This is the Problem

I was with some Los Angeles friends who were visiting from Los Angeles. They were staying in the Chelsea Hotel. We went up, talked and lounged on the beds.

Ninth Floor.

A great view of the north side of 23rd Street.

The Chelsea Hotel.

Back in the day (and I guess I was never young), but back in the day, I was kind of afraid of the place. It was a peeling heroin den. But it was cheap. Wacked creative people could live there.

Now, as we all know (and it has been known for years), it’s all cleaned up with overhead lighting from Lamps Plus, curtain rods from Restoration Hardware and some leftover Sixties furniture, sort of grooving it out, sort of sadly abandoned.

Look, I will admit, if I were to stay in the Chelsea Hotel, I would rather stay in it today than twenty years ago.

But this is the thing. WHY can’t things be mall-updated AND cheap?

Or even more fundamentally, WHY can’t poor people, I don’t care if they are addicted to heroin, make their places decent and clean and refuse to move out?

Or even more simply, WHY did everything get so bland and expensive?

Of course, I’d rather not have the mall-updates in the Chelsea Hotel. But I think it is a bit better than a carpet of used needles. However, it could have been redone with greater care.

I would like New York to calm down and get poorer. It will be interesting if we can do this, together, and not let everything peel and fall apart and end up dangerous, again.