Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

"Apparition of the Eternal Church"

Pianist Bruce Levingston, whose Lincoln Center concert many of you attended earlier this year, has been involved in a fascinating project, Paul Festa's film, "Apparition of the Eternal Church." Bruce calls the film, which documents reactions to an organ score by French composer Olivier Messiaen, both touching and hilarious. 

Paul Festa's new film "Apparition of the Eternal Church," has already garnered a number of awards. However, the showing on November 9th at St. Bartholomew's Church will be the official New York City Premiere (show-time is at 7:30 pm at St. Bart's located at Park avenue and 51st Street with a concert prelude of classical guitar music performed by Adam Tully beginning one half hour before the show). Immediately following the film, the brilliant organist William Trafka will play a live performance of  the Messiaen work on the St. Bart's organ which is one of the largest and greatest pipe organs in the country. Then there will be a 20 minute panel discussion with the director and many of the participants in the film. Tickets are $10, $20, $35, and $100 and anyone purchasing a ticket for $35 and above will receive a free year's subscription to New York Magazine and an invitation to a reception sponsored after the showing with the director and cast. Please call 212-378-0248 to order or reserve tickets.

What was your role in bringing about the film premiere and the live performance?
Dan Nuxoll, one of the founders of a wonderful New York organization called Rooftop Films, sent me Paul Festa's  documentary, a film  based on the reactions of people hearing an organ score by the great French composer Olivier Messiaen. When I saw the 50 minute film I was so blown away I immediately watched it a second time to see if I would have the same reaction to the first viewing. I did. It is one of the most powerful and touching tributes to the transcendental power of music and
art. It is also one the most hilarious films I've ever seen. Paul Festa, who attended both Yale and Juilliard, was so taken with Messiaen's great organ masterpiece Apparition of the Church he decided
to film people listening to the 10 minute work and have them comment on it while they listened. The drop-dead reactions the music evokes from such distinctly different and articulate characters as Harold Bloom,  John Cameron Mitchell, Lemony Snicket, Ana Matronic, Sandi Dubowski, Albert Fuller, Ron Gallman, Justin Bond as "Kiki," and many other wonderful figures is just astounding. Some people are transported by the music, some disgusted, some moved to tears, but all seem changed in some kind of profound way.

What’s your favorite part of the film?
Well there are several parts that really got to me, but I think the penultimate scene which is an interview with Albert Fuller, the musician who actually gave one of the North American premieres of the Messiaen piece almost 50 years ago, is probably my favorite part. It is joyous, emotional and reflective and reveals as much as any moment in the film what music and art can mean to us in life.

Has your work been influenced by Olivier Messiaen?
Yes. I've performed a number of his beautiful works for the piano. He often filled his pieces with actual transcriptions of birdsong. Messiaen possessed a deep sense of spirituality and felt birdsong was
the singing of angels on earth. His ability to incorporate those magical sounds in his music changed the way I hear both music and nature itself. He helped awaken my soul.

Fellow Countryman of Dylan Thomas Pleads For Room

How does Stanely Bard do it?  He must receive e-mails like this by the dozens.  These people just want to be able to stay at the Chelsea for a couple of nights, for heavens sake!  Is that too much to ask? They've been saving their money and it's their life-long dream trip. They seem to have a genuine appreciation of the Chelsea and it's history. Here's Illtud's resume.  We had room for Dylan Thomas, surely we can make room for Illtud. Read his plea and offer your suggestions:

I'm scared of sounding like a real cheapskate but is there any way of getting a discount on a room at the Chelsea for a couple of nights? My girlfriend and I have booked flights to New York in February to celebrate building our own home (we've been in a knackered old trailer for over two years) but as we've splurged so much on the house we're rather strapped for cash, NY mightn't have been the right place to choose for a holiday! Any advice about the Chelsea would be much appreciated (a specific room to request etc).

New York is one of those special places, it's been described to me so many times as 'like being in a movie'. As a photographer my idea of New York is heavily influenced by the photographs of Weegee, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand – a lively, bustling, cosmopolitan city. As it’s my first trip to the city there’s a list of things that I want to do - visit the Whitney, MOMA and Guggenheim, drink a double whisky at the White Horse Tavern, people watch in the Village, brows the windows at Tiffany, eat a hotdog on the boardwalk at Coney Island, take the Staten Island Ferry, but when it comes to somewhere to stay, it has to be the Chelsea.

Trawling the list of people who have lived/stayed at the Chelsea gives me butterflies - and it's not celebrity worship it's an appreciation for music, literature, photography and film. We’ve been building our house now for over two years and the things we miss the most are the material things – our books, records and paintings. I imagine that staying at the Chelsea will make us somehow seem closer to those people who’s work fill our shelves and adorn our walls.

From the long list of past residents, I would have to say that those that I’m drawn towards the most are some of my fellow countrymen – firstly, John Cale. He was born some ten miles from where I type this now, in the village of Garnant (which is now a grey depressing post-industrial village with nothing going for it), it’s quite incredible to think that he came from there, and that he influenced so much of late 20^th Century music. The first song I heard Cale sing was Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, I was captivated, and I have been ever since. I took my girlfriend to see Cale at the Union Chapel, Islington in London and it was one of the most incredible musical experiences we’ve ever had.

The second Welshman on my list is Dylan Thomas, he once said that his hometown, Swansea was the graveyard of ambition but he like Cale made his way to London and then to New York. Thomas unlike Cale was part of the small bohemian Welsh world, he was part of the Kardomah Gang (a group of poets who used to meet at the Kardomah Café in Swansea) and met his wife Caitlin whilst she was with the painter Augustus John. At the time Tenby a picturesque Georgian seaside town was the summer home of Welsh bohemia, it is now, though architecturally beautiful just a seaside town filled with tourists and drunks on stag weekends. New York has The Village an icon of bohemia in much the same way as Paris has Montmartre. We haven’t got anything like that here in Wales. I just want some experience of what might have been had I been born sixty years ago.
Cheers, Illtud.

Well, if you had been born 60 years earlier, things sure would have been a lot different. The place as a really hoppin' flophouse in those days!  On the plus side, the fact that your coming to New York in February may get you a lower rate.  And, if you don't mind a room with a shared bath, that may be the less expensive way to go. It never hurts to mention your love of the Chelsea to our illustrious proprietor Stanley Bard!
As for which room to ask for, you can't go wrong with Sid's room! (Just kidding, actually.  They'll never let you in if you do that.)  Oh, and I think you're supposed to have 18 whiskeys at the White Horse before you check into the Chelsea.

Test Your Chelsea Hotel Knowledge

The most recent issue of Time Out New York features the essential New York City quiz.  Question number 19 tests your knowledge of our famous former residents.  If you can't answer this question you must check out immediately and/or throw yourself down the famed staircase! 
Which of the following people never lived at the Chelsea Hotel?
A, Mark Twain
B. Bob Dylan
C. Stanley Kubrick
D. Thomas Pynchon

For the full quiz, click here.

