What happens at the Chelsea…
For years I’ve had an ) obsession with the Chelsea Hotel (they say Kerouac did revisions of On The Road there…but that can’t be true, right? I mean, he didn’t believe in revisions, right?)
I have loved the Chelsea since I first lived in NYC in my early twenties and was in the height of my Beat Generation obsession. I mean, how could you not be obsessed with a place like this:
History (from the Chelsea Hotel Website)
The hotel has always been a center of artistic and bohemian activity and it houses artwork created by many of the artists who have visited. The hotel was the first building to be listed by New York City as a cultural preservation site and historic building of note. The twelve-story red-brick building that now houses the Hotel Chelsea was built in 1883 as a private apartment cooperative that opened in 1884; it was the tallest building in New York until 1899. At the time Chelsea, and particularly the street on which the hotel was located, was the center of New York’s Theater District. However, within a few years the combination of economic worries and the relocation of the theaters bankrupted the Chelsea cooperative. In 1905, the building was purchased and opened as a hotel.
Owing to its long list of famous guests and residents, the hotel has an ornate history, both as a birth place of creative modern art and home of bad behavior. Bob Dylan composed songs while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas died of alcohol poisoning on in 1953, and where Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.
Chelsea Hotel’s famous visitors and residents Visitors and residents of the Chelsea Hotel include Eugene O’Neil, Thomas Wolfe, and Arthur C. Clarke (who wrote 2001: A Space Oddyssey while in residence). Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead passed through the hotels doors in the 1960s.
Virgil Thompson, Larry Rivers, William Burroughs, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Patti Smith, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, and many, many others stayed here too.
Of course, as much as I love the hotel, I’ve never been cool enough to get past the lobby (which is amazing, by the way, a freakshow with tons of art on the walls). But now, by some strange twist of fate, I have made a friend who lives there. Not only does he live there, but he lives in the Bob Dylan/Dylan Thomas room:
Dylan Thomas actually died in room 206 in 1953 after going on a bender that led to alcohol poisoning. Dylan’s last words are said to have been, “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskeys, and I think that’s a record!”
I always thought, like so many others, that Dylan Thomas died after 18 whiskies at the White Horse tavern. Yeah, I’ve had many drinks in his booth. But now I know he made it back to the Chelsea, where he fell into a coma. Later, Bob Dylan lived in this same room (divided into parts now – my friend actually lives in the living room area). Bob was there a long time, and it inspired him to change his last name to Dylan (I, for one, think he should have kept Zimmerman. Of course, I’m not one to talk…’cause here’s the honest truth: I’m really meant to be Maya Solomon, but my Grandfather changed it for his sons…different time, y’know? It wasn’t so great for business to have a Jewish name then…now, of course, that’ll help you out in a place like New York!)
This room is right under the Chelsea Sign. And it is surreal and beautiful and completely haunted. At least, I think it is haunted. Emily and I had a seance and she swears she heard Dylan Thomas sigh from the closet at the sound of his own words read in my horrible Okie version of a Welsh accent…
I’ve met some crazy/brilliant people at the Chelsea…especially Jeff, who lives in the Dylan room, and Willem, who has been there something like 15 years. There’s a documentary that just came out about the Chelsea, here’s the preview…Willem is the one who says how women come to the Chelsea all innocent, “guitars strapped on their backs” and end up “whores”. Nice, huh? Well, it hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’ll keep ya updated.
But whether it is haunted or not…it is incredible. There is something about the whole hotel, and that room especially, that makes people a little crazy. And crazy isn’t so bad, right?
So I promise to documents some of my crazy Chelsea moments, and please do not hold me responsible for my behavior…it was the ghost of Dylan, I swear.
