This book is an oral history consisting of interviews with former hotel residents. Most them are peripheral characters because many of the more famous residents died (early) and the book focuses on the 80s after the hotel has already begun declining.
However the book is still a fascinating window into a funkier, freakier New York City the way it was before it became a corporate Disneyland for the rich.
The hotel management encouraged artists of all kinds to live a the hotel. If management felt like you had potential, they'd give you a break on rent. With the artists came junkies, drag queens, prostitutes, and unclassifiable characters that gave the Chelsea such a strange atmosphere.
The book is divided into different character-centric chapters ie Dee Dee Romane, the management, etc. Alongside the interviews are fascinating footnotes worthy of David Foster Wallace.
Ultimately the book is an elegy for a stranger, more artistic New York. Artists and musicians are what give cities their flavor, if the rents are too high, then a city will become a duller and blander place without them.
If you're a reader interested in punk rock, beat writers, or New York history, I'd recommend this title. ( )

“In 2001, he died of everything he had ever done.” ~James Lough

While the author wrote this of one of the personalities he met while researching the Chelsea’s colorful history, the same could be said of the Chelsea Hotel itself. James Lough’s This Ain’t No Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980-1995 is an interesting look at the history of the hotel within that era of New York City history. Reading it now was an interesting parallel to the New-York Historical Society’s AIDS exhibit this summer as there was significant overlap in time, characters and storyline.
Reading the book was somewhat bittersweet since the hotel is no more, apparently. There are apparently rumors that it will be a boutique hotel with a club as soon as early 2014 or or 2015 (if no more construction issues) but it won’t be the Chelsea. How can I be attached to the story of a building whose existence I was only tangentially aware of? Thank you books.

I actually love the author’s approach to writing this book. He read and researched, then interviewed via phone/email and then met as many of the subjects as possible. It allowed him to tell a cohesive narrative that was part a biography of the people and part the hotel’s own memoirs.

More: http://travellingcari.com/2014/03/01/review-this-aint-no-holiday-inn/ ( )