Chelsea Hotel residents Ed and Debby Hamilton (the people behind the Hotel Chelsea Blog and BlogChelsea) were featured in an Australian television documentary about the gentrification of our neighborhood. It focuses on what's being lost as more and more of our real estate turns into luxury condos. It also features their "frienemy" Cindy Gallop, who is presented as a characiture of who is moving into the neighborhood. (My mental image is a hedge-fund guy with a wife who doesn't work and two kids under 5.) If Cindy weren't rich, I figure she'd just be an eccentric bohemian (possibly homeless -- I mean, her apartment is more or less a stationary version of a shopping cart filled with extraneous possessions). Linda and Ed wrote this and this about a party Cindy threw to build bridges to the "old" Chelsea community, many of whom are still pissed off about the conversion of the old McBurney YMCA building into the David Barton Gym and luxury condos.
Definitely do watch the thing, though. There's some great camera work and excellent images of the neighborhood. It totally made me want to live in the Chelsea, which is a desire I have, to varying degrees, from time to time. (Brian and I need a one bedroom and a private bath. I wonder how doable that would be.)
If you liked Ed in the Australian documentary, you'll love him in the short film "Sid's Room." Sid's room is a reference to room 100 in the Chelsea Hotel, in which Sid Vicious' girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was killed
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