The Chelsea Hotel

When I was 18 I left my hometown for New York. I had never been to the city before and was too afraid to fly thus I moved there by taking the Amtrak train. I had nothing but a suitcase, guitar and a backpack. I probably - or most definitely - looked somewhat like a Timothee Chalamet current depiction of Bob Dylan.

I was also armed with an ipod nano, which had a few albums and various songs by various artists scattered throughout that I uploaded on various friends laptops. Most notably, Chelsea Girls by Nico and the song Chelsea Hotel No 2 by Leonard Cohen.

I understood that these were of course New York City songs. Road maps to how to be an artist in New York and thus I listened to them religiously - far more than anything else on the ipod - as I watched the midwest landscape slowly morph into the northeast out my Amtrak window.

Something about the word Chelsea paired with the album cover of Chelsea Girls seemed so immediately romantic. Nicos long blonde hair fading back into itself. Listening to these songs I got romantic visions of all my favorite artists inside a magical neighborhood where the sex, drugs, art openings, poetry and music never stopped. Everything, one could say, that I was chasing in my own pursuit of New York.

When I arrived on the Amtrak three days later I ended up staying in New York for the next seven years. In those seven years, despite my train ride and fascination with all songs pertaining to the Chelsea Hotel, I never, not once visited the hotel while I lived there. Why? It’s hard to say, really. Most likely just the absent mindedness of a young adult. But also, I probably felt I didn’t need the actual Chelsea Hotel. I understood it as Leonard Cohen, Nicos and two dozen other of my favorite artists refuge, somewhere in a sepia past, but not my present day. I was looking for my own Chelsea scene, which I quickly found, on the other side of the river in Brooklyn, and that was more than enough.

I would hear stories though. About how decrepit it was and how a lot of the old tenants from its heyday still lived there and that you could still smoke inside. Ian once told me about a residency he did at the hotel where he would play guitar sitting on the edge of a bathtub accompanying a bathing psychic who predicted peoples futures through song. Customers would come in and sit on the toilet as they performed.

And of course every once in a while a friend would get a room there for the weekend or a special occasion but even still, somehow, I never managed to go.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago for Katie’s press trip to New York on the week of her albums release and Katie requested we stay there. They had recently redone the hotel but honored a lot of its past we were told, with a lot of its old tennants still living there in rent controlled rooms. And so we got a room there for the five day period she would be working. We stayed in room 6Y and I loved it so much that when Katie left I extended my trip, not wanting to leave New York, and not wanting to leave the hotel.

Over the week period that I was there I had multiple friends come visit me, which was wonderful. Most times when visiting New York I have to go to my friends, bending to their busy schedules and running all over the city. But because of the hotel, everyone wanted to come to me.

Katie and I would lay in bed late, until she had press to do. Her twin allison came by, excited to also visit the Chelsea for the first time. My old band the Babies, in preparation for our upcoming reunion, decided to do a photo shoot in my room. It was the first time the four of us had been in the same room since our last show in 2013. Rodrigo and I got a drink in the lobby and caught up. Liam and I hung in the bar and then watched tennis in my room as we ran down the facts of who had stayed where inside the Chelsea;

Bob Dylan wrote Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands and Sara in room 211, Leonard Cohen and Janice Joplin would have had sex in room 415. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorp lived in room 1017 and is where he took his first photographs and Nancy died in room 100. Most all of the artistic pillars of my life all under the same roof at different points in their life - it’s dizzying to think about. The list goes on and on.

One early evening as Katie and I were laying in bed I noticed it the golden hour outside on the balcony and suggested we go take photos while the light was good. When we got outside we noticed that the magic light was being perfectly bounced off a glass skyscraper adjacent to the hotel, as if its whole existence was to illuminate the 6th floor balcony at approx 6 PM in the early spring.

Hotels can be wonderfully imaginative places. I love them. Traveling for a living you get to understand that hotels, at their best, can shape the best experiences and at their worst, ruin them. The Chelsea, on all levels, was above and beyond. It was my favorite trip to the city I’ve taken in many years and in no small part because of the hotel. I love the Chelsea and can’t wait to go back. A haunted, magical wonderland.

Here’s photos of my iconic friends being iconic in front of the iconic sign. Below the paywall is a cover oh Chelsea Hotel No 2 with the fodder of the streets coming in through my rooms victorian doors. Had to do it!

Katie in the magic hour

Golden liam

Rodrgio singing to the neighborhood

Katie and Allison

Magic hour

The Babies - photo by Kevin Condon