Bohemians at Barnes & Noble: Trippy Turnout for Chelsea Hotel Book
Artsy denizens of the embattled Chelsea Hotel turned out en masse to the not-so-bohemian Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue and 21st Street last night, as fellow hotel inhabitant Ed Hamilton read passages from his new book, Legends of the Chelsea Hotel.
"It's good he decided to dress up," one attendee joked as Mr. Hamilton took the podium dressed in jeans, a button-up shirt, and a blue baseball cap bearing the logo of a recent New York blogger summit. (Mr. Hamilton also operates a hotel-centric blog called Living With Legends.)
Painter Hawk Alfredson and photographer Mia Hanson (who's also pictured in the book) were among those present.
Before delving into the text, Mr. Hamilton waxed nostaglic for the hotel's old junky-friendly vibe and bemoaned its becoming "more and more of a fancy boutique hotel."
He described the book as part fact, part fiction. During the reading, Mr. Hamilton pulled from two chapters—"scary stories for Halloween," he said—one involving a druggie Dead-head zombie reanimated on the hotel's rooftop and another describing a seemingly personal encounter with the purported ghost of writer (and former Room 829 resident) Thomas Wolfe during the 2003 blackout:
"[A] large, hulking man," Mr. Hamilton described the phantom. "His broad back curved over a drafting table where an array of papers was spread out before him. He seemed to be working on some sort of outline... The man was wearing a starched white shirt, and the papers were white, which added to the brilliance of the scene."
Later, as the author autographed copies, this reporter asked him how much of the Wolfe ghost story was true.
"Well, it didn't happen during the blackout," Mr. Hamilton said. And, he added, "I don't know if it was him."
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What a sad joke the past events keep turning out to be. Now this stupid 150th nonsense. David Elder playing "dress up" as patron-to-the-arts Stanley Bard. It's stomach-turning and creepy. Wasting his time and the hotel's money on this charade, spending millions ousting an old manager and a professional management company while the money should be spent keeping the hotel from FALLING APART.
This whole art event is a disaster; paying homage to an era that has been dead for decades. Someone should call the FDNY as the room 600 space is illegal for events. And the co-curators and collaborators are unconscionable. Elder truly is one of you. Living in the hotel without paying rent, and laying about "curating" (ha! just like prep-school rich kid Arthur "Nash" Rosenblatt) Ask a real artist like the one pushing the envelope in 1032 what he thinks about the hangers-on. Few real artists live in the Chelsea today, just dying has-beens and never-weres, trying to scrape a living by clinging to the aura of the hotel, and churning out books about the legends of the hotel that they neither witnessed nor helped create. All you no-talent residents not paying rent are just as bad - or worse - than Elder or Krauss. Same goes for the stock brokers and daddy's-girls, and millionaire gym magnates who hole-up in rent-controlled apartments on the upper floors, while sad old ladies live in squalor beside them. Ed, especially Troeller and her drunk-driving husband. - Stop kidding yourselves! Can't you just let the hotel die in peace?