Chelsea Wildness - This Ain't no Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 - page 43

ROBERT CAMPBELL
The spiral stairwell used to come all the way down to the lobby, but people kept
jumping down the stairwell and killing them--selves. So they closed up the stairs
on the second floor and put a cover over the front desk so people wouldn't jump
down there and kill the clerks and management working at the front desk.
This little piece of renovation is one of the hotel's oddest architectural features. The stair-
well simply stops and the hole is sealed in with a hardwood floor surrounded by a little
brassrailing,kindoflikeapenforchildrenorsmallanimals.Whowouldguessitwasbuilt
to protect the front desk clerks from falling bodies?
JULIE EAKIN
When Dimitri was living there later, in 1989, he and I went out to see Spike
Lee's Do the Right Thing at a theater just down the street. When we came out
of the theater, there were ambulances in front of the Chelsea. We walked down
the street and into the hotel's lobby. Somebody had dived from one of the upper
stories down to the slate bottom at the base of the stairwell. And the stairwell is
narrow, probably three feet by twenty feet. He had dented this slate floor at the
base of the stairwell with his head! His head dented the slate floor! But he was
actually still alive, because he was drunk!
While most Chelsea suicides ended their spontaneous lives with spontaneous deaths, there
was the occasional planner.
ROBERT CAMPBELL
Sometimes at the Chelsea people would check in to check out. My friend Scott
Covert who lived there knew this guy there who had AIDS. This guy was just so
sick,andsotiredofitall,hedecidedtokillhimself.SoScottgothimthismondo
cut of heroin, which was like ten bags, a bindle, or whatever they call it. And
then the guy with AIDS, because he was going to kill himself, put up all of his
belongings for sale. I bought his turntable.
But at the last minute, instead of checking out, the guy chickened out. On top
ofthat,hewantedallhisbelongingsback.Iwouldn'tgivehimbackhisturntable.
I did have a feeling he was going to chicken out—otherwise I probably would
have bought more of his stuff. He took the heroin himself all right, but not all at
once to kill himself. He took it in smaller amounts just to get high.
Our last suicide harkens the stereotypical image of yellow police tape stretched across a
hall. The painter John Zinsser was around when the police showed up.