An excerpt from

This Ain’t No Holiday Inn:

True Tales of Bohemian Life at the Chelsea Hotel

by James Lough

You Gotta Get Stanley!

Finally, I had made it to the Chelsea. For years I had phoned, emailed and postal mailed a small army of free-spirited Bohemians who had lived, loved, partied, created art and crashed at the Chelsea Hotel. “Crashed” as in slept on somebody’s floor, and “crashed” as in “crashed and burned.” I tracked these free spirited eccentrics down, interviewed them on the phone for hours and hours -- my dime. I bought them meals and drinks, grilled and cajoled them to be part of this book and even lent them money. For years, I had read every book about the Chelsea Hotel, every article, brochure and blog I could get my hands on. I had watched all the movies shot in its venerable rooms and halls. Now, finally, it was time to get at these eminent Bohemians in person.

The one who got me started on this fool’s errand, my brother-in-law Robert Campbell, told me later it was a small miracle, convincing so many Chelsea veterans to talk to me at all. After all, these were a bunch of streetwise Bohemians who made their own rules and who, often as not, walked on the other side of the law. Why would they take me seriously? Why didn’t they automatically assume I was a fake, a poseur, a dilettante? These folks had forever surrounded themselves with would-be artists and artists manqué, smoking Galois or American Spirits in the cafes and talking about getting around to writing a play, or bragging about that time they almost got a band together. Why would I be I any different? How many other self-styled writers had come to the Chelsea announcing they were writing a book?

“Oh and one more thing,” Robert had told me. “You gotta get Stanley Bard. Without an interview with Stanley, the book will have a big ol’ hole in the middle of it. You gotta get the Bard.”

Robert was right about this too. But after my fruitless attempts during my present stay, after I had requested an interview with Stanley and dropped the names of precisely the wrong people, after Stanley’s son David caught me climbing the fire escape, and after being snubbed on the phone by his son David, my impulse was to blurt out “Fat chance.” But I bit my tongue. Robert was right – we had to get Stanley.

The Artist on the Sidewalk

Meanwhile, life went on at the Chelsea, and my daily activities took me, several times daily, in and out of the hotel’s glass front doors. I had noticed that outside the doors, during day light hours, a young artist with short dark hair and bangs could reliably be found sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. She had propped her canvas up against the hotel’s wrought iron railing. Just another eccentric Chelsea artist, as far as I could tell, a fixture at the hotel. The ever-indulgent Stanley had apparently given her permission to make the act of painting into a show of sorts. Her works were abstract -- big, bright patchworks of myriad colors partitioned by lattices of whimsical black curlicues which, if they were to sprout hands, feet, and heads, would feel right at home in the paintings of Keith Haring. I thought nothing of it – another Chelsea artist in this Artists’ Ward.

While she painted, she made herself available to talk with any passerby about any topic. She had lots and lots of chi and a voluminous voice with a Midwestern accent, probably Chicago. She seemed bubbly enough, and fun to talk with, but of little interest to my book project, which was mainly about the Chelsea in the 80s.

So how on earth was I to know that this sidewalk painter would turn out to be the Grand Gatekeeper? That Susan Olmetti, which I later learned was her name, held the big ring of keys that would admit little old me into the rooms of people of the hotel, people who up to then had only been the slightest whiffs of rumors? Even better, how could I have imagined that Susan might be able to give me direct and open access to the hotel’s very innermost circle, to the living, breathing Holy Grail, the illustrious captain – at least before the Board’s mutiny – Stanley Bard himself?

“You gotta get the Bard!”

The Book-Filled Baggage Cart

A couple of days after my first encounter with Susan Olmetti, my friend Alex Stein showed up at the Chelsea from Boulder. He was an old friend of mine, a writer with a couple of good books to his credit. Spur of the moment, I had phoned him and suggested he come and stay for a week. He hemmed and hawed and then agreed.

One evening, as we were heading out into the halls from 426 to get dinner, we came upon a big baggage cart sitting askew in the area by the elevator. The cart held not baggage but books, hardcovers, paperbacks, all kinds of books scattered precariously, helter-skelter, heaps of them spilling off the cart onto the rug.

And who should storm out of her room into the hall but the bubbly, dark-banged young artist who had planted herself on the sidewalk out front? Only now she wasn’t bubbly – she was boiling over. Armfuls of books pressed against her chest, she looked harried and disturbed. She was raging, uttering blasphemies. Out loud, she vituperized about some indignity the new management had visited upon her. She dumped her load of books on top of the pile and looked up at us.

“Wanna buy some books?” Before we could answer, she strode hastily back to her room for more.

When she returned, I scented a possible story coalescing. “Is the new management threatening to kick you out?” I figured she hoped to make rent by selling the books to a used bookstore, or avoid the middle man by displaying them on a blanket on her sidewalk out front. She said nothing as she unloaded more books on the pile.

A bit abashed, I persisted. “Is the new management kicking you out?”

“More like I’ll kick them out!” she said, without breaking stride, and vanished into her room. She said it with such extraordinary force, such utter confidence, that for a moment I actually believed she did have the power to excommunicate management, or at least give them a good scolding. She had friends in high places.

“Can you guys give me a hand?” she asked, clutching yet another load. Selfish me, now that she wanted us to help, her story was getting less interesting. She was in such an emotional state, after all, and the stack was such a mess. I wished the elevator would hurry up. Alex, a polite Canadian, had kneeled cooperatively next to the cart and was making half-hearted tries at forming neat stacks out of the volcano of books. Each one he picked up sent others spilling off the cart. As far as I was concerned, there were just so many books for us to be any real help, plus we had places to be –

“You guys like books?” she asked casually. “Take any of ‘em you want.”

