Busker plays/ People on street at night | Music | 00:00 |
Altercation between Transvestite and Doorman | TRANSVESTITE: Bitch! Don't get sarcastic! | 00:26 |
| DOORMAN: Hey don't call me a bitch! |
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| TRANSVESTITE: That's what I just said. Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! I don't like you, bitch. I'm getting the fuck outta here. |
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Doorman to camera | DOORMAN: That's part of everyday life man -at least once a day! | 00:38 |
Maher walks into lobby | Music | 00:43 |
Shots around lobby | STANLEY: Front-desk. Well I don't have.... I want to give you the same floor, so that's why... | 55:15 |
Stanley behind desk | Just show him 517, he wants to see what a room is like. Yeah I can understand... You know the Chelsea Hotel, don't you? It's world famous, this hotel. | 01:03 |
Ed writing blog | Music | 01:13 |
| ED: The Chelsea, like the people who live here, they're just all kind of whacky, you know, they're just all originals. There's no normal people living here. | 01:18 |
Ed. Super: Ed Hamilton | You know I mean Debbie and I are about the most normal. And like everybody says ‘We can't believe you live at the Chelsea Hotel.' [laughs]'' | 01:31 |
Ed and Debbie play fussball | MAHER: Ed Hamilton and Debbie martin are bloggers. | 01:45 |
| Natives of Kentucky, for 12 years they've lived in a small room at the Chelsea Hotel...With a fussball table! | 01:55 |
| DEBBIE: My chief complaint with the room is Ed's fussball table. You know, we could have a couch if we didn‘t have a fussball table! | 02:03 |
| But we have a fussball table. But it was such a dream, you can't let go of it that easily... | 02:08 |
| MAHER: Despite tensions over Ed's table, the dream they | 02:14 |
Ext. Hotel | shared was to live among the legends of this faded Victorian pile on Manhattan's 23rd Street. | 02:17 |
Chelsea skyline. Night | Music | 02:24 |
Photos of famous residents | MAHER: Apart from Leonard Cohen, a procession of writers, painters and performers has walked, stumbled and sometimes crawled along these corridors. | 02:52 |
Corridor/Stairwell shots | Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Arthur miller, Arthur C. Clark, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Brett Whitely -- the list goes on and on. | 03:10 |
| Music | 03:21 |
| MAHER: Dylan Thomas drank himself into an early grave here. Nancy, the girlfriend of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, was murdered here, and on a cheerier note, Bill and Hillary Clinton named their daughter after a song Joni Mitchell wrote about staying here. | 03:25 |
| Music | 03:40 |
Ed writes on fire escape/ Street shots | MAHER: As well as celebrating the Chelsea's legends, Ed and Debbie started their blog to campaign against gentrification of their neighbourhood and to urge the hotel's manager of more than 40 years not to sell out. ED: No discussion of the Chelsea would be complete without mentioning | 04:00 |
Ed writes on fire escape | Stanley Bard - The dapper genial older gentleman who stands behind the hotel's front desk warmly greeting guests as he has seemingly forever | 04:19 |
Stanley at front desk
| STANLEY: [laughs] There's my man - he looks like he's all set to go!... Good morning - could you put this in - one day $250 plus tax... | 04:29 |
| STANLEY: If you could say you could actually love a building - that's the closest thing I could say. I do love this building and more importantly | 04:43 |
Stanley. Super: Stanley Bard Hotel Manager | I love the people that live here and have been associated with the hotel. | 04:51 |
| MAHER: What is it about the Chelsea that over so many years - over decades - has attracted artists? | 04:56 |
| STANLEY: Well, artists need a certain kind of environment to work, to create and I guess the Chelsea has those things. It has the environment, it has the feeling. It has the tranquillity. It has everything that an artist would want. | 05:04 |
Gerald plays piano |
| 05:21 |
| MAHER: Over the years Stanley Bard has taken hundreds of artists into his hotel - artists like composer Gerald Busby. | 05:28 |
| GERALD: I was penniless for a while. And Stanley, the manager, moved me from a four room apartment into a studio and said ‘Now if you behave yourself and pay the rent, you can stay here for the rest of your life.' | 05:36 |
| This place is very addictive. It's very hard to leave once you move in, and fortunately I've been able to stay. | 05:56 |
Gerald at computer | MAHER: Gerald has composed music for the renowned American director Robert Altman, and a concert was given at Carnegie Hall to mark his seventieth birthday. He came to live at the Chelsea more than thirty years ago at the behest of another acclaimed composer, Virgil Thompson. But after only one month, a fire nearly brought a quick end to his stay. | 06:21 |
Gerald. Super: Gerald Busby Composer | GERALD: And we all ran to the window on the 10th floor and people on the roof of the building behind us were saying ‘Jump!' They wanted some spectacle. Well anyway, we went down to see Virgil and Virgil was dressed in his finest silk shirt and black pants and nice shiny shoes. I said ‘Virgil, why are you so dressed up ?' He says ‘Well I was hoping maybe some of those firemen might come up here and I wanted to look my best.' [laughs] | 06:46 |
Chelsea skyline/Construction | Music | 07:20 |
| MAHER: The Chelsea may have been saved from fire, but according to Gerald and Ed there are other forces now at work that could destroy the neighbourhood. | 07:36 |
Gerald and Ed walk | ED: I think about it all the time 'cause I see buildings gettin' torn down... | 07:44 |
| GERALD: Oh that, well this monstrosity replaced some 19th century houses. | 07:49 |
