ED HAMILTON

This reporter was witness to some tense moments at the Chelsea Hotel over the weekend, including a verbal confrontation (pictured above) at the front desk between hotel vice president David Elder and hotel tenant Arthur Nash.

No punches were thrown, but the incident clearly spooked Mr. Elder. In recent days, a new security detail has been patrolling the hotel’s lobby and hallways. The hulking guys in suits have been particularly attentive to Mr. Nash.

The initial standoff happened during the second night of a photography exhibit entitled “Chelsea Hotel Through the Eyes of The Photographers,” scheduled to coincide with the historic hotel's 125th anniversary. But it also came at a time of lingering tensions inside the iconic lodge.

Mr. Elder is at the center of the controversy. It was his 2005 lawsuit that ultimately resulted in the highly-publicized ouster of longtime manger and majority owner Stanley Bard. Thus, he has taken the brunt of some residents’ anger. “Greed” has been scrawled on his door; excrement left on his doormat—someone even sent him a dead fish in the mail. And, the hotel blog, Living With Legends, has fervently chronicled Mr. Elder’s longstanding California court battle with his elderly father-in-law, the writer Piri Thomas, over more than $1 million in dividends reaped from hotel profits.

“I’m not doing an interview,” Mr. Elder said on Saturday, mingling with guests just one night after he was chased from the exhibit hall by a masked doppelgänger dressed in a hotel bathrobe. (A stink bomb had earlier disrupted the show.)  read more »

BD NY Hotels, the Richard Born and Ira Drukier-led outfit hired last year to replace eccentric longtime Chelsea Hotel manager Stanley Bard, has filed for arbitration after being fired by the hotel's governing board for "willful misconduct."

The controversial management team, which installed a rookie, 26-year-old Glennon Travis in the place of the veteran manager, Mr. Bard, has claimed in court papers that it has "fully performed its obligations" under a three-year contract, signed last June, and further asserted that the hotel was more profitable on its watch than when Mr. Bard ran the place.  read more »

Legendary hotelier Stanley Bard doesn't hang out in the lobby of his beloved Chelsea Hotel as often as he used to.

But, two weeks ago, the hotel's infamously ousted manager made a rare appearance, joining the director Milos Forman (himself a former hotel resident) for an on-camera interview smack-dab in the middle of the lobby.

"The new management comes running out of the back and is like, 'You can’t shoot that here!'" said the writer Ed Hamilton, a 13-year resident of the iconic lodge on West 23rd Street. "He tried to charge Stanley $600 to film in the lobby. Of course, Stanley wouldn't pay that."

Mr. Hamilton relayed the recent lobby incident during a panel discussion about the historic and embattled hotel last night at the Museum of the City of New York.

Mr. Hamilton, author of Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca, interviewed Mr. Bard himself recently for a short video by fellow hotel resident and filmmaker Sam Bassett.

In the interview, played during the panel discussion, Mr. Bard took a few jabs at the hotel's controversial new managers.  read more »

Legendary hotelier Stanley Bard will deliver a videotaped "message of hope" tonight at the Museum of the City of New York.

Hear what the charismatic former manager of the embattled Chelsea Hotel has been up to since his controversial ouster last summer, what he thinks about the new management and ongoing eviction proceedings, as well as his vision for the future of the iconic 125-year-old lodge, of which he remains the majority owner.

Mr. Bard's remarks will follow a panel discussion with preservationist Edward Kirkland and writers Ed Hamilton, author of the 2007 book Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with the Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca, and Sherill Tippins, author of the forthcoming Dream Palace: The Extraordinary Life of the Chelsea Hotel.

The event starts at 6:30.  read more »

The new managers of the historic Chelsea Hotel have launched a revamped Web site for reservations and information about the iconic lodge on West 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues.

The "History" section drops the usual references to famous hotel inhabitants Dylan Thomas and Sid Vicious but makes no mention of the old manager, Stanley Bard, whose ouster after nearly 50 years stirred up so much controversy this year.

"It’s hard to deny that, besides being one of the chief celebrities of the hotel, he had a little bit to do with making this place the unique artistic attraction that it is today," writer and hotel watchdog Ed Hamilton said on his blog, Living With Legends.

Mr. Bard used to say that getting into the Chelsea was harder than getting into an Ivy League school. Now you can check-in with the simple click of a mouse.

Quoteth hotel frequenter Bob Dylan: "The times they are a-changin.'"

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."