THERE'S charming, then there's offensive and then there's the charm offensive that a charming but offensive aging institution adopts to encourage everyone to maintain its presence in our lives. This week, it's the dilapidated but - wait for it - 'charming' Hotel Chelsea in New York.
The hotel is the battered jewel of West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth (isn't it funny how everyone knows New York now? You almost feel like taking its street lingo into Irish taxis: "Can take me just a block over from Dawson and Nassau please?").
In case you haven't heard, the Chelsea Hotel is being prised from the Bard family who have run it since 19dickitydoo. The new owners could almost have their own cartoon since they're being painted as such evil sharp sharks who want to turn the place around into a generic Manhattan 'boutique' hotel.
Why the outcry? Well Hotel Chelsea is as historic a building you can get in shiny new Manhattan.
Arthur Miller wrote an operetta in room 711. Sid Vicious stabbed Nancy Spungen to death in room 100. Tom Wolfe wrote 'You Can't Go Home' there.
Dylan Thomas drank 18 whiskeys at the bar, fell into a coma and died and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix rehearsed there. Burroughs, Oppenheimer, Kerouac, Twain, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Paul Sartre, Leonard Cohen, Gore Vidal and even Uma Thurman were all long-term residents in the12storey building. And it was in the hotel that Andy Warhol shot 'The Chelsea Girls', a film about his "superstar" girls who lived there; hands up Nico, Edie Sedgwick and Ultra Violent.
Cue freaking out that such intangible history will be lost. Cue cries for preservation echoing similar yelps that are still ringing in the ears of anyone within a mile of the Bowery where CBGBs shut up shop on Halloween last year. The Chelsea is in a desperate state, hence the take-over (one resident described a simple request for toilet paper as a gigantic ordeal for staff). Everyone knows it, in the same way that everyone knows that CBGBs - for all its history . . . was a complete shit hole (I once slipped on a pool of pee there and fell through a rotting door into the surprised arms of a puking punk in the jacks. Good gig though). But nostalgia is the heroin of the reluctant progressive, allowing everyone to slip into an unproductive slump, refusing to budge.
It's the boyfriend-your-friends-hate argument, you know, 'he's a bastard, but he's my bastard' (also known in my family as 'Mum's ER syndrome', which comes from my Mum's tendency to say "it's no good since Dr Ross left" every five minutes while watching ER. Dr Ross, aka George Clooney, left seven years ago). Sometimes we don't want to change something . . . even the faults. It happens here too. Bewley's on Grafton Street was shut to mass protests and tears in Joe Duffy's ear only to be reopened minus its soul, Greene's bookshop, Hector Grey's and Switzer's goddammit too. Service can be rubbish, food or goods manky, but we still want to keep the status quo. It's a perverted detest of and inability to accept aging. We hate seeing what we once loved slip from grace.
But we must think before we revamp. Things we destroy often come back for a sequel. Opposite Tribune Towers, the Baggot Inn is undergoing a revamp, and the Ierne Ballroom in Parnell Square has opened its doors again. Sometimes the shoddy should stay. Preservers can be annoying, but things are iconic for a reason and should be let lie. Show me a 1990s boutique hotel that has as much history as the Chelsea in 50 years and I might change my mind. If I'm not living there by then.
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