LIFE AND DEATH AT THE CHELSEA HOTEL
THE FRIEND WHO SHOWED ME THE CHELSEA HOTEL KILLED HIMSELF THREE MONTHS LATER.
A month after that the Chelsea was taken over by developers, and its 70-plus years of bohemian excess and wonder were over. Inadvertently, I’d managed to see an iconic building, one that had always figured large on my list of artistic landmarks, just before its essence was forever destroyed.
The friend who took me around the hotel in 2011 was Mark Kramer. He’d been my friend for 15 years, yet this was
