Anyone who has been anyone or is anyone has at some point stepped through New York’s Chelsea Hotel, either as a visitor or resident knows only to full well the regard and the cache a time spent at the Chelsea Hotel has. Home to influential writers, actors, artists, thinkers such as Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious, Robert Mapplethorpe, Larry Rivers, and multiple people associated with Andy Warhol’s Factory (the list does not include so many other current darlings that I have had the pleasure of meeting during the many years I have been haunting back and forth the Chelsea Hotel) as well as some of the most colorful personalities a city like NY can be so fortunate (or unfortunate) to host the once beaming cultural icon will soon cease to be. Cease to be because it too has run the gamut like most cultural entities in NY and has recently announced that it is now for sale.
Remarked bad boy Dylan Thomas before drinking himself to death in 1953: “If you were indigent and had a partying nature, then it was imperative you found a place to crash for the night, and if you didn’t have a room to go to, then you would surely know someone who knew someone who knew where the action was… and this was invariably at the Chelsea.”- Walesonline.co.uk
It’s inevitable. The baby boomers will slowly be selling off their property for peanuts, to developers who have no sense of history and legacy. The only possible way to save the original structure is to commodify its legend into a sort of theme park for kids who have no idea who Sid & Nancy are (and don’t give a shit) – i.g: CBGB by Varvatos. At this point, with all the underage flashing teeny boppers hogging headlines, Don Hill’s might as well be owned and operated by Hot Topic and open it up to tweens.