Old and Crappy: It's An "Only In New York" Kinda Place

Michael Armstrong and his friends are definitely our kind of tourists.  They were looking for an "only in New York" kind of place and understood that "old and crappy" is good!  Michael says his stay at the Chelsea was one of the greatest experiences of his life.

What brought you to the famed Chelsea Hotel?
i was planning my first trip to new york (along with 3 friends) and started to research  hotels. to be honest, i wasn't even considering the chelsea. one of the friends i was going with suggested we stay there. of course i had heard of the chelsea, but for some reason i never considered it. as a side note, i went to some site that has hotel ratings by the people that've stayed there, and the chelsea was a mixed bag. most said they liked the atmosphere but that it was "old and crappy", as one of them put it. so reading those ratings is what made me want to try the chelsea. i thought "the only thing they're saying is bad about the chelsea is that it's old." well, the whole reason i love new york is that it retains it's history, doesn't tear it down and start new (for the most part). i wasn't looking for a holiday inn or the mariott. i wanted a real, only in new york, kind of a hotel.

Has your art been inspired by any former or current residents?
looking over some of the famous people that've stayed at the chelsea, there are some names that stand out. i wouldn't say these people influence my art, but definitely inspire. robert crumb: a great character. i love his outlook on life, his taste in music, and his art. william dekooning & jasper johns: i would say they inspire me because i hate their art so much that it really pushes me to create what i think is good art. diego rivera: this guy on the other hand was a great artist. he definitely has a small influence on my art. as does a lot of art and artists of the 30's. art deco is my pornography. it gets me more excited then almost anything. so to be able to walk down any given street and to see examples of art deco architecture is a major thrill for me, and just that vibe alone is what inspires my art.

Do you think the Chelsea has a creative spirit?
any place that is home to numerous artistic and creative people i would say has a creative spirit. that's the reason i love new york. the whole city has a creative spirit.

What was the best/worst thing that happened to you during your stay?
there was no key event that was either good or bad. but i can say that, as a whole, our stay in manhattan/at the chelsea was one of the greatest experiences of my life. just being in the city was an event in itself. being a lover of architecture, especially architecture from the 20's and 30's, to be in new york is like an orgasm for the senses. i wanted to get a lot of good shots of architecture and just the city in general. but in a place where every street is a photo op, it's a little hard to decide what to focus on. so i decided to limit my shots to things that were specific to our trip. and leave my more mass documenting of architecture and street life for when i move there next year.

thanks to the chelsea for a great stay. i'd recommend it to anyone.

michael james armstrong
san diego, ca (soon to be nyc!)
to see photos from my trip and examples of my art, go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/starberrysweet/tags/thehotelchelsea/

The Magician of the Chelsea Conjures Up A Show

If you walk through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, with it’s grand, museum-like quality, you may
chance to encounter a living artist among the shades of yesteryear.  In an air charged with the accomplishments of the giants of the past, perhap you will notice the tall, handsome Texan with the cowboy hat pulled down over his long brown hair, sweat beading upon his forehead as he hunches over his canvas in a corner of the room, oblivious to distraction as he immerses himself in his painstaking work.  This is David Combs.

     A journalist who was interviewing us about the blog came into the lobby recently and immediately felt the tingling creative energy of the Chelsea.  He saw David toiling away and felt this as part and parcel of the Chelsea’s vibe.  But at the same time he wondered how the painter could stay here and work with the energy level so high.  He felt it would be a distraction.  Telling us about it later, he said that when he approached David, the painter had his eyes closed as he worked at his canvas.  “How does he do it?” the puzzled journalist asked us that day, pointing out that, “It wasn’t some kind of abstract mess either.  It was very detailed.”  He concluded that the Chelsea was a kind of a magic place, and we agreed with him wholeheartedly, of course.

     And David, I might add, is certainly one of our resident magicians.    He showed up in the Chelsea Lobby one day without warning, set up his easle, and began painting the lobby on a round canvas, sketching in the couches and chairs, the mantle piece and the front desk, and even the art that hung on the walls.  We all speculated as to his motives, but after awhile it became clear that David was angling for a permanent room.  (It’s very difficult to get one.)  He took a long time on that painting, coming back day after day, peopling the canvas with familiar lobby-sitters, touching it up and retouching it, as if he was waiting for Stanley to give him a place and was not about to budge before he got one.  As the weeks passed, the painting began to seem obviously complete, but yet David lingered, still attempting to will himself into the Chelsea.  And then in the bottom right hand “corner” of the round painting he began sketching in a small easle and canvas--and then a tiny cowboy-hatted artist bending over the tiny canvas!  David was literally painting himself into the Chelsea.  As, in the final analysis, he did indeed score a room, I don’t know how any more proof of the magic of his art could possibly be required.

     The infamous round canvas David was working on that day was on view at his show in Room 219 of the Chelsea last week.  Entitled “The Angel of the Chelsea,” the painting portrays the woman in the hanging sculpture in the lobby as a sort of  guardian angel watching over the denizens of the hotel—or perhaps haunting them, depending upon your perspective.  At first I hadn’t cared for the painting, felt it too cheerful, too sunny and bright and yellow, the people a bit too happy.  But as David worked on it over the days and weeks, the canvas seemed to take on depth almost like a patina of age and grime, reflecting the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of the Chelsea, somehow in the end fully capturing the mystery and the shadow world of enchantment that animates the Chelsea spirit.

     David’s paintings radiate out from the canvas, pulsating with a weird energy.  One painting was particularly striking in this regard, and I noticed several people commenting on its power. Looming behind the Chelsea, the fierce red skies of a lightning storm threaten to overwhelm, engulf, and sweep away the doomed hotel.  Strangely, however, the storm seems alternately to be emanating from the Chelsea itself, it’s palate strangely in harmony with the red brick hues of the building’s façade.  As reported—albeit somewhat faciciously--in no less august a publication than the New Yorker, the Chelsea is the entrance to hell; this was the first thing I thought of when I viewed this striking canvas.  In any event, a storm is a brewin’ here at the Chelsea, and we have to ask ourselves: is it the artistic storm in the hearts and minds of the artists themselves, or is it the storm of gentrification that threatens to sweep us all away?  David’s painting poses this question in a primal and intuitive way.

     Though David’s painting is realistic, sometimes, as in the red painting, disturbingly so, he often adds a whimsical touch to lighten the proceedings.  Another painting that proved quite popular was his “Chelsea Dogs” which portrayed the lobby populated by the various dogs living at the Chelsea, happily frolicking about, some of them even floating through.  (This one sold right away, to an animal lover from outside the hotel—as did previous two paintings discussed.)  One of the most memorable moments of the show was when two of the dogs in the painting, a couple of little docshunds, showed up to romp and frolic about the feet of the assembled throng.  It was if the hotdogs knew they were the stars of the show and they weren’t about to be denied their 15 minutes of fame!  I think they had the best time of anybody that evening.  Only David could have conjured up such magic.

