool. Uh Okay, Well that's it. That's
it for Chelsea Hotel. If you want to know more
about the Chelsea Hotel, go check out the Chelsea Hotel.
And since I said Chelsea Hotel three times, as was
foretold in two thousand and eight, I've unlocked listener mail.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
That's right, and to prevent another listener mail. Yes, we
know naked Lunch was written.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
There, thank you, Thank you, sir, And a lot of.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Other stuff was written there. You can't cover it all, no, Hey, guys,
this is about inner monologues too, because I mentioned, aside
from me thinking weird things when I'm falling asleep, I
mentioned Emily's thumb spelling, and it turns out a ton
of people do stuff like that, and I told her
and she was just delighted to find out that she
is in a club. Hey, guys over after a decade,
(46:41):
I finally have the inspiration to write. On the latest episode,
Chuck mentioned Emily spells outwords with their thumb while stressed.
I do something extremely similar, but instead of tracing the letters,
I spell them out in the sign language alphabet.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
And there were all kinds of variations. Some people air type,
sometimes it's cursive, sometimes it's sign language. It's really interesting.
I spelled them out and sign language alphabet, have been
doing it since I was at least eleven, and have
never heard of anyone else spelling out words well stressed.
I would love to know the reason, but I'm also
just content to know that someone else has a similar eccentricity.
Thanks for sharing such a lovely anecdote of what it
(47:15):
means to love someone with all their little oddities. And
peccadillos one of my favorite words. Yeah, it's the acceptance
and enjoy in the mundane and extraordinary in life that
keeps me coming back every week for a new episode.
I'm a sandwich listener. I'm sure you're going to get
dozens of these emails claiming to be Emily's long lost
finger spelling twin, But I had to write in because
I've always wanted to stay weird. And Lauren Nider or Niter,
(47:38):
I'm not sure how you pronounce it. You are in
a larger club because we got heard from a lot
of you.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, that's really cool. I'm glad. Emily's delighted. Yeah, I'm
delighted too, me too. Well, if you want to be
like Lauren and write in and let us know that
you're a part of a club too, well, we love
to hear that kind of stuff. You can send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
H
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Should Know. The Super Cool Edition another edition in our
ongoing New York saga to explain every single building or
theme or trend in the entire city of New York.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I feel like these are always me, so I'm sorry
if I'm foisting these.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, you love New York, I do.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you know the T shirt told me to.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh, I thought it was I Heart New York. Is
that what that means?
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah? I get it now, but it's iHeart New York.
I didn't say you heart New York. I took it
all wrong. But now I love that city, so I
want to know more about it.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It is a very cool city, and this is a
cool place in the city's history. For a long part
of the city's history, actually the Chelsea Hotel, which little
known fact, is actually supposed to be called the Hotel Chelsea.
And I could not find where who first turned it around,
because surely it was a poet or a singer or
(01:18):
something writer. But at some point it got basically transversed
even though the official name is and always has been
since it was a hotel, that's the Hotel Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, it can be a little confusing. Same place, though,
so don't sweat it. So you can say either one.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
But wait, wait, wait, you want to talk confusing. Okay,
there's a Marriotte Renaissance Chelsea Hotel in the same neighborhood.
I mean I could see myself accidentally booking that and
being like, this place is a little more put together
than I expected.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, I mean, Chelsea is a neighborhood and every hotel
in there is a Hotel Chelsea. Yeah, a Chelsea Hotel. Rather.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I love Chelsea. I think that is one of my
favorite neighborhoods in New York, if not my favorite. We
stayed there a bunch of times when we went and
visited New York and Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, I like it as well, and I have stayed
at the Hotel Chelsea a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I have too. But yeah, yeah, but that actually answers
a question that I had. I was trying to figure
out where you came up with this as a topic.
I would have guessed the Taylor Swift song The Tortured
Poets department. Okay, because she mentions it in in there,
that's I guess, not where. That's not what inspired you
(02:37):
to do this.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
No club, Dylan. If anybody I got no, I mean
from staying there semi recently, and that's the great thing
about our job. I was like, Yeah, I wish I knew
a little bit more about this place, and here we are.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, what'd you think of it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
At the hotel? Yeah, well, you know, as as you learn.
If you don't know that Chelsea Hotel was renovated over
the course of many, many many years after being closed
for those renovations, we'll get into all the ins and
outs of that. But I thought that it was a
top notch renovation that from what I've read, even though
it's a fancy pants place now, everything I've read says
(03:19):
that they did a very tasteful job. In fact, let
me read in fact, so I'm not just talking out
of my butt, but one of the people in the
New Yorker or something that wrote about it said it
presents itself subtly and doesn't scream. I've changed due largely
to the fact that the building was landmarked in nineteen
seventy seven, so many elements such as its facade and
(03:41):
famous stairwell cannot be changed in accordance with this landmark status.
