Staying up all night in the Chelsea Hotel

In a city with a thousand skyscrapers, at the Chelsea Hotel, on New York’s West 23rd Street, the room is the view.

The cartoonish blood-red building looks like it was plucked from the pages of a comic book. Sid Vicious stayed there. Nancy Spungen died there. Brendan Behan went on the wagon there and Dee Dee Ramone worked the rooms as a bell-hop who could get you anything. Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Dylan Thomas – they are just some of the names who have checked in at the hotel’s modest marble reception desk. Dylan (Bob) even immortalised it in song, revealing in ‘Sara” that he’d “stayed up all night in the Chelsea Hotel, writing ‘Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ for you.”
It’s a lot of history to live up to but there is still a spine-tingling buzz in the Chelsea – even though there’s no bar, no restaurant, no normal distractions. Like American playwright Arthur Miller said, “There are no vacuum cleaners, no rules, no shame.”
Hot Press was handed the key to room 905 by Stanley Bard, the hotel manager who has seen all those famous names come and go and return or never come back. Card-keys are unheard of. You’re lucky if your room has a number on the door, and if it has, it’s probably jotted on a post-it.
“That’s a good room,” says Stanley of 905 – no two rooms at the Chelsea are the same. The grey-haired gent speaks with a softly disarming yet authoritative New Yawk accent. You know he’s the boss. “It’s more like a small apartment,” he explains, adding. “it was Milos Forman’s room.” Later we learn that a young Milos arrived in New York with nothing, but the Chelsea let him stay on credit. Milos, of course, went on to become the Academy award-winning director of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and has always credited the Chelsea for its role in his success.
A ride up one of the twin clunky elevators is an experience in itself. Don’t expect the doors to close automatically or you’ll face the wrath of a long-term tenant who’s seen that faux pas too many times before. “PRESS THE BUTTON TO CLOSE THE DOORS SOME TIME TODAY PLEASE,” he might advise you. If you’re on the second floor just take the cast-iron staircase that goes all the way to the 10th and admire the art on the way up. When Hot Press saw a man of at least 80 take the lazy option we had to smile at the abuse that was hurled once the lift doors closed again… we just hope his ears were as worn out at his legs.
Resting our rucksack in our room, we realise how out of place a rucksack looks here. The décor is beautifully understated and effortlessly stylish. You could see a young Leonard Cohen settling into a room like this. There are wooden floorboards and a funky red painting provideing the only splash of colour on a plain white wall. The telly looks out of place as it sits on a woodworm-riddled old press, like the kind your granny used to own. But there’s no cable so just put it in the wardrobe.
A jaunt around the town and a tipple or two later, it’s time to go home. At night is when the lobby at the Chelsea comes alive, filling with old-timers and misfits who fit in quite well. Pompousness is frowned upon. Artist and all-’round good fella, Joe Treacy shows me a thick notebook filled with sketches. Joe comes to the lobby to fill his lungs with the strange creative kick of the Chelsea air.
“It’s like a church,” he says. “You know that feeling when you go into a church – you just know you are in a church no matter what you believe in,. That’s what it’s like here if you have a mind that works a particular way. You’ll feel it. You can’t help it, you’ll just feel it.”
At this stage, Hot Press is quite drunk. A camera – the type an Irish tourist buys at a newsagents – is produced. Joe smiles and obliges as Hot Press poses behind the check-in desk pretending to answer the phone. The late night desk guy smiles too and even joins Hot Press for a pic. I’m behaving like the ultimate tourist in the world’s least touristy hotel. Christ… this will be embarrassing in the morning. But nobody minded and, better still, next day, nobody reminded.
Like Leonard Cohen said: “It’s one of those hotels that has everything that I love so well about hotels. I love hotels to which, at 4am, you can bring along a midget, a bear and four ladies, drag them to your room and no one cares about it.”
And that’s the Chelsea, a rest stop for rare individuals.