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The Chelsea Hotel: The Legend, the Gift Shop

October 22, 2004 at 4:24 AM | 0 Comments

If you're like us, you've read a thing or two about the Chelsea Hotel, New York's infamous den of artists and musicians, murders and movies. Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur C. Clarke, Dylan Thomas, Warhol's superstars, William Burroughs, Dee Dee Ramone have all called the Hotel home, and several persons of note have even died within its hallowed, Bohemian walls.

If you are on a budget and a schedule (and who isn't?), you're probably not going to be staying there any time soon, because rooms start at $150 a night and availability is extremely limited, due to those guests who choose to stay for, well, decades. The next best thing to booking a room at this NYC landmark? Visiting their online gift shop! You'll find everything from films based on Chelsea Hotel happenings (I recommend Sid and Nancy), to books based on the scandalous lives of its denizens, to novels like The Case of the Murdered Muckraker and The Chelsea Girl Murders.

Thanks to the hotel's literary residents, these walls can talk. And it's a good thing, too, because they've got scores of stories to tell -- and reading about it is a lot safer than staying there.