Current owners instead have worked with it and around its
physical history, and the enhancements are fitting one hundred and
fifty eight rooms in fifteen room categories from two hundred
square feet, who's seventeen hundred square feet and there you go.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, yeah, and that's great that they did a good
job with it, because people all the way back to
the nineteen forties, with Edgar Lee Masters, the poet author
of Spoon River Anthology, who lived there for a while,
was worried about the gist of the Chelsea Hotel being
stripped away by new owners. And it's changed hands a
(04:26):
few times, but it's also stayed in really capable hands
for decades. And those capable hands, as will see, helped
give the Chelsea Hotel its own, like it's very famous vibe.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, and I should also say too that a lot
of people, I'm sure, think it's an abomination, and a
lot of times used the same people that were like,
you know, Times Square was better or New York was
better when it was a dirt bag city crumbling and
you were as likely to get mugged walking the streets,
or spray painted on if you stood still for too long,
(05:00):
as anything else.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, So, based on what we'll learn about what went
on in the Chelsea Hotel, I think it's very telling
how dangerous New York was at the time. That almost
to a person when they interviewed residents years later, they
say they felt safe in the Chelsea Hotel, and the
Chelsea Hotel was as crazy as a place could get.
(05:23):
And yet it just goes to show you how much
more dangerous it was outside of the Chelsea Hotel in
New York at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, it seemed to have a very familial quality to it. Yea,
and for good reason. So let's jump back to the
beginning when it was built. First of all, it's right
there at West twenty third Street in the Chelsea neighborhood,
and it started in eighteen eighty four as the Chelsea
Association Building, Nuts and Bolts. It is a twelve story building,
was one of the taller buildings in New York at
(05:50):
the time. It is a Victorian Gothic. It is a beautiful,
gorgeous building. If you look at it from across the street.
It's just one of the one of New York's greatest
landmarks designed by architect Philip Is it Hubert or Hubert?
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I'm going to say Hubert, that's what I would say.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
All right, we'll go with that. And Hubert designed it
on the philosophy of a French philosopher that he was
a fan of named Charles. What is it? I think
fer Fourier, who was a utopian socialist and kind of
thought this concept of a co op of a community
should work in co ops called phalanxes, and that's what
(06:30):
the Chelsea started out as, was one of the first
housing co ops in New York City, where if you
live in a co op, then you own a share
of that building along with all the other owners, and
you also are responsible for the monies that help maintain
and keep up that building.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, it's all fun and games until you need a
new roof exactly. So Hubert actually followed Fourier's vision and
turned the Chelsea into not just the co op but
an attempted socialist utopian paradise where it wasn't just for
the wealthy like that it was I think, I don't
know if you said or not. It was one of
(07:05):
the tallest buildings in New York at the time, so
it was a very tony address when the building opened.
And yet he set apartments aside for some of the
people who had built the building, like some of the
electricians if there was such thing at the time, some
of the plumbers, some of the carpenters, like they had shares.
They were able to live in this co op because
(07:27):
there was room made for them, and there was also
room made for artists and musicians and writers. And the
point was for everybody to kind of rely on one another.
So if you needed plumbing help, you could pay your
plumber in you know, a painting or something like that,
if your plumber would accept it. Everybody was meant to
(07:48):
depend on everyone else and be kind of self sufficient
as a unit.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, uh, not so big into abstract, but yeah, sure,
I guess are you going places.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
To die?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Exactly? They're also in that very first iteration, and this
is very key. You mentioned artists, but there were the
top floor had fifteen artist studios up there, and that
really kind of carried on throughout the history of the
Chelsea until most recently. Yeah, that version of the Chelsea
was about around for about twenty one years. It went
bankrupt in nineteen oh five, some of those residents stuck around,
(08:26):
and then the rest became a hotel, and the Chelsea
for decades functioned as a place where you could stay
there as a hotel, you could stay there for a month,
you could stay there for a week, like weekly and
monthly rates, where you could be a resident and live there.
It's a very unique situation.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, And so the rooms also apparently were fairly cheap,
especially for a luxury place, a luxury building, so if
you were up and coming or starving artists, you could
still probably afford a place there. And because it was
created to house artists and talent of all different kinds,
(09:04):
it was automatically attractive. It just kind of became a
place where art was created, not just a place where
artists could live. There was a long time Chelsea resident
named Harry Smith who I saw described as the archetypal
Bohemian trickster figure, and he's just Chelsea Hotel through and
through from what I could tell. He said that the
(09:26):
hotel exuded atmospheric vibrations that attracted artists and also helped
produce great art. So like the building itself and the
vibe that was in it, led to better art than
maybe would have otherwise been produced, at least according to
Harry Smith, who was a trickster apparently, so he might
have been lying.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And also, you know, the human brain works in funny ways,
and once a place in gets her reputation is at
ego in there, and that in itself, you may think
you're being inspired just by being there, and that ends
up inspiring you. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think some people, though
I'm not going to name names, but I think over
time some artists who stayed there have wanted to kind
of capture what that hotel does and maybe bit off
a little more than they could chew.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think, I know you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I think you should second to have a second thought
or too. If you're like, I'm going to make an
ode to the Chelsea Hotel where there's a song, a movie,
doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I know exactly what you're talking about. We're not talking
about Oh, Henry though, who stayed there a lot. For
Mark Twain who stayed there a lot, or Sarah Bernhard
who stayed there when she came to New York to perform.