     Included in the show were a few paintings from David’s earlier incarnation as a street artist—before Stanley brought him in from the cold—and at least one deserves special mention.

It’s a painting of the inside of the New York Public Library; but what makes it notable is that the famous lion statues have now been animated and brought indoors to roam the halls!  Striking as well is the tree sprouting from the cracked marble tiles, having forced its way up through the floor.  Reflecting on this painting I felt that it could be taken as an apt metaphor for David’s career, for his ambition to bring the gritty realism of the streets—together with the magical dynamism of New York—indoors (into the stolid, stuffy, self important gallerys) in the service of explaining to the world, and even to ourselves, this special indescribable something, this mystique that enlivens the Chelsea.

     When told of the eyes-closed-painting incident, David himself expressed puzzlement.  “Was I asleep?” he asked.  “I must’ve been really tired that day.”

     “No, the journalist said that you were actually painting,” I said, feeling that obviously this sorcerer of the art world, this man who can turn metaphor into reality, had been channeling the spirit of one of the old Chelsea masters: Larry Rivers or Willem de Kooning perhaps, or even (as I suppose would make more sense) Diego Rivera, in service to his art.

     However, perhaps ill-advisedly, but in any event in search of a more rational explanation, I suggested, “Maybe you were just pretending so the journalist would go away and not ask you any questions.”

     “No, I wouldn’t do that,” David assured me.  “I don’t mind talking to people about my art.” 

     And so, the mystery remains. (Ed Hamilton)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Get the candy ready!  The little Chelsea ghouls and goblins will be heading our way anytime.  Here are some shots from last year courtesy of Linda Troeller.

THE GRAY MAN OF THE CHELSEA

An old Chelsea babysitter writes:

            Though I never lived at the Chelsea Hotel myself, I used to babysit for a young couple who lived there back in the early nineties.  They were not artists. The man was an engineer and the woman owned a small business and I’m not sure why they chose the Chelsea.  Perhaps because they liked to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle (they had an active social life) or maybe they wanted to be thought of as artistic or daring.  Or maybe just because it was cheap.  That’s the only thing I can think of.  I was a teenager at the time, and since they were gone all the time I babysat for them nearly every day one summer, and they went out a lot at night too.

            Their little boy was six or seven years old.  They were very protective of the child, and tried to keep him away from the dubious characters that roamed the halls of the Chelsea, and they were always complaining to Stanley about somebody doing something immoral. In fact, that’s probably why they hired me, because I came from outside the hotel.

            Now, what I’m going to say is the God’s honest truth, though the couple won’t admit it and they called me a liar to my face, but one night they had gone out to a cocktail party and they came home really late with another couple and they were all talking and joking around out in the stairwell.  I wanted to leave and I was waiting to get paid. The cocktail party was in the hotel I think, or at least there was some sort of party on one of the lower floors.  All I know is it was really loud.  They lived on the tenth floor.

            The boy, for obvious reasons I don’t want to say his name, came out in his pajamas.  When we noticed him we all said, what are you doing out here, go back to bed, but he wouldn’t.  Instead he went to the railing of the stairs and looked up at the skylight.  He just kept looking up and finally he said, “Mommy, who is that man up there?”    His parents just laughed and said, “Oh, what are you talking about?”  But instead of dropping it, the boy became increasingly excited, pointing and screaming: “Mommy, why is that man up there?!”  “There’s nobody up there honey,” his mother said.  “That man!  That gray man up there!”  “There’s nobody up there,” his father said sternly.  “Get back to bed.”

            Then the boy got quiet.  He kept staring at the skylight, but he was quiet.  I probably should have taken him to bed, but it was late and I really wanted to get paid and go home.  “He’s just tired,” the parents said to their friends, who said their goodbyes and got on the elevator and went down.  But while we were distracted watching them leave the boy had somehow managed to climb up on the railing and stand there, I don’t know how he did it, balanced on the top rail.

            Luckily, they saw him.  “Oh my God!” they said.  “What are you doing?!” the mother said, and the father grabbed him back down from there before he could jump or fall.  The boy started shaking and shivering all over as they both held him, almost having an epileptic fit, and he peed in his pants.  The parents were drunk and had been smoking pot I think, but that really sobered them up quick.  I didn’t even get my money that night but I guess after that I forgot about it and really just wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

            Like I said, they say I’m a liar about this.  But what they can’t deny is that their son changed after this incident.  I can’t prove anything but I personally think he was possessed by some kind of spirit that night.  He was a really sweet kid before but after that he was either like a zombie or else he would go into a violent rage.  They told me to keep sharp objects locked up and not to let him out of my sight and not to go anywhere.  They were keeping him locked in his room at night because he would try to sneak out and one time he turned on all the burners on the gas stove and almost killed them all.  When you took him out him out you had to hold onto him because he would go for the railing, not rushing for it but like pulled to it in a trance.  And he was strong too.  A couple of times he got away from me and tried to climb up onto the railing, whether to jump or what I don’t know, but I was able to pull him back down and get him into the elevator thank God.  I don’t know if he was trying to get to the man or to throw himself over but it was clear that if he kept doing it he would fall eventually.  Darkness was bad, but an overcast day was the worst.  He tore his room all up when he went into his violent rages and he graffitied all over the walls in crayons in gibberish or an unknown language.

            After a few days of this I wanted to quit but the parents begged me to stay and said they couldn’t get anyone else.  These days they would probably say the child had ADD, and they got a doctor and medicated the child and it kept him quiet but he still couldn’t be left alone or he would go out into the hallway and head for the railing.  I lasted about two weeks, it was not worth the money even though they agreed to pay me double.

            Now I’ve done some research on this issue since then and this type of possession is never straightforward.  (Though I was a babysitter then I went on to get a college education and studied psychology and parapsychology.)  The boy was smart and he knew what was happening to him in a way though understandably he would often become confused and I think this was the source of his violent rages.  Sometimes he thought that adults were trying to lead him to the railing or even to throw him over.  He would scream and run away and hide in his room.  I guess in these instances he was not possessed and maybe he even thought the adults were the Gray Man.  When he was like this then you couldn’t get him out the door for anything.