| ED: Right! | 07:56 |
| GERALD: Ahhhh ! The very thought of it !! | 07:57 |
| ED: You don't see those kind of places too much these days. | 08:01 |
| MAHER: Ed Hamilton may seem mild mannered, but he relishes using the words on his blog as bullets. | 08:04 |
Cindy on street, enters condo | And right now he's aiming them at people like Cindy Gallop - an advertising executive who lives directly across the road from the Chelsea in a multi-million dollar condominium which was once home to the YMCA. | 08:12 |
Cindy in apartment. Shots around apartment | Music | 08:25 |
| ED [reading]: The place looks as dark as a cave and completely unliveable. Cindy claims to have had a vision of this place while relaxing in her favourite watering hole in Shanghai. Too bad the Chinese didn't Shanghai her ass! Perhaps the most annoying feature of the apartment is the display of stilettos running along the living room wall - part storage, part installation, Cindy says - and I may add a fairly shameless display of wealth! | 08:43 |
Portrait of Cindy | CINDY: When I see something that speaks to me, then I buy it and that really is the case with everything in this apartment. | 09:12 |
| MAHER: Which do you identify with? The mongoose or the cobra? | 09:20 |
Cindy. | CINDY [laughs] I probably really identify with the situation? | 09:23 |
| MAHER: That's not answering the question. | 09:26 |
| CINDY: Both. | 09:29 |
Portrait of Cindy | CINDY: When I read Ed's rant about me | 09:31 |
Cindy. Super: Cindy Gallop Businesswoman | on his blog I could completely understand and empathise with it, and that may sound rather bizarre but I could totally understand that if you were someone that had lived in Chelsea a long time and loved the neighbourhood then {a} you would be enormously sad that the ‘Y' had vacated such a fantastic landmark building and {b} you'd be pretty unhappy about the perceived set of yuppies who had moved into it instead. And yep, you'd absolutely hate my guts ! | 09:33 |
| MAHER: Because he was pretty splenetic wasn't he? I mean he said in his blog ‘Cindy, doesn't care what I say or what anybody concerned about gentrification has to say. Kiss my rich ass!' she is telling us all .' | 09:58 |
| CINDY: I love that bit ....yup he was pretty majorly venting. | 10:10 |
Ed at computer | MAHER: Ed has eased off on Cindy since she invited him and a few other Chelsea residents around to discuss the changes to the neighbourhood. But he's still worried the hotel might suffer the same fate as the old ‘Y'. ED: Well yeah, I mean there | 10:16 |
Ed. Super: Ed Hamilton | is that fear. I mean we live in a special place, you know, where we have Stanley bard who is looking after us to some extent and trying to keep the rents low on people. But he's got a lot of pressure from his board of directors to raise the rents, because you know they are saying ‘Well you know we could be selling these condos you know for $10 million like they did across the street at the ‘Y.'' | 10:33 |
Stanley. Super: Stanley Bard Hotel Manager | MAHER: You must be under pressure from the shareholders? | 10:58 |
| STANLEY: I am constantly under pressure. You can't believe how much pressure. But so far as long as I'm strong and healthy I will continue to fight for my belief system and for the hotel. | 11:01 |
| MAHER: Well what do the shareholders want to do ? Do they want to turn it into condos ? | 11:15 |
| STANLEY: They always want.... Shareholders are shareholders. They always want to sell. | 11:18 |
Ext. Cindy's building | MAHER: Back at Cindy's loft, there's pressure of a different kind. | 11:25 |
| CINDY: Well, well, well ... I mean I've seen it already , through the plastic you know - so... | 11:29 |
Cindy looks at new painting | MAHER: Last year she commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of her and her boyfriend. Trouble is, the man astride the Ducati is no longer her boyfriend and she's now not sure she wants to keep the painting. | 11:34 |
| CINDY: So this was intended to be ironically self-referential and now I'm wondering if the irony comes through or not [laughs]. | 11:51 |
| ARTIST: Why does it have to be ironic? | 11:58 |
| CINDY: Well, because otherwise it's rather lurid I think [laughs]. Rather bodice ripper! | 12:00 |
Buskers on street | Music | 12:08 |
Cindy on street | CINDY: When you live on 23rd street you live on the gritty frontline. And I can promise you that there is nothing particularly gentrified or prettified or safe about living on 23rd street in Chelsea. | 12:25 |
| MAHER: Nevertheless, what longer term residents here are saying is that they are being kicked out of the neighbourhood. They are being forced to move because rents are just soaring. | 12:36 |
| CINDY: And that is a universal problem within Manhattan, full stop. | 12:44 |
Cindy. Super: Cindy Gallop Businesswoman | And it's really hard to know how to answer that because they are absolutely right. I mean the level of affordable housing is, you know, virtually non-existent in a lot of neighbourhoods. | 12:48 |
Chelsea skyline. Pan to Ed writing on fire escape | Music | 12:57 |
| ED: It's been a good run, but we're on the tail end of the comet here, and in all probability this is the last generation of bohemians who will be able to call the Chelsea their home.' | 13:06 |
| Music | 13:19 |
Gerald. Super: Gerald Busby Composer | GERALD: Who knows what they will do? The Plaza Hotel is now a condominium whatever - with apartments for 25 billion dollars! [laughs] | 13:22 |
| MAHER: What would you do if they did something like that ? | 13:31 |
| GERALD: Well, I haven't the faintest idea. I have no idea where I would go. | 13:34 |
| Music | 13:38 |
Credits | Reporter: Michael Maher Camera: Tim Bates Editor: Woody Landay | 13:46
13:55 |