Those were all like frequent guests in those early years there,
they were artists, you know, very famous artists at the time,
occupying those artist studios on the top floor. From the
(10:48):
very beginning. They even held some Titanic survivors in nineteen twelve.
That's where they went when they were when they were
brought in shivering in the cold.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, which is pretty cool that they opened their door
to them. I'm sure other hotels did too, but I
thought that was neat. Yeah, and we should say these
artists that were staying here, Oh, Henry was hiding from creditors. Yeah,
when he stayed there, John French Sloan, he was a
member of the Ashcan School of Art, which made its
name by showing some of the grittier, more dismal side
(11:19):
of New York life, which is totally contrary to the zeitgeist.
And so the artists were avant garde. Basically throughout the
entire history of the Chelsea Hotel, the artists working there
were like the vanguard of the avant garde.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, and like a bohemian. You'll hear those words throw
out a lot when the Chelsea Hotel is described or
its tendency over the years.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
They were Czechoslovakian to a person.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
During the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties. Thomas Wolfe
I was a frequentor there. In fact, he died. He
spent the last years of his life there in Room
eight twenty nine, writing things like you Can't Go Home Again.
And he died very young though, from tuberculosis, at the
age of thirty seven, and was known to kind of,
(12:09):
you know, paste the halls looking for inspiration or that
next paragrapher sentence.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, I saw that. Somebody said he ran out into
the street one night at like three am and shouted
that he'd written ten thousand words in one day. That's great,
that's pretty substantial. And Thomas Wolf also not to be
confused with Tom Wolf. No, No, he was an influence
in his own right. He influenced the Beats, mainly through
(12:34):
Jack Karawak. He influenced the new journalists, so ironically, Thomas
Wolf influenced Tom Wolf.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And in fact, there's a story that Fear and Loathing
from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and at the
Kentucky Derby that Hunter Thompson took that from a Thomas
Wolfe's story.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh okay, yeah, that's pretty cool. We saw him. It
done one on Hunter S. Thompson either.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Now he might be undue. You know how remember the
time we did that live shows the Worst Idea, where
we did how humor works and we realized part way
through in front of a live audience that explaining humor
is like the least funny thing you can do.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I don't remember that. Was that a like a tour
show or was that like for a it.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Was a podfest?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Was it really?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah? In La Here's bad.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I blocked that one out.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So you mentioned a lot of people have you know,
done their odes to the hotel, whether it's movies or
songs or whatever. Perhaps the first one was a guy
named Edgar Lee Masters lived there from thirty one to
forty four and wrote a poem called the Hotel Chelsea,
So he kind of got the ball rolling.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, and he's the guy I was saying earlier wrote
Spoon River Anthology that was yeah, worried about it being
about it losing its vibe.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Well, let's read this first couple of lines. Then. Don't
know who that is, but he's writing it to 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. Yeah, there you have it.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yep. So this was the forties. I'm guessing this was
nineteen forty three when it changed hands I think for
the first or second time and was finally turned into
the Hotel Chelsea. But he had very little to worry
about because it got even more avant garde after that.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, you know, it's kind of had its ups and
downs as far as how I mean nice it was.
I guess it fell in pretty hard times after World
War Two, but it was always you know, Dave described
it as gruff but lovable. I mean, it never lost
that charm. It seems like yea, even at its divious.
Dylan Thomas, the famous author, was a heavy drinker, as
(14:56):
I think everyone knows. He drank himself to death. They're
at the Chelsea and nineteen fifty three and they have
a plaque. They all applaques for everybody, but there's a
Dylan Thomas plaque. Dylan Thomas lived and wrote at the
Chelsea Hotel, and from here he sailed out to die.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah. I read that on the day that he fell
into a coma that eventually he died from he said,
I've had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record.
It's gotta be.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
So yeah, Dylan Thomas was one of the ones whose
death really kind of I don't quite know how to
put it, but there's there's certain aspects of the Chelsea
Hotel and tragic figures dying in it is part of that.
That's an aspect of it in and of itself, and
Dylan Thomas kind of set the tone for that, right.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, immortalized maybe.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Sure, so he became he helped make the Chelsea Hotel
famous in that respect by dying as a tragic figure there.
Other people are just kind of famous, and because they
stayed in the Chelsea Hotel it kind of gives it
a little more props. Like Jackson Pollock, he lived there
for a little while. Little known fact the CIA paid
(16:08):
his rent. No really, virgin No, I'm kidding, Virgil. Have
you ever heard the theory that the CIA was behind
the abstract expressionist movements to make the United States seem
more intellectual to the Soviets?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
No, but that makes that joke a very deep cut.
So I don't even feel bad this time. Okay for
falling for it.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So there are other people too that you may not
have heard of that I hadn't heard of, that were
longtime residents that really kind of gave it like legitimacy.
There was a music critic and composer named Virgil Thompson
who was apparently just incredibly prolific. He lived there for
fifty years and died in Room nine twenty. Larry Rivers,
(16:49):
he's considered the godfather of pop art. He lived there
for about a decade. And when you put all this
together and then also bring in tours, because don't forget,
this is a hotel hell that some people are living
in for decades, but there's also people coming and going.