            I mention this because of what happened next.  I was trying to take him out to the dentist one day.  His parents were stupid for making me do this but they insisted because they wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong.  I knew better by this time and I kept a tight grip on the boy and kept my body between him and the railing as I steered him toward the elevator.  This time though he didn’t go into a trance like usual and try to make it to the railing.  Instead as soon as we got near the railing he started screaming hysterically and struggling against me.  I held on and told him to shut up as I pushed the elevator button.  But he bit my hand and got free and ran back to the room and started struggling to open the door, turning the handle and pulling and  pushing against it.  Of course it was locked but he started screaming at me and cursing me, calling me a fucking bitch and every other name in the book, telling me to open the door and let him in or he’d kill me.  Alright that’s it, we’re not going anywhere I thought, and I got the key out of my pocket and opened the door.  He burst in and before I could get in he grabbed the door and slammed it on me.  I got my body in the way and stuck my foot in the door so he couldn’t close it all the way but he was freakishly strong and I couldn’t push it open.  He got the chain on somehow and he ran back into the apartment.  I couldn’t just leave him in there because who knows what he was going to do so I tried to stick my hand in and get the chain off.  When he saw that he ran at the door but I had my foot in  it and though it hurt like hell he couldn’t close the door.  Where he got the scissors I’ll never know, but the next thing I know he stabs me in the hand!  I screamed and pulled my hand out and my foot too, and he slammed the door and threw the dead bolt.

            So then I was standing there bleeding and I didn’t know what to do.  I was bleeding profusely and I couldn’t even leave to go to the hospital because what if the kid got out and killed himself?  Or killed himself in there?  I tried calling for him in my confusion, begging him to open the door but of course that did no good.  Finally I banged on all the neighbors doors and finally somebody opened up and gave me a rag to wrap my hand in.  I told the lady to call the mother at work and she came home and tried to act like it was no big deal and I was the one who was crazy and caused the problem in the first place.  I don’t think anybody believed her, but still!  I was the one who was trying to help!  I had to get five stitches in my hand at the hospital.

            There was no way I was going back after that, and I told them they should get the child institutionalized.  They didn’t appreciate that one bit but there wasn’t much they could say after the kid had just stabbed me.  The man paid me, overpaid me by several times, trying to pay me off I guess, to buy my silence and it’s true I didn’t say anything to anybody for nearly a year after that and by that time they had already left the Chelsea.  And New York, I think.  The reason I didn’t say anything was not the money but because they made me feel like I was crazy for even mentioning it.  I was just seventeen, remember.

            They got another babysitter, a girl in her twenties who I knew from school, and the kid drove her crazy.  She started taking drugs, maybe she had been taking them before, and eventually she had to get psychiatric help.  I think she may have even spent some time in a mental hospital.  The couple tried to blame her for their child’s condition, saying she was a junkie, but she had nothing to do with it since like I said the child was like that before.  I feel more sorry for her than for anybody to tell you the truth.  Except for maybe the child.  He was supposed to start school in the fall, but they held him back and I doubt he was ever normal again.

            Since then I’ve often thought of the Gray Man, wondered who he was, perhaps the ghost of someone who committed suicide by throwing himself down the stairwell.  Or maybe a more elemental spirit, a sort of evil pied piper of children.  When I asked the boy one time who the Gray Man was, he said he was smoke.  I don’t know whether this makes any sense or not, but this was when the boy was in a good, or rational state of mind.  The parents and their child disappeared into middle America and obscurity, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the Chelsea as possible.  The boy would be in his early twenties now which is typically when a dormant mental illness manifests.  I assume they’ve had him on medication all this time, but now that he’s an adult what if he decides to stop taking it as often happens?  There was a powerful attraction working on him, that I know, pulling him toward that railing and that skylight.  And so I have to ask, is this paranormal force still drawing him to the Chelsea?  Will he return to the scene of his childhood and his lost innocence?  And what form will his madness take in adulthood?  It seems only time will tell.

Wow, this place is even scarier than I thought.  Junkies and schizophrenics are one thing, but elemental spirits are more than I can handle.  Almost makes me want to live in the suburbs!  And this woman seems pretty authoritative too; after all, she’s studied parapsychology.  Keep your doors locked tonight!  (Ed Hamilton)

All Tomorrow's Parties: Oct. 30 - Nov 5, 2006

Monday, Oct. 30, 7:00 p.m.

Ray Sette, whose book, The Planets Align So Rare, examines the ancient art of astrology, will give a seasonally enjoyable reading at the Half King on the day before Halloween. Sette’s book explores the human potential in its relation to and its various dimensions within astrology.  Sette will entertain the audience even further by giving us astrological readings! Free.
The Half King, 505 WEST 23RD STREET, NY NY

TUESDAY OCT. 31, 10:00 pm

SUSANNE BARTSCH INVITES YOU TO  OUR CHURCH HALLOWEEN co hosted by MONSIGNOR KENNY KENNY masters of sermon: LARRY TEE, RYAN & GUEST DJ'S SAINTS: DIRTY MARTINI, THEODORA, ASTRO, KIM AVIANCE, LADYFAG, AMBER RAY, MUFFIN, IGGY, BRANDON, LAVINIA, JUN, NICKY LONDON, JULIE ATLAS MUZ & MORE. MOTHER SUPERIOR: AMANDA LEPORE: GATE KEEPERS: ADAM & CYNTHIA

AVALON, 20st & 6 (Back at Happy Valley Next Week)

Tuesday, Oct. 31, 7:00 p.m.
It's the 33rd Annual West Village Halloween Parade. A couple of friends from the McBurney Y enjoy last year's parade. On 6th Avenue from Spring Street to 21st Street

Friday, Nov. 3, 8:00 p.m.
Ballet Hispanico offers an interesting program featuring Palladium Suite — an affectionate flashback to the larger-than-life characters who filled the original Palladium nightclub in its red-hot prime.
The Joyce Theatre,  175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, NY NY

Nov. 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
It's WFMU's annual record fair. Not only can you purchase rare records from more than 200 vendors you can hear live music and catch their awesome DJ's in action. Well worth the $6.00 entry fee. Here's the complete schedule of events. Select events include: Sat. Nov. 4 from 10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Velvet Underground: Under Review Obscure footage, interviews, critical analyses, and some private Warhol footage. (85 min)  WFMU is an independent freeform radio station broadcasting at 91.1 fm in the New York City area, at 90.1 fm in the Hudson Valley, and live on the web.
Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, between 6 & 7th Avenues

Halloween Recommendation: Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road

            If you like a good horror tale for the Halloween season, but you’re tired of the refried Steven King pabulum that was bland as hell even the first time around, then Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is the book for you.  Most people wouldn’t even consider this a horror tale, and it’s certainly not horror of the jump-out-and-get-ya variety.  The book is not even horror in the supernatural sense—no zombies of werewolves here--though it’s certainly suspenseful, and I for one have always been of the opinion that there’s enough horror in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people to scare Count Dracula half to death.

            We’re not exactly in the mundane world here, however: in The Road we enter a familiar post apocalyptic wasteland in which the sun is blotted out by a gray pall of fallout that cloaks the land in a nuclear winter.  All plants are dead and nothing grows; there are very few living mammals, human or otherwise, wandering about.  Black ash coats the land, rivers run black, and when snow falls it is gray.  Through this world we follow an unnamed man and his son as they make their way south—pushing a grocery cart filled with their worldly possessions along the titular road--to escape the increasing cold of the coming winter.  Dirty and haggard, half-starved, they hunt for cans of food in farmhouses and handfuls of grain on the floors of barns, hiding in ditches when other humans come by, huddling under a tarp to sleep when it rains.

