Chelsea Portraits - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 189

I brought Scott to the Chelsea Hotel and introduced Scott to Stanley Bard, which
helped him get his room. When I first met him, Scott was living in the subways
because he had nowhere to live. A lot of homeless people lived on the subways
because the trains were somewhere warm to go to, and all you needed to do was
bum fifty cents. You could ride them endlessly back and forth, back and forth.
Theynevershooedyouoffofthoseoldtrains.He'drideitfromHarlemtoConey
Island and back and make six trips, or ten trips or whatever, in the course of an
evening. But he couldn't sleep on the train at night for fear of being stabbed or
mugged. But then he'd get off in the morning, and during the day he would go
and sleep in Central Park.
At that point, he was just using regular paper to do his tombstone rubbings,
like a lot of people had been doing for many years. The first one he rubbed was
in Detroit, the grave of the dead Supreme, Florence Ballard. She had fallen out
withDianaRossandtheSupremescastheraside,andshediedindigent.Covert's
from that area in Michigan. He also always wanted to open a pet cemetery. He
had this interest in death, not a macabre interest, but also not a fear of it certainly
Then he started doing tombstone rubbings and went to Pen Argyl,
Pennsylvania and rubbed Jayne Mansfield. It was a big, tombstone carved into
the shape of a heart. Then he found out that Moms Mabley and Joan Crawford
were buried in the same Ferncliffe cemetery just north of Manhattan, and Mal-
colm Xwas also buried there, andalot ofother famous people. Sohefrequented
that cemetery. He also loved going and rubbing the graves of mobsters and of
HarryHoudinioutinBrooklyn.NottomentionthegraveofJean-MichelBasqui-
at, who is buried with a very simple gravestone in Green-Wood Cemetery in
Brooklyn. Those were some of his favorites.
MARLOWE WEST
I went over to Scott Covert's place two or three times. I was very curious about
his work, which turned out to be awesome. Almost like the Plaster Casters 107 or
something, these groupie girls who would go to meet rock stars and take plaster
impressions of their erections.
ROBERT CAMPBELL
Once,ScottsoldabunchofpaintingstoHollySolomon, 108 thisreallyhotshotart
dealer on 57th Street. She bought about thirteen of them, I think.
ELLIS DUNCAN