FOREWORD [excerpt] GABY HOFFMANN AND ALEX AUDER GABY: So some people are doing a book about residents at the Chelsea who are still living there through the construction and they asked me to write the foreword. I was just gonna say no cause I can hardly find time to write an email these days or how about a dream? Or that thing Rosy said about being brave and what it felt like when Lewis clapped with glee after Chris beatboxed for Rosy's dark disco tooth brushing session last night and if I'm gonna write anything do I wanna write the foreword to someone else's book about how bohemian the bohemians are and how cool it is that I was raised by an artist bohemian enough to live in the mecca of bohemianism and what a loss and oh the city and all those hideous chase banks and what about that old bum on the stoop I would chat with every day while eating my soggy éclair from the corner donut shop that is now a Starbucks before I would go home to rollerblade down the halls and drop eggs off the balcony and--oh yeah they love it--step over that syringe in the back stairway while running upstairs to eat chicken and broccoli with Ruth and family cause mom "just can't take it anymore"--you know living on the postage stamp. And ahh those were the days and the f***ing rich blah blah blah and if I'm gonna finally write about it all I will do it for my own book, film, or play, or eulogy, and then I thought you should do it cause you've already written so much and it's so good and then I thought I could interview you and then I thought we could just write emails like this one in the 5 minutes before the baby wakes. And then I would convince them that they're bohemian enough to let this be the foreword. What do you think? Ah there's that baby! xo ALEX: You and I are forever bonded by our dead sibling, the Chelsea Hotel. We two are the rare few who really and truly grew up in the Chelsea Hotel and it takes a lot of intentional looking the other way when I hear about Chelsea stories from rich people who moved there in the 2000s because they CHOSE to live a "bohemian" lifestyle. As an adult, I had to give yoga classes to some of these characters IN the Chelsea Hotel, which I could no longer afford to live in even if I had wanted to, and finally I was forced out of NY altogether. That's the hard thing to explain. We didn't choose the Chelsea Hotel. We ended up there because Stanley didn't ask for a deposit or a lease. Mom always wanted to move out of our "postage stamp" of an apartment, but she just couldn't get it together for all of the reasons that drew her to the Chelsea in the first place. Yeah, we don't want to sound like bitter expats . . . and yet . . . we do have this love story to share. I loved the Chelsea so much. I loved waiting for you to come home to our little apartment the night you were born. Now that I'm 48 and raising my kids in this neoliberal, helicopter-parenting world, I so often dig back into the memory banks to relive the freedom and community and uncanny surprises that waited for us in that lobby. I go through a somatic journey: through the lobby-I-know like-the-back-of-my-hand, sneak into the sinister El Quijote bathrooms to tend to my recurring bloody nose, up to the first floor elevators if I don't feel like talking to Merle, and while I wait for the gold elevator I spit into the first-floor stairwell to see how it differed from spitting from the 7th floor. . . . Okay I gotta go . . . love you. PHOTOGRAPHER'S NOTE [excerpt] The photographs in this book capture a moment in this process and frame an instant of a city in constant transition. It would be false to claim that the Chelsea's history has been peaceful. But although gentrification and renovation have strained tenants' quality of life, these burdens have replaced an existence in which the front desk was protected by bulletproof glass and drug use proliferated within the hotel's walls. Despite the uniqueness of the hotel, its tenants tell a familiar narrative of life in a rapidly evolving city and increasingly exclusive real estate market. This book is about how a group of eccentric and varied personalities coexist and preserve the oral history of a rich and important part of New York City. The tenants have found a way to create and sustain a refuge where life and creativity have flourished. Gone are the times when those living alternative lifestyles could find shelter here for meager rents. The spaces that can accommodate artists who have yet to achieve broad success have long since moved far from the Chelsea. But those artists who found that here have persisted; they're still living creative and important lives. On one of my last shoots for this book I met a great artist and tenant at the Chelsea, Bettina Grossman. Though she decided not to be part of the project, I noticed on her door as I was leaving, a small scrap of paper with the handwritten words "Sanctuary--Protect the Magic." I hope my work will help to preserve and share some of the magic of the Hotel Chelsea. --COLIN MILLER Excerpted from Hotel Chelsea: Living in the Last Bohemian Haven by Colin Miller, Ray Mock All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
