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Edie Sedgwick set fire to it, Sid Vicious's girlfriend Nancy was killed there, and Dylan, Kubrick and Joplin all made it their home. For years it has been a hotbed of controversy, a bohemian mecca for the famous and the arty. ARIEL LEVE enters the mysterious world of the Chelsea in New York - the world's most infamous hotel.
THERE is a note taped up in the lift. It is written with marker pen in a child's handwriting - "Wanted: Gold buttons. My brother Pascal needs gold buttons for a school project. Do you have any to spare? Leave at the front desk." A day later, the note has a running commentary at the bottom. Someone has written in black ink, "Why didn't Pascal write this note?" and underneath that in blue ink someone has responded, "Because his brother rocks," and then underneath that in pencil someone else has added: "Because Pascal is five years old!"
It is late on a frigid January afternoon. There is a man checking in at the front desk. His name is Mr Parrot and he is wearing a long, cream-coloured robe and a turban. He is with his falcon. They are frequent guests.
There are 240 apartments in the Chelsea Hotel. Sixty per cent are residential and 40 per cent are hotel rooms. Contradictions play out everywhere. It is a place of permanence and transience. Some who live there enjoy feeling shut off from the world - it is a place to where they can disappear. Others enjoy feeling part of a community, describing it as a vertical village. The Chelsea exists as a microcosm of New York. Those who struggle share the lift with those who don't, it's multi-generational and there are hidden stories behind every door.
Like the city itself, it's a refuge for reinvention. Some people come to the Chelsea Hotel because they can become someone else. And some people come because they know it's a place where they can be themselves. But the one thing, perhaps the only thing, that everyone who lives there agrees on is this: despite everything that's been written or said about it, in all the books and all the movies that have eulogised it, nobody has got it right.
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