And then you also throw in rich people who are
basically just trying to hang out with artists, even though
(17:11):
they have no artistic talent themselves. It's just the crowd
they want to hang with. You put all these people together,
and you've got like who you would see if you
went into the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, exactly, all right, we should take a break and
we'll come back and talk about David and Stanley Bard
right after this.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Okay, So I said earlier that the Chelsea Hotel was
in capable hands for decades, and those hands were initially
David Bard and then after that his son Stanley Bard,
and between the two of them they took Philip Hubert's
vision of this socialist utopia but really the really artsy
part of it, and just went to town. I saw
(18:16):
it described as Stanley curated who lived in the Chelsea Hotel.
It wasn't like, Hey, I've got some money, I want
to live here. You basically had to be vouched for
by another avant garde artist that probably already lived there.
That was a good way to get in.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, and this I found this funny little fact that
you know, how little things can change history. David in
nineteen forty three, the elder Bard, he got together with
some other investors to buy the hotel out of foreclosure.
And the reason he did that is because he was
a furrier who was allergic to fur and couldn't take
(18:58):
it anymore. So the reason the Chelsea Hotel, one of
the reasons that it kind of stayed that thing, is
because when David Bard took the reins in nineteen forty three,
he kept that spirit alive with the artist and like
taking a painting in lieu of rent. Had it gone
to just some money hungry, greedy people, it made have
completely changed in nineteen forty three, and we wouldn't even
(19:20):
be talking about it today. So had he not been
a fur or allergic to fur, it may have been
a completely different scene there. But he ran the hotel
until he died in sixty four, and like you said, Stanley,
his son took over. And Stanley Bard was great. He
was I've got a pretty fun like Apparently there was
(19:41):
never any like problem he couldn't handle. He was known
for being able to handle like whatever weirdness was going
on there at the time. And Arthur Miller, when he
was divorced from Marilyn Monroe, lived there for a period
of years and wrote a lot about the Chelsea Hotel.
And here's one good example about Stanley Bard called down
after being so frustrated with how disgusting his carpet was. Said,
(20:05):
for Christ's sake, Stanley, don't you have a vacuum cleaner
in the house? He said, of course, we have lots
of them. He said, well, why aren't they ever used?
He said, they're not used. Stanley, You know g d
Welly that you don't use them. I have never heard
such a thing. Why don't they use them? Or you're
asking me why they don't use them, Well, you're the
one who brought it up. Look, Stanley, just get a
vacuum cleaner up here, and let's just forget this conversation. Please, fine,
(20:27):
how are you otherwise? Truthfully, there is no otherwise. All
I am is a man waiting desperately for a vacuum cleaner.
And then Arthur Miller said, and then he would laugh,
grateful for another happy tenant. And that was like nothing
was like ever wrong. Right at the Chelsea people were
dying and being wheeled out of there in overdoses, and
he would make jokes at like, no, the cops were
(20:48):
here because they lived there, and the body bags and
the gurneys are just props.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Yeah. So apparently Milosh Foreman a true bohemian. He lived
at Chelsea from I think for the early seventies, about
the first half of the seventies, and he asked Stanley
once if anyone had ever died, I believe, to basically
get him to admit yeah, yeah, because there were a
lot of deaths, whether it was by suicide, murder, mattress
(21:19):
fires overdoses. Yeah, and it was just well known that
there were a lot of deaths that happened in the
Chelsea Hotel. So Milos Foreman asked Stanley once if he
could think of anybody who ever died there, and he
could only come up with one person, and he was
a painter named al Fais Cole.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
He died in nineteen eighty eight, the oldest man in
the world at one hundred and twelve. He died at
the Chelsea Hotel. And that's the one person that Stanley
could think of. And the entire time that he was
running the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, and Stanley ran it for forty years after his
dad died. But like I said, his dad had the
same attitude. They asked David the elder Bard why he
didn't ever evict a tenant who apparently was playing the
drums and everyone was complaining and it was even driving
him nuts, And his answer was, I like people.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah, yeah, it was cool, like you could get away
with from what I saw, You could get away basically
anything up to murder essentially, And Stanley would put up
with it because that was the rhythm that his father
had kind of laid out, and if you want to
cultivate an avant garde artist colony in the middle of
(22:29):
New York, you're going to have to do that, or
else just give up because it's not going to work otherwise.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah. I got to read this other Arthur Miller quote.
It's pretty good too. He said the Chelsea, and this is,
by the way, from the Chelsea Affect affect about the Bards.
He said, the Chelsea, whatever else it was, was a
house of infinite toleration. Yeah. This was the Bard's genius.
I thought to have achieved an operating chaos which at
(22:57):
the same time could be home to people who were
not crazy.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, which I don't know who those people were.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
I saw Matt as a Hatter used more times in
the oral history of the Chelsea Hotel than I ever
have anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, just about everybody there.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
So my favorite Arthur Miller quote, by the way, is
these pretzels are making me thirsty. Y. It's a great one.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah. So let's jump into the sixties and seventies, because
that's when the Chelsea seemed like it had some of
its most notable events and residents, even if they were
part time my favorite guy. Bob Dylan stayed at the Chelsea,
stayed in room two eleven for about three years, you know,
off and on because he was going up to Woodstock
as well. But sixty one to sixty four is when
(23:47):
he was hanging out with Ginsburg and doing his thing.
