The Hotel Chelsea: visit New York and stay in rock ‘n roll’s most historic hotel
Not only is the Chelsea a hotel, but it is and has been in the past a full time residence for artists, musicians, and writers in the Chelsea neighborhood NYC. In fact, although it operates as a hotel and you can stay there, it mostly caters to people who live there all the time. There is a whole community going on within the walls of this old hotel, and if you stay there for a few days you will begin to observe the quirky rhythms of this funky dwelling. It was here that Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote about his affair with Janis Joplin. Here is the hotel, opened in the late 1800s, where rock and roll rumors have it that Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols punk band stabbed to death his girlfriend. Here Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and countless other musicians stayed. Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, and probably fellow poet Jack Kerouac, as well as writer Charles Bukowski, all spent hours drinking and philosophizing within the famed hotel. When the Blue Rags band signed to the nearly defunct Sub Pop Label, which was best known for signing Nirvana, they visited the Chelsea while recording their record in NYC. “Oh yeah, that place was a trip” commented the drummer, with a grin. “You could spend a night there and wind up living there for the rest of your life.” Whether you plan to stay a day or a lifetime, visit the Chelsea and enjoy adding your own name to the long list of Bohemians, artists, writers, and rockers who have slept there before you.