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World Hotels - Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with Artists and Outlaws in New York's Rebel Mecca
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List Price: $16.95
Our Price: $11.53
Your Save: $ 5.42 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71
EAN: 9781568583792
ISBN: 1568583796
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: 2007-11-02
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Studio: Da Capo Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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There's a current that courses through the old Chelsea Hotel, an electricity that drives people relentlessly to create. It's an energy that longtime resident and creator of "Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog" Ed Hamilton will tell you often drives inhabitants to madness. In a series of linked cyanide capsules, Legends of the Chelsea Hotel tells the odd, funny, and often tragic truth of the writers, artists, and musicians — the famous and the obscure alike — who have fallen prey to the Chelsea. Readers enter one of Dee Dee Ramone's flashbacks; meet the ghost of author Thomas Wolfe; learn of movie star Ethan Hawke's mystical powers over women; see the ungodly acts allegedly being perpetrated in the basement club Serena's; and feel the dark aura of Room 100, where punk rocker Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend Nancy. Other Chelsea residents past and present who will be included: Ryan Adams, club kid/murderer Michael Alig, Sarah Bernhardt, the Warhol Factory's Richard Bernstein, Victor Bockris, Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen, Lesbian activist Storme DeLarverie, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Janis Joplin, Jack Kerouac, Madonna, Edgar Lee Masters, Arthur Miller, Edie Sedgwick, Sam Shepard, Patti Smith, Dylan Thomas, and Rufus Wainwright.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Support Chelsea! - Ten Reasons Wise People Should Endorse Hillary Clinton
Comment: Welcome to De De Land!!
"Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" is one of rare highly stimulating books published in the past decade.
"Hotel Chelsea" describes how old great American spirit has survived her legends through her history.
Each story is built up in the style of almost a haunting fashion and speaks to you directly voce con dolce.
From Madonna's #822 to Sid Vicious' #100,
Ed Hamilton caresses unique Chelsea rooms with enchanting brushings.
So vividly written, one may often be driven into trans and smell the scent of opium.
And, in trans, one could hit an idea perhaps on the wind from Montana that a former Foreign Minister in the Far East had better send his grandson, in the pine room at a famous Japanese restaurant, to the Annapolis;
or, one might be afraid of once again diluting victory for Democrats with Hillary Clinton against John McCain in upcoming Presidential race.
Stop worrying, just in case, and, simply love Chelsea!
That's all you good people have to do.
Incidentally, Hotel Chelsea's geographical location is in itself still fascinating.
The hotel is located on the 23rd Street in Manhattan, a bit west of the 6th Avenue.
You will be led, along with the Americas Avenue, to our most magnificent miles in either direction - regardless it is to the north or to the south.
It was the legend after all.
It still is.
What are the ten reasons? Never mind. You will watch inside.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: The dark thoughts in the dark corridors
Comment: When I read Ed Hamilton's Legends of the Chelsea Hotel, I found myself getting more and more impatient by the day, in the same way I sometimes get impatient listening to a child telling a long story about his day with much excitement while I am "busy" getting through bad traffic. Look, buddy, I have no time for this and what is the point here, I would like to ask him. Ed seems to have such patience that few of us have these days for the details and mundane, insane dramas of life in general, and of the lives of New York city's strangers of no "social significance" in particular, like that of the dead exterminator's wife. Although the book drops many names of celebrities, I felt that he loved the NY transients and/or unknown artists he met at the Chelsea Hotel equally or even more than these cultural historic figures who shared the experiences of the unique lodging. The former souls seemed to have a way to dearly affect and disturb the author into drinking as well as prolific expression of the English language and profanity, not mentioning inspiring him into similar questionable behaviors. His stories seemed to aim at making readers either cringe in disgust (at his perverse enjoyment), or making us consider about embracing these extremely unpleasurable aspects of life as Mad TV-like jokes, or both. His style of writing also reminded me of George Grosz who was known for his "ferocious social satire" and "vitriolic social criticism" of his time and the modern urban life in his caricature art. Like the gentrification of the hotel itself, the author seemed to question our way of wallpapering over the real signs of life and muffling the real sounds of suffering modern souls symbolized by the diverse New Yorker population.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Feel the glory days now before they disappear forever
Comment: So much has been written, photographed, filmed, composed, documented, sung about the Chelsea Hotel, that the challenge for any passionate fan and creator is to find new ways in which to approach and cover the territory. Ed Hamilton does a terrific job of personalizing the extraordinary history and ambience of the Chelsea, and thereby providing a refreshing, engaging and extremely entertaining perspective, that brings new dimensions to the more well-worn aspects of the hotel's story, while also bringing that story right up to date. Very sadly, it can only be a matter of time now before the spirit and the inhabitants who have made the Chelsea one of the world's most storied cultural institutions gradually dissipate and disappear. Read this book now to get a sense of a very special place before it's gone forever.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An original, like the Chelsea Hotel
Comment: This book isn't simply blogs--although the author did co-create [...]here he writes them: http://www.hotelchelseablog.com/. It's also not necessarily a journalist's book or a historian's. Yet I finished feeling culturally literate on outlaws, hustlers, and artists from Sid Vicious to Thomas Wolfe; Edie Sedgwick to Storme DeLarverie (so glad to know about her); Herbert Huncke to Dee Dee Ramone; Stanley Bard (the "illustrious proprietor") to Rene Ricard--as well as many more. I'd personally compare Legends of the Chelsea Hotel to literature on community like V. S. Naipaul's Miguel Street, no matter the differences in scene and tone. That's probably because I knew Ed Hamilton first as a novelist and short-story writer. But I don't want to classify him either--or take away any of the fun of the book (yes, there are zombies and ghosts and descents into madness). What I can say is I couldn't stop reading this inside account--and I especially love the section regarding Patti Smith, where past and present, as well as dream and reality, seem to fuse.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Uneven, interesting, some misinformation
Comment: This is a good, if somewhat disjointed, memoir of life at the Chelsea Hotel during the last ten years. It is certainly worth buying if you have an interest in the hotel. I stayed there during the 80s, so this is catching up for me. It is also a crime that developers have taken control of the Chelsea and it is now effectively history.
There is misinformation. The author has William Burroughs not only staying at the hotel, but writing Naked Lunch there. It is common knowledge that he wrote the book in Tangier. So, one has to question all the historical information.
But history isn't really the question - it is the vibe of living in the Chelsea, and the author does a good job of describing his experiences. He is not a professional writer, and it shows - the book could have used a good edit (which apparently publishers don't do anymore).
For a good history of the Chelsea in earlier years, read At the Chelsea by Florence Turner (which may be out of print - worth hunting down). Turner is a far better writer, and her memoir shines.
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