He wrote most of, if not all, of Blonde on Blonde,
which is his seventh album, and very specifically in the
song Sarah, which was about his wife, his wife Sarah
that he married in sixty five. There's a great line
in that song storms are bruin in your eyes, No
(24:08):
different Sarah. Okay, this one is very skating, tough song.
Bob Dylan was the champion of the anti love song.
This is kind of one of them. But he said,
he writes about staying up for days in the Chelsea
Hotel writing a sad eyed Lady of the Lowlands for you.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
So he references another song on the same Sarah.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, it's a song to his ex wife, And he said, basically,
I remember staying up for days writing sad eyed Lady
of the Lowlands for you.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, and no time is a good time for goodbye.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Have you seen the Dylan movie? Do you care about
that at all.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Nope, yeah, gotcha. So, but yeah, that was pretty seminar.
I mean, that's one of his biggest albums, right, And
I saw that at the time too, that Bob Dylan
and Andy Warhol went basically head to head over Edie Sedgwick,
who also stayed at the Chelsea Hotel. And apparently that
(25:04):
was the end of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick's Red
hot I don't know what you'd call it, not a romance,
just interaction of relationship. Sure, we'll just go with that,
but it was something other than that, and it lasted
less than a year. But apparently Andy Warhol was so
(25:25):
jealous that Edie Sedgwick had become totally obsessed with Bob Dylan,
who may or may not have returned her advances. It
just depends on who you ask. Bob Dylan says no that,
but Andy Warhol lost because Bob Dylan was at the time,
like basically the biggest person in like alternative culture, the
(25:47):
counterculture at the time, like even more than Andy Warhol was.
Like he was just huge, and it's kind of it's
kind of difficult to overstate what a big deal this
very big person living and working in the Chelsea Hotel.
Like what it did for the Chelsea Hotel's reputation.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah, for sure. And it's also mind blowing to know
while Bob Dylan's up there in room two eleven literally
typing out one of the seminal albums of all time,
at the same time, Arthur C. Clark is adapting the
screenplay for two thousand and one A Space Odyssey on
a different floor, in a different room, So like these
kind of creative you know, and Andy Warhol is in
(26:28):
there shooting parts of Chelsea Girls. Like stuff was really
really happening. It didn't earn its reputation just it wasn't
overblown at all, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Right now, Another really famous thing that happened around that
time was from Edie Sedgwick. She set her mattress on fire.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, and on purpose.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I think was it on purpose because this was not
her first department fire.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, I think it was on purpose.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay, So it's possible this is a very turbulent time
for her. Yea, she could have been heartbroken over Bob Dylan.
She could have been upset Andy Warhol had turned his
back on her. I know the previous apartment fire in
a different building was because she had shot up a
speedball and the cigarette fell out of her mouth and
onto her mattress and set her her house on fire.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's kind of on purpose too, I guess.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
So, yeah, but that kind of leads me to something.
There's something that just doesn't show up in the histories.
I mean here or there. It kind of comes up,
but I think it's really understated the effect that had
on the community that developed in the Chelsea Hotel from
the entire time that the building was open. And that
has drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs. Like so everybody
(27:42):
from Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress, to Bob Dylan and beyond.
I wouldn't put it beyond Ethan.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Hawk, he lived there for a while.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, So I mean the club kids, like with the
Capital C and the Capitol K in the eighties and nineties,
like some of them lived there and they were definitely
doing drugs. They're like it was just a really big
part of the experience of living at the Chelsea Hotel.
It was like essentially one of the muses that was
(28:14):
walking around the halls of that building all the time.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, for sure. I mean Gabby Hoffman, the actor. She
was raised there from birth till she was eleven years old.
Her mom was Viva, who was another one of Warhol's superstars,
and little Gaby Hoffman from Sleepless in Seattle. You know,
she's a grown lady, you know, middle aged woman now
and has talked a lot about it. She loved living there,
(28:38):
but you know, she was stepping over people, you know,
passed out with hair and needles in their arms, and
you know, on her roller skates and just you know,
kind of a crazy life. But to her, it was
just like, yeah, I just lived in this sort of
legendary divy apartment building. Like there was a gazillion non
famous ones in New York, this one just happened to
be famous. Did see where her mom Viva? Eventually, I
(29:01):
don't think it was ever published, but she wrote a
book because writers always like very chicully say that like
Gabby Hoffman was sort of the Chelsea Hotels answer to
Eloise the children's book. And apparently her mom wrote a
book called Gabby at the Chelsea. But I don't think
I would try to find out think it was ever released.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
That's cute. I would love to see that. Yeah, how
about some more famous stuff that happened there.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Huh Yeah, like Liaison's Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen. That's
a big one.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah. He wrote about that in Chelsea Hotel number two,
one of his songs, very famous song. So they were
together from sixty eight to seventy when Janis died. I
don't know if they were like an item or if
they just, you know, liked hanging out.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
If you know, sure, I think I know Jimi.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
But regardless, they were just a famous couple from there. Yeah,
that's not the right word. I'm having trouble pulling words
out of the air. Another couple that you could probably
call more of a couple was Patty Smith and Robert Maplethorpe.