            Anarchy has gripped the land: bands of bloodthirsty cannibals have sprung up to hunt those lucky, or perhaps unlucky, enough to have escaped the initial, unnamed, calamity.  One of the scariest scenes of the book occurs when a band of these desperate characters pass by on the road a mere thirty feet from where the man and boy lie hidden:

When he raised up to look he could just see the top of the truck moving along the road.  Men standing in the stakebed, some of them holding rifles.  The truck passed on and the black diesel smoke coiled through the woods.  The motor sounded ropy.  Missing and puttering.  Then it quit....They could hear the men talking.  Hear them unlatch and raise the hood.  He sat with his arm around the boy.  Shh, he said.  Shh....He raised his head to look and coming through the weeds twenty feet away was one of their number unbuckling his belt.  They both froze.

The book goes on like this from start to finish, and it’s hard to put down.  I read it all the way through over a two-day period, and I’m not really a fast reader. 

            McCarthy is very good at description and plotting, though not so good at characterization: the two main characters, the man and the boy, are mere symbols.  Although the novel purports to explore the moral dimension of survival in a post apocalyptic world, it’s parameters are overly simplistic (there is, for instance, no examination of the moral structure of the cannibal society: they are just “evil”), and at the end we are left with a rather pat and predictable reaffirmation of convention moral values.  This book is thus not for science fiction fans, who will feel like they’ve been here and done this countless times before.  The Road is a trash novel for the literary set: it’s not great literature by any means, but it gives you a break from D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Wolfe and takes you on a hell of a frightening joy ride. (Ed Hamilton)

First Day In Hell Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

Well, the secret is officially out!  Even The New Yorker knows the Chelsea Hotel is the entry point into hell.  We used to get a goth punk or two in here maybe once a month to burn a candle in front of Sid's room. But now they're gonna be lining up down the block.

My first day in Hell is drawing to a close. They don’t really have a sunset here, but the fires seem to dim a bit, and the screaming gets more subdued. Most of the demons are asleep now, their pointy tails curled up around them. They look so innocent, it’s hard to believe that just a few hours ago they were raping and torturing us.

The day started off at a party at the Chelsea Hotel, where some friends were daring me to do something. The next thing I knew, I was in Hell. At first, it seemed like a dream, but then I remembered that five-Martini dreams are usually a lot worse. (MY FIRST DAY IN HELL, by JACK HANDEY) (via CherryRamone)

Larry The Ghost

Larry the Ghost is perhaps the Chelsea's most famous resident spirit.  Our Anonymous Hotel Chelsea Blogger # 3 interviewed several live residents in order to come to the following conclusions about Larry:

The main thing about Larry is that he never stops talking. This is upsetting to the other ghosts, because they're eager to tell their stories once they find someone who can hear/see them.  But Larry always pushes his way to the front and starts lecturing in such a loud voice that the others can't get a word in.  What he wants people to know, mainly is:
1) It's what's inside the Chelsea that's real. Everything out there, in the so-called city, is an illusion.
2) There was something there long before the Chelsea was built that is the source of the place's creative power.
3) It's not about the product--the specific art that's created; it's about the life that is led at the Chelsea Hotel.  "That's what's important, man," says Larry.

Though skeptics in the world at large might say that the residents who claim to have encountered Larry are a bit on the batty side, we take solace in the wisdom of Larry himself: he would have no doubt as to whom was really crazy.  (photo link)

Thick Walls

It must be true what they say about the walls being 3 feet thick around here at the Chelsea.  Look's like Sally Singer had a dj at her dinner party and we didn't hear a thing.

Miss Amelia's "Dracula"

An evening of Guilty Pleasures is not complete without the charming Miss Amelia's rendition of Dracula!

Courtesy of youtube.com and Tim Sullivan

Shakedown Street, Ventura 1987

We're always glad to be of help to folks in the neighborhood.  Here's an e-mail from a reader who'd like to connect with someone who lives in the Chelsea.
I was walking west on 23^rd Street yesterday  (10/25) whistling along with a recording on my iPod of an amazing “Shakedown Street” from the Grateful Dead’s 10/25/79 show, and a blonde woman turned around a few times and looked at me.  I thought she was going to tell me to stop whistling, but instead she asked if I was whistling Shakedown Street.  (That surprised me; usually my whistling is unrecognizable.)  She said something about seeing a Shakedown at Ventura in 1986 or 1987 (it was 1987 and I was also there).  The woman exchanged waves with the guy closing Chelsea Guitars for the day, and turned into the Chelsea Hotel.  I asked “do you live here” and she said “yes.”

If you recognize yourself, please contact this guy via Craigslist.

A Crossroads for Spirits: A Medium Visits the Chelsea

We always knew the Chelsea was filled with ghosts.  There's just too many frustrated artists roaming the halls for it to be otherwise, too many lost souls with unfinished business.  But leave it to our Anonymous Hotel Chelsea Blogger # 3 to bring a medium to the hotel in order to provide the definitivie proof of this otherworldy infestation.  If you've ever felt the hairs on the back of your neck bristle as you've walked these halls late at night, then delve into this terrifying document at your own peril, for you may well see your deepest fears confirmed:

I remembered some more ghostly things that my "medium" friend saw at the Chelsea.  We took a tour from first to top floor, so I'll try to remember everything she said was there (provided to you anonymously, of course):

Lobby: There are half a dozen to a dozen spirits hanging around the lobby, hoping every day that someone will notice them, but almost no one ever does. They're lonely and very anxious to be recognized.

Elevator: Definitely someone lurking in there, just watching from the corner.

A room on the 3rd floor, West End: Something terrible--a beating or murder--happened in the bathroom.  Best not to go in there. Another friend who was with us ignored this warning and took a shower there, and found deep scratch marks on her chest afterwards.
Writer Sparkle Hayter, who lived for quite a while on the third floor had this to say about these findings: A hard drugs dealer lived there for a while (he was also into bestial porn, we later learned) and the cops came one day to say they had a report he was keeping a woman there against her will.  After he left, a lot of star-crossed lovers stayed in that room – had wall-shaking arguments, soul-rattling arguments.  When it was empty however, and I was away on a  book tour, people would hear someone typing, on a  typewriter in my room.  I often saw the shadow of a crouched woman in a corner of my room late at night and heard weeping, when I walked towards it, she disappeared.  Any connection?

And speaking of ghosts, you know about Sid haunting the east elevator? And about the man in the hat ghost (ask David Bard about the latter.)

