Chelsea Portraits - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 217

Don Who?
PAUL VOLMER
Speaking of freaks, there was a character when I first arrived at the hotel named
Don Normal. Don Normal had a ZZ Top-style red beard with two points, and he
would wear a caveman sarong over one shoulder and platform shoes. And then
he had a three-inch long piece of pipe, maybe one inch in diameter, that he had
shoved through his ear. That was his nickname, Don Normal. After he moved out
of the hotel, he ran a bar in the East Village called the Normal Bar.
The thing Chelsea dwellers all said about Don Normal was once you got past his Viking
cave man get-up, he was actually a very normal guy with whom you could sit and have a
very normal conversation.
And aren't dentists artists too? Especially those who specialize in cosmetic dentistry, as
did Dr. Peter Ferro, in Room 614.
JOHN ZINSSER
On the sixth floor, there was a dentist's office! 117 That's another thing that struck
me as really creepy, like the guru's chanting group on the same floor. I couldn't
imagine a creepier place to go to the dentist than at the Chelsea, and think about
allthegasandsyringes.It'slikeDr.BenwayinWilliamBurroughs' Naked Lunch!