Instantly our minds focused to pinpoints. I squatted down next to Alex and began rummaging through the titles. The prospect of free books gave his desultory stacking a new sense of purpose.

To our surprise, they weren’t drug store novels with gold-embossed titles. They were good books, novels by well-respected writers, books of psychology, but not pop psychology. One was a clinical book about Manic Depression, or rather its vaguer, updated name, Bipolar Disorder. It might prove interesting, but more likely it would just gather dust on my shelf at home. Alex picked up a copy of The Magus, a ‘60s classic by the erudite philosophical novelist John Fowles. Back then, most every college student had read it or at least knew about The Magus. Although sorely tempted by some of these delicacies, I resisted. Extra weight, I reasoned, in my luggage on the trip home.

The painter was beginning to calm down. She was still peeved about something, something she obviously didn’t want to talk about in any detail, but she was equally curious about us. We exchanged introductions – her name was Susan Olmetti.

“What brings you to the Chelsea?” she asked.

We went through the usual spiel. We were both writers and I was writing a book about the Chelsea during the 80s and early 90s etc.

Our chat grew casual and friendly, and she was interested in the book project. Maybe just such a book could publicize the unjust tearing down of Stanley Bard. Maybe a little publicity could help restore him to his proper place.

Susan’s manner changed. Suddenly she was excited. “You know, I can introduce you to lots of people. Have you met Storme?”

We had not met Storme, but I had heard plenty about her.

“What about Hawk? Some of Hawk’s paintings are in the hallways. I’ll hook you guys up.”

As we said our goodbyes, we parted abruptly, without ceremony, like people who knew they’d see each other very soon. The elevator still hadn’t made it up to the fourth floor, so Alex and I slinked down the stairs, one book richer.

Susan to the Rescue, Again

The night before I left the Chelsea, as I stuffed my clothes back into my suitcase, I reflected on the success of the trip. I was happy with all the interviews under my belt, some sixteen interviews in fourteen days, but still disappointed that Stanley Bard hadn’t been one of them. What with all the commotion from the takeover, he’d been impossible to track down.

As I began zipping up the suitcase, there came a loud rapping on the door. And who was it but Susan Olmetti, the vibrant sidewalk painter, the bequeather of used books, dropping by my room. She had a gift for me, a painting – well – part of a painting. She seems to have taken an Exacto knife to the canvas, cutting off two-thirds of it as well as removing the two side slats, leaving only a single vertical strip of canvas about as wide as a spread hand. The whole thing looked like a capital “I”.

“But Susan,” I say, thanking her for the generous gift, “I can’t pack this in my suitcase. The paint’s still wet and it will get all over everything.”

“Just fold it in half,” she said, shrugging off my trivial concern. “When you get it home, unfold it again.”

“Are you serious? Fold the canvas in half – paint side in?”

“Sure.”

“That’ll squish the painting beyond recognition!”

“So what?” She insisted, mildly exasperated. “People are so uptight about art. Just unfold it, and if the painting’s not what it was when I made it, then it’s something else now, isn’t it!”

This struck me as very Chelsea.

The next morning, I checked out at the hotel’s front desk without fanfare or sentimentality. It had been a good visit. I had interviewed some very relevant Chelsea dwellers, and probably had enough material to fill a book. It had been a bad couple of weeks for the Bards – disastrous, in fact -- and as much as I sympathized with them, as much as I took their side in this appalling conflict, my being here when it all shook down had been a lucky break. I felt vaguely exhausted, amply filled, satisfied, solid, and ready to head back to my family and home.

If it hadn’t been for Susan, I would have flown back home, probably only remembering on the plane the giant void that I had conveniently forgotten. The elephant in the lobby that I wouldn’t allow myself think about.

“We gotta get Stanley,” Robert had said again and again.

After last year’s labyrinthine failure to talk with him – after being the mouse to his toying, catlike evasions, and after my own ridiculous fire escape blunder and admission that I had anything to do with certain personae non grata – I wish I could have said “I got Stanley Bard to talk.” I wish I could have said that my blind persistence and journalistic grit finally turned the main man around to my point of view. But I didn’t. I got the cap, but not the feather.

But Susan Olmetti did.

As I wheeled my bag through the lobby toward the taxi waiting outside, there she was, my Chelsea guardian angel, shouting out of nowhere “Wait! Don’t leave yet! You gotta talk to Stanley!”

Susan disappeared into Stanley’s office. A minute or so later, she came out and beckoned me inside. It is, as John Zinsser had said, a beautiful office, spacious with lovely detailing, crown molding, the works. Built-in bookcases lined the walls, holding multitudinous books, books about the Chelsea, books written by Chelsea writers, magazines in German, journals in French, all featuring the Chelsea.

I would also like to say that talking to Stanley Bard was a peak experience that clouds split open and rays streamed through. After all, an encounter with the mythical Mr. Bard had become like a holy grail.

Stanley stepped out from behind his huge desk and shook my hand. I thanked him sincerely for everything he had done with the Chelsea, for everything he had done for artists and for art.

“I think it’s a great hotel,” said Bard graciously. “It affected a lot of people’s lives, and if affected the arts, and the city. I’m proud of that – I don’t want to keep it a secret. A lot of people know it.”

But I had a taxi waiting and a flight at JFK.

Nevertheless, we had made our connection. Some weeks later, Susan came through again. She arranged for me to interview Stanley Bard over the phone. And now, pieces from the interview are peppered through the book. Thanks to Susan Olmetti, the void has been filled.

So when my friend Robert now says, “You did it, man! You got Stanley!” I’ll take some of the credit, maybe one-tenth. The sidewalk painter Susan gets the rest.