Fifth floor, west end, one of the little halls leading north: An 1880s-era woman spirit, elegantly dressed, stands before a non-existent mirror touching up her hair, over and over, eternally. She's anxious about a meeting she's about to have.

One of the middle floors (6th?): A little boy-ghost in Thirties-era clothes kicked my friend in the shins hard enough to make her limp the rest of the way upstairs. She actually had a bruise there later.

A higher floor (7th or 8th), west wing pretty near the elevators: A spirit tried to lure my friend into a "womb-like purple room," telling her soothingly that she just needed to rest. My friend was sure that if she followed the spirit she'd be suffocated.

On one middle floor (I think), at the west end, someone had put up voodoo veves--colorful magic symbols--all over the walls, to counteract bad energy.  My friend said the person had an excellent reason to do that, but that the veves weren't working.

Around the 9th floor or so, west end, narrow corridor (I think it was leading north), there was something so upsetting that my friend started crying and ran upstairs to get away from it.

In the cellar--in a corridor leading away from the back (perhaps that tunnel that's supposed to lead to 22nd Street) there's a primal, powerful force too scary for my friend to go near.  Maybe that's what inspired DeeDee Ramone to put Sid Vicious' ghost down there in "Chelsea Horror Hotel."

Drifting through the halls is a young girl in a white Victorian-style nightgown, weeping helplessly and desperate to tell her story to someone. She tried to talk to my friend, but Larry, the famous hiptster ghost, kept interrupting.

As you can see, we had a great tour. (Interesting that she didn't mention seeing anything in the east half of the hotel, except in the cellar.) Overall, she said it was the most haunted building she'd visited in New York, except for the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.  The list here looks pretty negative, but she said there were a wide range of spirits, good and bad, happy and unhappy.  Also, she had the impression that many of them were able to come and go from the hotel. They weren't stuck inside the building.  So it's apparently a crossroads for spirits as well as artists.

Anonymous Hotel Chelsea Blogger #3

BAD ENERGY AND TRANSIENT SPIRITS: Tim Sullivan and the Ghosts of the Chelsea

            The Chelsea has a reputation as being a welcoming haven for spirits--of both the living and the dead variety.  We asked longtime resident Tim Sullivan what he knew about the ghosts who inhabit the Chelsea.

            Tim is a big man, with a gray tuft of beard and brown hair—which you don’t usually notice since he almost always wears a baseball cap.  A rock guitarist, Tim comes off as a regular guy, plainspoken, without pretension.  When asked about the primal force that is reputed to inhabit the basement, he says, “That wouldn’t surprise me at all.  Parts of that basement are like a cave.  I’ve seen some really weird stuff down there.”  He goes on to add, “This area is the lowest point on the island, marshland.  Some people believe the Chelsea may be sitting on top of an ancient Indian burial ground.”

            Tim discovered the Chelsea in the early eighties when he was checking out the Guitar store on the ground floor of the building.  He looked into the lobby and sensed a weird energy; it drew him to the place, and when, a few years later, he had a chance to move in, he didn’t hesitate.  “The Lobby has always had a very sad vibe,” Tim says, when asked of ghost sightings there.  “It used to be filled with down-and-outers, drug addicts and punk rockers hanging out.  This used to be a very bad neighborhood.”  Tim believes that ghosts are just powerful memories.  (And he doesn’t intend to leave one!)  “It may be that the ghosts come with the guests,” he says, which would explain the more recent lightening of the vibe in the lobby.  “Now this neighborhood is like Columbus Avenue,” Tim says.  “Once they painted the lobby and brightened it up, it released the bad energy and a lot of the spirits moved on.”

            We’re betting there are still more than a few left!  Tim had three specific ghost stories to share with us:

Betty Boop

            In a room on the fourth floor, a tourist awoke late one night, sensing a presence.  Getting up, she chanced to glance in an old mirror, and was startled enough to call the front desk and demand another room.  “Oh my God!” she said.  “Who lived here before?  I looked in the mirror and saw an image of a woman who looked like Betty Boop!”

            Though the tourist couldn’t have known, the desk clerk she spoke to did, and her words sent a chill down his spine.  The room had belonged to an old woman named Tatianna, who had been a prostitute in her prime.  She had indeed looked like Betty Boop, wearing the clothes of a flapper, the bobbed hair, and the old 1920s era hats.  She had died 16 or 17 years prior to this incident.

            “If you live here all the time you get used to the energy, so you may not see it as an apparition,” Tim explains.  “Guests, on the other hand, can sometimes see the real spirit behind the energy.”

Nancy Spungen

            Tim doesn’t believe that Sid killed Nancy.  He thinks instead it was a drug dealer named Rockets Redglare, a notorious bastard, who lived, coincidentally or not, in the room right next to the Betty Boop room.  In any event:

            After Nancy was killed, Stanley had her apartment split up between two other apartments so punks wouldn’t come around looking for it.  He tried to rent the rooms out to people who didn’t know about the tragedy.  I was visiting a couple in one of the apartments and I noticed that they had a room closed off, so I asked them what was in there.  They said nothing, that they didn’t use the room at all and didn’t keep anything in there.  They said that the room had a bad energy, and the wife said she had seen an eerie glow in there.  They were Portuguese and had never even heard of Sid and Nancy.

            The guy who lived in this apartment next tried to sublet it when he went to stay in France, but the woman he sublet it to called him as soon as he got there and said she absolutely refused to stay there another minute.

The Preacher

            This next one doesn’t take place at the Chelsea, but it’s a good one, and it happened to Tim himself, so we include it:

            I was at a friend’s house in California. He gave me my own room to sleep in.  That night I dreamed that a big, stern-faced old man, dressed in black, was sitting on top of me, pushing down on my chest.  I awoke screaming, really terrified.  I didn’t mention it to my friend at the time, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.  I thought about it for three or four months.  When I finally mentioned it, my friend said it sounded like his grandfather, who had been a preacher in life, in a Holy Roller church.  The old preacher had been sleeping in that very same room when he died, and I had been there on the anniversary of his death as well, which my friend remembered because it had been Father’s Day.

            I’m glad that old preacher isn’t floating around the Chelsea!  Although, who knows, maybe he followed Tim here.  This is a hotel after all, and ghosts, like guests, seem to be able to check in and out at will.  So I don’t know about you, but I still plan to be on the lookout!

Tim Sullivan's latest CD is due out early next year.  I don't think it will be about ghosts, but without a doubt it will be influenced by the rockin' supernatural energy of the Chelsea.   So stay tuned to the blog, and we'll let you know and maybe even have a snippet for you to play.

