This place is part of New York and music history. We’ll have to keep a close eye on this to see what happens….
The Ghosts of Sid and Nancy are probably really pissed off….
On Saturday, though, apart from crestfallen guests whose stays had been abruptly cut short, the goings-on at the Chelsea were, by its standards, relatively standard.
Wide-eyed tourists snapped photos of the lobby as residents swept past them without a glance. Steve Johnson, 29, visiting from North Carolina with his cousin, sat in the lobby gravely recounting the time he said he was approached in his room by a ghost. Gabriel Marchisio, a Uruguayan tarot card reader and hotel fixture, lingered by the front desk dispatching, for the heck of it, his signature “muah ha ha ha” monster laugh.
Shortly before dusk, police officers rushed in and up to the ninth floor. A guest had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend and called his mother to tell her he wanted to kill himself; his mother called the police, who in turn escorted the man to Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. “Never a dull moment,” a front-desk clerk said.
In the rooms above, people partied, prowled and slept. Hip-hop blared from Sid and Nancy’s old room. Hotel guests held earnest, drunken conversations from the balconies overlooking West 23rd Street. Ms. Ramona combed the halls with her camera. Tony Notarberardino, a photographer who has lived at the Chelsea for 17 years, hosted an “end of an era” party in an attempt to cheer everyone up. He scattered white rose petals near the entryway of his sixth-floor apartment, which is choked with chandeliers, beaded lamps, red walls and gilt-edged mirrors and feels like a speakeasy crossed with an opium den. “Let’s celebrate what we had,” he said, “and embrace change.”
Sometime before dawn, someone drove a fist through a swinging door on the first floor, leaving a wide penumbra of shattered glass. A worker discovered it in the morning.
“Already,” he said sadly, “they’re destroying the place.”
Lost in the 21st Century 