They moved into the Chelsea They were totally broke at
the time. Patty Smith became like the poet of the
(30:11):
punk scene. Robert Maplethorpe famously became the devil incarnate with his.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Photos, provocative pictures, that's.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
One way to put it. Sure of BDSM culture and
gay culture in the eighties, and like almost got the
National Endowments for the Arts canceled, Although I think it's
unfair to say it was him. Jesse Helms almost got
the NEA canceled, and it was Robert Maplethorpe was just
making art and Jesse Helms just did not think a
(30:44):
bullwhip coming out of a man's rectum was art.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
That's right. I had that book. I haven't read yet.
It's on the shelf with a bunch of other rock
and roll books that I have yet to get to.
But the Jesse Helms story no exactly what a rock
and roll Patty Smith's book that she wrote about her
time with maple Thorpe, I think it's called Just Kids
that I'm looking forward to getting into. But boy, can
(31:11):
I tell a quick Patti Smith Bob Dylan story. Is
there nothing to do with the Chelsea Hotel?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Well, you know what I'm gonna say, it does I'll
say she told him here. If you're a Dylan fanuel
like this, you can just check out for a second.
But on Bob Dylan's very famous Rolling Thunder tour that
he took up in seventy five seventy six, some people
look at that as like some peak Dylan live performance,
unbelievable stuff. But he has a performance of his song
(31:38):
isis one of his great songs after the record is
off the record Desire where it's just one of the
great live performances of anyone ever is his performance on
Rolling Thunder of Isis and he doesn't play the guitar
and he's just standing there and he didn't do that
a lot. And he Patty Smith is the one who
encouraged him. He said, Bob, you should, you should do
Isis without the guitar. And he said, Patty, I don't
(32:01):
know what to do with my hands, and she said,
make them into fists.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So did he yell, heck, yeah, you did, okay?
Speaker 1 (32:10):
And Patti Smith that wrote also about the Chelsea a
lot in the restaurant there. It's not officially part of it,
but it's connected. You can get to it through the hotel.
Al Quixote underwent a lot of renovations to reopen. It
was a pretty big dive of a place back then,
but it was cheap food and it was Spanish food,
(32:33):
and so people ate there, even though apparently the food
wasn't good. I saw it described was it. The piea
could have been consistency of yesterday's oatmeal. The taste of
the sangria might be best described as purple but before
the Woodstock Music Festival, Patty Smith went to the Chelsea
or was living there, I guess, And she said, I
walked into Alcahoti's Bar one afternoon in nineteen sixty nine
(32:55):
to find musicians everywhere, sitting before tables laid with mounds
of shrimp and green so payea, pictures of sin gree
and bottles of tequila. Jefferson airplane was there, so was
Janis Joplin and her band Jimmy Hendrix sat by the door. Like,
can you like just walking into a restaurant and seeing
something like that happening? Incredible?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, you'd be like, I don't really care about any
these people, No I do.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
I love Jimmy Hendrix, and clearly I love at least
Jefferson Starship.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Right, you were like, one day you don't know it yet,
you're gonna write a song called Sarah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
And I spent at least one summer just listening to
Dennis Joplin's greatest hits over and over again, so I
could be down with that scene.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Man, Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll
be right back and we'll finish up on the Chelsea Hotel, right,
for this. All Right, we talked about people dying at
(34:10):
the Chelsea, so we should probably talk more specifically about
this because it seemed to happen a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Right, Yeah, there were people who jumped out of windows.
Remember it was a twelve story building and this was
nothing new. People. There was a there's a rumor of
a ghost of a woman who supposedly lived. There was
an artist who was upset with herself and cut off
her hand and then threw herself out the window. And
this would have been in the first couple decades of
(34:39):
the twentieth century. But it didn't stop with her. It
just kept going and going and going. And then even
if someone didn't die by suicide or it wasn't murdered
or their place wasn't set on fire, just the day
to day grimy grittiness of it of heroin addicts like
shooting up in the bathrooms or sex workers like washing
(35:00):
their underwear in the bathrooms. That was another quote from
the Oral History of All Places that Vanity Fairhead on
the Chelsea Hotel, Like there was just a definite dark
side to it, which was just kind of underscores what
I was saying before. The people were like and I
felt so safe there, and it was like, what was
it like outside of this building? If this was what
(35:21):
it was like inside, you know.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, that's a good point. There was a very notorious
death there, depending on who you ask. Said Vicious murdered
his girlfriend Nancy Spongeen there in room one hundred in
October of nineteen seventy eight. We can't say for sure
because he denied it to his last days, which was
(35:46):
before he went to court. He died of a heroin
overdose before he was able to go to trial for that.