Thomas Wolfe Postcards: A Ghost Story At The Hotel Chelsea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whole Foods Muffin Scam: Muffins Labeled Sugar-Free Contain Sugar

The Whole Foods on 7th Ave. and 24th St. in Chelsea is a nightmare in many ways—please, don’t get me started!—but if you get there right when the doors open at 8AM it’s bearable. They have
good coffee at their coffee bar in back of the store, and a wide variety of hot teas. They have a good selection of muffins and scones in their bakery department, including, most importantly from my perspective, sugar-free ones. Since the closing of the much-missed Taylor Bakery on 18th a few years back, Whole Foods has been the only place in the neighborhood to find such items.
So you can imagine my consternation when, for two weeks running, the store didn’t have any sugar-free offerings. I finally complained to the bakery manager, a woman, that they seemed to have stopped carrying their sugar-free muffins and scones. I pointed out that they used to have a sugar-free cranberry muffin, but now they had something that looked just like it, but was labeled “Vegan Cranberry” and had maple syrup in it. She told me that that was the same muffin they had always carried, and that they had never carried a sugar-free cranberry muffin.
This wasn’t the first time they’d tried to discontinue the sugar-free products, so I had complained before. I knew that you had to keep after these people, because they’re always trying to put sugar into everything because it’s so cheap. In a sugar-free muffin they have to use costlier ingredients such as eggs and butter and cream—and fruit juice as a sweetener--in order to make it taste decent.
My girlfriend Debbie also called and spoke to the bakery. After being repeatedly put on hold, she finally got through to a man who identified himself as a bakery employee. He said that sometimes they ran out of ingredients—though it’s funny they never run out of sugar--and that he’d call her back once he found out what had happened.
Though he never did call Debbie back, a woman named Femima (possibly the same woman I spoke to) did call the next day. Femima explained that the muffins had been mislabeled all along, that in fact they had never been sugar-free, but had always contained maple syrup. That’s why the sugar-free cranberry muffin looked exactly the same as the vegan cranberry muffin: they were the same!
It’s the same with the “sugar-free” currant scones: never actually sugar-free, they are now labeled “No-sugar Added Currant Scones” and contain Agave Syrup (though that still sounds like they are adding sugar).
What’s more, it seems that in past instances when I complained that they had appeared to be discontinuing sugar-free products, it had been the same thing: they had just changed the labels to reflect the true ingredients. And when I raised a stink they just changed the labels back! How’s that for customer service?
Thankfully, I am not a diabetic. For someone who is, this mislabeling could lead them to eat something that could induce a potentially life-threatening condition. I don’t see why everything I eat should have to contain sugar. But really, my reasons for wanting to avoid sugar are immaterial: the bottom line is, Whole Foods shouldn’t be mislabeling their products.

Harry and the Zombie

Today we kick off our blog-of-horror week. Everyday, leading up to Halloween, we will be running ghost stories set in our favorite spooky, old hotel. So don't miss a single scare!

            It’s well known that underground filmmaker Harry Smith was also a painter, folklorist and ethnomusicologist, and that he collected string figures and paper airplanes.  Less well know is that, during his time at the Chelsea, Harry kept a Zombie.  A disciple of uber-Satanist Aleister Crowley— whom he often claimed, much to his mother’s embarrassment, to be his real father—Harry was a consecrated bishop in the O.T.O., the Ordo Templi Orientis, a mystical order founded in Germany in 1902 and reorganized by Crowley in 1912.  The order is fairly eclectic, embracing all world traditions of magic, and that’s what led Harry to the study of Voodoo.  Traveling to Haiti in the sixties in order to fully immerse himself in the dark art, Harry soon attained the rank of Houngan, or Voodoo priest, amazing even seasoned practitioners with the ease with which he channeled the spirit of the powerful snake god Damballah Wedo.

            Raising the dead, however, is another matter altogether, and it would take Harry the greater part of the next two decades to attain the competence necessary to negotiate the intricacies—and to avoid the myriad perils--of the arcane reanimation ceremony.  (In Harry’s defense I should note that he did have a lot of irons on the fire.)  Finally, by the end of the eighties, he was ready to give it a go.  Knowing that the only place in New York that would tolerate such an abomination was the Chelsea Hotel, he made an appointment to see our illustrious proprietor, Stanley Bard, and he was moving his stuff into the Dowager of 23^rd St. that very afternoon.  Now, all Harry lacked was a suitable subject for his diabolical ministrations.

            Luckily, in my early years at the Chelsea, there were still several residents around who remembered Harry and the Zombie, and by questioning them at length I have been able to reconstruct the events surrounding the Zombie’s tenure at the hotel.  I spoke with a man—for obvious reasons he chooses to remain anonymous--who was involved in the actual ceremony, and what follows is an account, in his own words, of that terrible night:

At the time I was Harry’s disciple, so when he mentioned the idea to me I was all for it, since I figured with a Zombie slave around that meant less work for me.  One night this deadhead dude came over, and Harry sat him down on the bed with a big bowl of reefer and a bottle of Jack.  I had never seen the dude before and I don’t know where Harry picked him up.  But while he was busy with the pot and the liquor, Harry went around lighting all the candles around his tiny junked-up room, dozens of them, stuck with melted wax onto every flat surface.  Then he put on a ratty yellow robe and a cardboard headdress, and started chanting and dancing around, and it wasn’t long before he was possessed by the spirit of Daballah Wedo.

      The deadhead didn’t seem to care, or even to really notice, what was going on, until Harry began to anoint him with cat’s urine and a greasy, foul-smelling pitch-like substance.  “What the fuck, man!” the deadhead dude said.  “Smoke some more reefer, dude,” Harry said.  “Try some bong hits  this time.”  Harry drug a bong out from under the bed.  It should come as no surprise that the bong was shaped like a skull, except this was a real skull, bored out and fitted with a pipe stem and mouth piece.  “Try a couple of these Quaaludes, too,” Harry said.  “OK, don’t mind if I do,” the deadhead said.

      Harry pulled a cage containing a live chicken from under his bed, and grabbed the chicken out by the neck.  It was squawking and flapping and making a hell of a racket, but Harry quickly put an end to that, holding it down and sacrificing it with a sacrificial knife on a sacrificial altar made from the cabinet of an old stereo speaker.  “Alright, man! Fry it up!” the deadhead said.  “I got the munchies like a motherfucker!”  Harry squirted blood from the chicken’s all over the deadhead, and in general all over the room, and then he threw the headless chicken down and it ran around slamming into boxes and rolling in the cat litter.  “Hey man, be careful with that thing!” the deadhead said.  “Where’s the skillet.  Put that shit on the stove.”  Of course, Harry’s room had no kitchen, but that’s another story.

      Producing a handful of white Zombie powder, Harry blew a huge puff of it in the deadhead dude’s face.  The dude started sneezing wildly and blowing his nose on the blood-and-urine-stained sheets, but soon he grew quiet.  “Far out man,” he said.  “I’m hallucinating my ass off.  Where can I get hold of some of that shit?”  But soon he stopped speaking altogether and his eyes glazed over and he flopped back onto the bed.  I then helped Harry to strip off the dude’s clothes and prepare his body for the final stages of the ceremony.

