Getting By - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 139

Down in Debasement
Interestingly, the basement of the Chelsea played a crucial role in the hotel's economy.
JOHN ZINSSER
It was an unbelievably scary, dungeon-like warren of rooms with these vaulted
brick arch doorways.
If you were brave enough to go down into this dark chamber—which had developed a sort
of mythology of its own—you were allowed to rummage around, find some old furniture
abandoned by previous tenants, and carry it up to your room.
JULIE EAKIN
The basement was kind of ramshackle, but you could go and just pick up tables
and dressers, whatever you wanted, and put them in your room. If you felt like
something else, you could go next week and trade it off. If you were twenty-four
years old and didn't care about elegance, the selection was good.
DIMITRI MUGIANIS
One of my rooms was really sweet, really big, with a working fire-place. Herbert
Huncke and I would find old furniture in the basement to build big fires in there.
Herbert got this chest of drawers and broke it up and burned it in the fireplace.
With the paint and the lacquer, it was emitting all these toxic fumes! It was dan-
gerous.
ROBERT CAMPBELL
Tim Sullivan got himself an upright piano from the basement.
TIM SULLIVAN
The piano had belonged to Bobby Fisher, another friend of mine from Virginia
Beach. He put it out, and then I snagged it Somehow we brought it up here to the
seventhfloor.SoIactuallyhadapianoinmyroom!WhenIwasakid,Iwantedto
be a piano tuner, so I had learned a little about it and I kept it tuned and played it.
I used to have the transom window that opened up at the top of my door, because
I didn't have air conditioning at the time. The cats would climb up the top of the
piano and jump out into the hall, and I'd have to run out there and get them.