But what we do know it's it. Nancy Spongeen was
stabbed to death there.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah. There's a a biographer author named Phil stre Man
or Strongman. I would call myself Phil Strongman if that
were my name. But he wrote a punk nonfiction book,
I guess called Pretty Vacant, and he points to rockets
Red Glare, who was a bodyguard for the Sex Pistols
(36:17):
at the time, who was the last person known to
have seen Nancy Spongent alive. And there was also supposedly
a bunch of money cash in the apartment that couldn't
be accounted for after her body was discovered. So he
makes a pretty good case. Apparently also Rockets Red Lair
was admitted to it later on to some people, So
(36:38):
who knows, But I don't think it was sid vicious.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, I know Rockets Red glare from a lot of
those early Jim Jarmish movies. Interesting dude, Rufus Wainwright lived
there in two thousand to work on a record, and
there's a pretty funny story there where he was. He
called down to the front and asked that they could
send up a quart of milk, and apparently the bellman
(37:03):
arrived with a tray full of just tons and tons
of drugs because milk, beknownst to Rufus, was the code
word at the Chelsea four drugs.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, because he was the only person in the history
of the hotel who actually wanted milk at one point.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
And you mentioned Ethan Hawk or that's about say old friend.
We don't have nothing to do with him, you know.
I love Ethan Hawk. I think he's a great passionate,
artistic dude. But he lived there for three years when
he was sort of I don't know think he was
fully divorced, but was when he was with Uma Thurman.
They were kind of on the rocks. Yeah, and he
made the movie Chelsea Walls in two thousand and one,
(37:42):
which is a series of short films about a day
in the life of people at the Chelsea Hotel.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
So you know something about him. I've become more and
more of a fan over the years. I think he's
really kind of grown into his talent.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's I like the guy a lot,
and I like his daughter, and I like I think
I am a big fan of that family. Yeah. Who's
his daughter, Maya Hawk? She's an actor.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
No, I don't know, I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Up and coming. She's on Stranger Things is probably what
most people know are from these days.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Oh okay, so what else, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And she looks just like Uma. Oh really Yeah, it's
really funny. I mean a little bit of Ethan in there,
but she's got Imma's mannerisms and voice. It's pretty cool. Nice.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
So you mentioned that the Chelsea Hotel underwent renovations for
a long time, over a decade. From what I saw,
the whole thing started when Stanley Bard was forced out
back in two thousand and seven or eight. I saw
both Remember that his father, David Bard, had purchased the
(38:48):
Chelsea with two other families, two other men. Well, their
errors were basically like, you are not making money here,
like he was very Stanley was very famous for accepting
art in lieu of rain if you were hard, you know,
down on your luck, but you were an artist, like
he would just you know, look the other way for
a few months. Like he was not running it like
(39:08):
a business, and he was very open about that. So
apparently the airs of the other two owners were like,
you need to get out. We have two thirds of
a vote and you're out. And that was when things
just kind of, yeah, big bummer. Things just started to
change because a few years after that they sold it
to some investors. I think that was in twenty eleven.
(39:31):
They sold it for eighty million dollars. The investors came in,
fired all of the staff because they were union, and
brought in non union workers. They did away with basically
everything that was cool and intangible about the place, and
they also took down all the art, Like one of
the things Stanley did was hang art by the artists
(39:51):
who'd lived there all throughout the place, it was just
laden with art. They took all of it off the walls,
put it in storage. Apparently some that was, and Stanley's
that wasn't. The hotels too. The Larry Rivers Foundation is
suing to get one of his paintings back that they
say was just on loan, and from that point on
it just became kind of ham fisted and not very
(40:13):
pleasant for the people who lived there in the Chelsea.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, it's very controversial renovation because, like you said, there's
still people living there. Some of those residents held out
and fought it and for as long as they could.
Some other residents were mad at those residents because they
were like, we're just living into under construction because it's
taking forever. Because you're fighting this like it's going to happen.
(40:39):
Just give up so we can at least get this
finished and live in normal life again. So it really,
you know, it depends on your perspective. There's a really,
really good documentary that I highly recommend called Dreaming Walls
from twenty twenty two where they go inside a lot
of these original residence apartments see what they're like. There
are also some good books about this. From what I
(41:01):
found as of now, I think there's about forty of
them still there. Original residence in those apartments and when
you stay there. You're walking down the hall to your
room and all the doors look the same, and then
you'll come across the door that's not the same, and
that's an original resident.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, which is pretty cool that they're still there. They're
also rent controlled, I believe, which is how they're sure.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, and it is one of those things where I
really like staying there, but I feel like, man, I
bet these people hate people like me that like staying
here is walking around I know, and like, you know,
with my nine year old daughter, who's not Gabby Hoffman.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Right, she's not on roller skates, she's not an uncle Buck.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
I know. So have very mixed feelings about the whole
thing about like if staying there support that kind of
action in general or.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Well, you know, you bring that up. I thought that too,
you mean, and I say there a couple of times
over the years we did the most avant garde thing
you can do. We stayed at the Chelsea Hotel when
we went to see comedian Tom Rhodes at the Gotham
Comedy Club next door.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oh that's very close.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, he's super undergone. But I mean, I totally get
that feeling that you're talking about where it's just like
this was something and now is this the like the
dulled up version, like kind of the fake disneyfied version
of what it used to be? And that leads me
to a question that I had throughout researching this, Chuck,
(42:30):
where is whatever the Chelsea Hotel was? Now? Where is it?