            Now of course, as everyone knows, a Zombie must be buried in order to “die” and subsequently be reborn in his new incarnation as the living dead.  And further, as anyone who has had to keep dead pets in their freezer knows, it is not easy to find a place to bury a mammal—even a small one--in New York City.  Harry was able to accomplish this feat in the rooftop garden of the Chelsea.  Although he caught hell from the woman whose tomato plants he uprooted, in three days time Harry was able to dig up the deadhead and reanimate him beneath the light of the full moon as a fully-functional Zombie.  (As you might imagine, it was incidents such as this that led Stanley Bard to restrict rooftop access.)

            Over the next few years, Harry used the Zombie to go out for beer and cigarettes and the occasional sandwich.  Sometimes he sent him on more nefarious errands as well--I suppose that goes without saying—such as to stand in line at crack houses on the Lower East Side.  Toward the end, Harry’s legs hurt him and he didn’t like to walk down the hall to the bathroom, so he took a dump in a plastic bag and had the Zombie take it to the trash bin late at night.  The Zombie slept standing up in the hall closet, though sometimes Harry, a drug addict and somewhat forgetful himself, would leave the door ajar and the Zombie would get out and roam the hotel.  One time he was discovered huddled in a corner of the basement, nearly catatonic, his eyes glazed, blood and gore caked on his face and arms, the remains of a devoured cat strewn about him.  Stanley gave him a stern lecture and sent him back up to his closet.

            Now you might wonder at this last incident, as you might well wonder why none of the other hotel residents seemed to notice that there was a ravening, bloodthirsty Zombie in their midst.  Well, most likely, everybody who encountered him just thought he was a particularly down-and-out junkie.  For in truth, the Zombie—whose name, by the way, was Paul--was actually quite a bit more cogent and well-put-together than many of the nuts who were running the halls of the Chelsea in those days.  And besides, you know how self-involved these creative types can be.

            Only the hotel maids, hailing as they did from Old World cultures steeped in mysticism, understood what was going on.  They wouldn’t go anywhere near the Harry’s room, wouldn’t even clean the transient room next door to Harry.  Godfearing Christian women, they held no truck in Voodoo.  But eventually Stanley began to put pressure on them to clean the rooms in that corridor, as the area was beginning to smell like a privy on a hot August day.  Pushed to extremes, the maids knew they had to act to wipe this ungodly scourge off the earth.  Biding their time, they waited until one day when Harry had stumbled into his room and collapsed in a drug-induced stupor, and then, armed respectively with broom, feather duster, and bucket and mop, the three large, formidable women advanced into the dingy corridor to clean out once and for all Harry’s filthy den of perfidy.

            Knowing enough to go after the master rather than his servant, the maids found Harry passed out on his bed, immobile and seemingly lifeless.  They lit sacred deodorizing candles and took up their positions around the bed, chanting in the words of darkness forbidden by their religion of light.  After several minutes of such noise, Harry still did not stir.

            “He’s dead,” the maid with duster said, leaning over Harry.

            “Don’t get too close!” the one with the broom cautioned.

            The duster-wielder put her head to Harry’s chest.  “There’s no heartbeat.”  She poked him with her duster.  “He’s dead!  He’s dead!”

            “He’s dead, he’s dead!” the two of them chanted, dancing about the bed, poking Harry repeatedly with broom handle and dust mop.

            The third maid, wanting to get in on the fun, raised her sopping mop from the bucket.  “Should I give him the holy water?”

            “Yeah!  Give him the holy water, sister!” the other two sang out.

            And the third maid raised her mop from the bucket and swung it over her shoulder in a broad arc, strewing soapy brown water all about the walls and ceiling, and brought it down with a resounding SPLAT! right square in Harry’s face.

            Sputtering and cursing, Harry sat bolt upright.  His detailed knowledge of the occult allowed him to immediately intuit the gravity of the situation.  Grimacing at the worst hangover of his life, Harry reached under his bed and then sprung to his feet.  And then the tiny, bearded, gray haired man chased the three big maids down the hallway in his underwear, wielding a Ceremonial Aztec Dagger that he had stolen from the Met.

            Harry’s anonymous disciple had this to add:

The problem was, they forgot to sacrifice the chicken! Can you believe it! Anybody knows that!  For anything related to Voodoo you gotta sacrifice a chicken!  In Voodoo you gotta sacrifice a goddamn chicken to get outta bed in the morning!  What a laugh.  Harry and I spent many a night howling with laughter at their ignorant gaffe.

            In the end, however, the maids’ spells, amateurish as they no doubt were, seem to have weakened Harry.  For he gave up the ghost not long after, famously singing, “I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying!” as he bubbled with excitement at the prospect of moving on to the next plane of existence.

            Naturally, Harry made one final attempt to exercise control of the Zombie from beyond the grave.  Unfortunately, he had spent too much time on filmmaking and ethnomusicology, and not enough time on necromancy.  It’s a competitive art, and those who succeed in it these days are generally narrow specialists.  Harry was one of the last of the Renaissance men, and ultimately he paid the price.  Alas, his like will not soon be seen again.

            After Harry was dead, as is well know, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs came to collect Harry’s papers and films and other artifacts.  Among these items was Paul the Zombie, still holed up in the hall closet.  Ginsberg, in an attempt to draw Paul back to the world of the living, attempted to coax him into a lotus position and persuaded him to chant a few mantras, but this had no lasting effect.  Burroughs, on seeing someone so down-and-out that even he could draw no inspiration from his existence,  finally decided to sell out, and the result was his infamous Nike commercial.  In the end, not even these giants of literature could figure out what to do with Paul, so they just left him in the closet, where he seemed happiest anyway.

            Although the rent on the hall closet was actually fairly low, especially since Chelsea was a depressed neighborhood at the time, Paul the Zombie could not afford it; still believing himself to be dead, he saw no reason to get a job.  And so, after a few months of hounding him, Stanley had no choice but to have Paul evicted.  Since then, in between stints in the mental hospital, Paul sleeps in a cardboard box on 22^nd street, sneaking back into the Chelsea periodically, or, when he manages to save enough money through panhandling, checking into one of the more modest rooms for a night or two of ungodly revelry. (Ed Hamilton) (Zombie Photos -- here and here)

Former Home of Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe To Become Condos

In the latest apparent triumph for the fans of gentrification, the Allerton Hotel on W. 22nd St. is rumored to have been sold to a developer for $17 million. It's not a very attractive building so of course the initial reports indicate that it will not be torn down.  Though few will miss the scuzzy crew that hangs out in front of the building, the Allerton is a unique Chelsea institution with it's own bohemian history. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe lived in the Allerton briefly after a short stay in a loft on Delancey St. and before moving to the Chelsea. The Allerton is where Patti reportedly wrote "Sister Morphine."  (via blogchelsea)