Checking In - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 3

work strung up in diagonal rows. Mobiles hung from the ceilings—sculptures rose from
the floors. Did the artists just donate their work out of adoration for Bard and the hotel?
The Chelsea's abundant art may not be worth all that much. In a recent legal dispute
between the hotel's owners, the artwork—so much that if they pulled it all off the walls
you'dthinkthebuildingwouldcollapse—wasappraisedatatotalofonlyaround$900,000.
More evidence that Bard took the best stuff home.
As I carried my bags through the lobby, I recognized, to my left, the cubby-like room
I'd seen in movies, the iconic little space with the payphones and the marble floors. In the
1980s, cell phones were almost nonexistent. And despite the fact that two-thirds of the res-
idents were not transients, but “permanent,” living there indefinitely, the Chelsea was still,
after all, a hotel. As with any hotel, outgoing phone calls made from your room were out-
rageously expensive. So residents plodded down to the lobby's payphones.
JULIE EAKIN
In the middle of the night or whenever, we'd always be going down there in pa-
jamas. Calls cost a dime. You'd pull the doors shut—it was one of those glass
jobs, so you could see all the business going on in the lobby as you were sitting
in there talking.
Whatmadethelittlephoneroomiconicwasn'tthemarblefloorsorthephoneboothsthem-
selves, but what happened there over the phone, from the ordinary to the sublime: lovers
arranging rendezvous, having knockdown drag outs, ordering pizzas or pot. Actor Ethan
Hawke,understandingthepayphones'symbolicresonanceasthecounterculture'sCommu-
nications Central, featured them in his movie Chelsea Walls.