Monday, December 1, 2008

Cosmopolitanism: staying at the Hotel Chelsea, Midtown Manhattan


NYC - Chelsea: Hotel Chelsea
Originally uploaded by wallyg
The Chelsea Hotel is known for celebrity accomplishments and infamy.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying at the Chelsea. William S. Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch here. Arthur Miller wrote After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, and The Price here. Dylan Thomas died here of alcohol poisoning on November 4, 1953. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room on September 21, 1968. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols may have stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, to death on October 12, 1978.

The hotel has provided long term residence to, among others, Mark Twain, O. Henry, William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Oppenheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bill Landis, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Cyndi Coyne, Mitch Hedberg, Milos Forman, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, Jane Fonda, Gaby Hoffmann, Pete Doherty, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Dee Dee Ramone, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Christo, Arman, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Willem de Kooning, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, Robert Mapplethorpe, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Richard Hell, Ryan Adams, Rufus Wainwright, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, and Anthony Kiedis. Several survivors of the Titanic stayed for some time in this hotel as it is a short distance from Pier 54 where the Titanic was supposed to dock. Andy Warhol directed The Chelsea Girls, his 1966 film about his Factory regulars and their lives at the hotel, here.

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