I don't think it's in New York anymore. I don't
think it's something like that can survive in New York
because it's just gotten so wealthy and wealthy and wealthy
and wealthiness is not really it doesn't really jibe with
what the Chelsea Hotel was. And it's heyday, So like
(42:52):
where is it? Is it somewhere else in the world?
Is it in Kansas? Like where did this go? I
really want to know who's doing really interesting cool work
these days? Where can you find it? Or is it
just not around?
Speaker 1 (43:06):
I know, I'm with you. And also the notion of
like it's a pretty easy target, but like you know,
I bet the Holiday and Express and Times Square kicked
out some residents for whatever building they took over. You know, like,
is there any hotel group on the earth that isn't
gross and did things like that in these dense cities?
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah. I mean, look what happened to San Francisco, Like
it lost a lot of it's Oh yeah, I don't
want to say luster, because it wasn't luster that made
it so charming, but it lost some of its jam.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah for sure. But you know, El Quixotie is awesome now.
They've got some really good chefs that work there. You know,
A big shout out to John Paccini, he's the general
manager there. He's the stuff you should know, listener. He's
always been very kind to me, so big shout out
to him, and he's just he's done a great job.
And the pie is good now. And I've had some
(44:00):
really great experiences in that restaurant and in that hotel.
The lobby bar there is amazing, Like it's a truly
great place to go have a drink. And if you
if you stay there, you can get in. But if
you don't stay there, you can still go get a
drink there. I would recommend it. So I don't know,
it's It's definitely makes me question things. But like I said,
is there a place in New York where original residents
(44:22):
weren't screwed over in some way or another to make
way for some new expensive thing.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Oh. I mean also not just like people living there,
I mean like the art, the tho oh yeah, the
artistic vibe that was there where total because it's not
like no, I you.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Know, I know, I know, And a lot of those
forty residents or some of them are still artists making
art there.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Yeah, for sure, they just got to.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
I don't know if that documentary was accurate, but I
think that the residents either aren't allowed to use the
main entrance or maybe they just prefer not to.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
I could see either one. Actually I really could too. Actually,
well that's it for the Chelsea Hotel. We could keep
going on and on and on, but I feel like
this is a good place to stop, don't you.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Uh yeah. I mean, let's quickly mention that there were
some very famous things auctioned off. Some of the famous doors.
Bob Dylan storer was auctioned off. I think either Leonard
Cohen or Janis Joplin store was auctioned and that iconic sign,
as best I can figure, was renovated. But part of
that renovation included replacing the letters, and those original letters
(45:33):
were sold off.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Cool. Thank you for figuring that out, because I could
not make heads or tails of how the sign was restored,
but then they auctioned off the sign.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, I think just pieces of the original. You know,
you got to see on both sides and H and
E on both sides, and you know, I think you
found even that they had them wired so you could
put it in your your loft and light it up.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Pretty awesome, pretty cool. Uh Okay, Well that's it. That's
it for Chelsea Hotel. If you want to know more
about the Chelsea Hotel, go check out the Chelsea Hotel.
And since I said Chelsea Hotel three times, as was
foretold in two thousand and eight, I've unlocked listener mail.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
That's right, and to prevent another listener mail. Yes, we
know naked Lunch was written.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
There, thank you, Thank you, sir, And a lot of.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Other stuff was written there. You can't cover it all, no, Hey, guys,
this is about inner monologues too, because I mentioned, aside
from me thinking weird things when I'm falling asleep, I
mentioned Emily's thumb spelling, and it turns out a ton
of people do stuff like that, and I told her
and she was just delighted to find out that she
is in a club. Hey, guys over after a decade,
(46:41):
I finally have the inspiration to write. On the latest episode,
Chuck mentioned Emily spells outwords with their thumb while stressed.
I do something extremely similar, but instead of tracing the letters,
I spell them out in the sign language alphabet.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
And there were all kinds of variations. Some people air type,
sometimes it's cursive, sometimes it's sign language. It's really interesting.
I spelled them out and sign language alphabet, have been
doing it since I was at least eleven, and have
never heard of anyone else spelling out words well stressed.
I would love to know the reason, but I'm also
just content to know that someone else has a similar eccentricity.
Thanks for sharing such a lovely anecdote of what it
(47:15):
means to love someone with all their little oddities. And
peccadillos one of my favorite words. Yeah, it's the acceptance
and enjoy in the mundane and extraordinary in life that
keeps me coming back every week for a new episode.
I'm a sandwich listener. I'm sure you're going to get
dozens of these emails claiming to be Emily's long lost
finger spelling twin, But I had to write in because
I've always wanted to stay weird. And Lauren Nider or Niter,
(47:38):
I'm not sure how you pronounce it. You are in
a larger club because we got heard from a lot
of you.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, that's really cool. I'm glad. Emily's delighted. Yeah, I'm
delighted too, me too. Well, if you want to be
like Lauren and write in and let us know that
you're a part of a club too, well, we love
to hear that kind of stuff. You can send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
H
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