Life and Death At the Chelsea
MORE
Tales of Retail
Jann Paxton is something of an enigma around Manhattan’s most mythical inn, the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street.
“I’ve been told that people call me ‘the ghost of the Chelsea,’” he said, “because I’m never seen. I’m kind of a hermit. … I almost never leave my bedroom—let alone the apartment.”
And yet, he may soon have to: On May 12, the 46-year-old Norfolk, Va., native is expected to pay more than $59,000 that he allegedly owes in back rent, according to a recent court order, or else lose his spacious isolation chamber on the hotel’s fifth floor.
“It’s not looking promising,” said the cash-strapped former singer-songwriter, who long ago divested himself of the “millions” he made in the music business, recording and touring around the turn of the millennium with his eponymously named band, Paxton.
“I’ve toured with Michael Bolton and Dee Snider and Stephen Stills. I’ve been featured on NPR. I have a couple of music awards. I was the real deal,” said Mr. Paxton, who lately relies on friends for groceries and packs of cigarettes. (He has threatened to sell some of his more valuable guitars in order to pay for more smokes.)
Even the recent firing of BD NY Hotels, the management company led by Richard Bron and Ira Drukier, hired last summer to replace longtime Chelsea Hotel proprietor Stanley Bard, seemed to offer little hope. (The judgement in his case was handed down beforehand.)
His dreaded eviction would add to a growing list of disappearing inhabitants at the old bohemian enclave in recent months.
At least 15 hotel tenants have already been expelled during BD’s relatively brief 10-month stint in charge of hotel operations—a statistic the firm has proudly touted on a list of purported accomplishments included in court papers contesting its sudden termination.
Mr. Paxton would bring that number up to 16.
Not that BD seemed to be waiting for a final tally. The fired managers had already beaten him out the door on Monday, leaving residents wondering who’s in charge, while lawyers for both sides prepare to squabble over incentive fees, renovation delays and the inability to bring in chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten for a new eatery, among other issues mentioned in court papers.
For those guys, it will likely come down to dollars and cents. For Mr. Paxton, meanwhile, it’s a matter of life and death.
“A court-appointed guardian is trying to get a stay of the eviction,” he noted, as next week’s deadline for payment rapidly approached, “because of my health.”
Complicating matters far beyond his financial woes, Mr. Paxton is terminally ill, stricken with cancer and a host of other ailments. “My health is so bad that if I’m evicted, I probably will die, living in an SRO or welfare hotel or something,” said Mr. Paxton, whose prior threats to take his own life, if evicted, prompted a number of court-ordered psychiatric evaluations.
HIS CASE SEEMS an apt metaphor for the hotel itself at this critical juncture in its 125-year history: a decaying relic of wilder times long gone, slowly succumbing to the effects of its own past excesses, yet stubbornly refusing to die, struggling to emerge anew amid the crushing pressures of modern times while, hopefully, not compromising its integrity.
It’s easy to understand why any hotel manager would want to free up a large living space like his. “I’ve been told I have the nicest apartment in the building,” Mr. Paxton said during an interview on Monday night in his apartment, where he lives with his 13-year-old pit bull, Ginger, for whom he named one of his albums, Ginger’s Dish.
Despite his poor health, he assured The Observer, “it’s not like I live in a trash dump with crack vials around me or anything like that.”
In fact, the place seemed immaculately well kept, adorned with antique furniture, tapestries, and framed photos and other paraphernalia from Mr. Paxton’s days as a touring musician. “The theme is Moroccan roll,” he quipped, walking briefly with the help of a cane.
Four guitars were displayed around a sealed fireplace, including a custom-made red Fender designed after a sports car he once owned.
“Here’s my bass player,” he said, pointing to a wooden urn on the mantle.
Like virtually any other unit in the building, the apartment comes complete with its own distinctive celebrity cachet. He’s been told that Marilyn Monroe once slept in the same room; Robert Rauschenberg painted the kitchen cabinets.
“Everybody’s stayed here, everybody in the world,” he said of the famous hotel, rattling off several big names: “Tennessee Williams, Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, J. D. Salinger. Just sitting here sometimes, it gives you a confidence.
“We’re the reason that people come from fucking Czechoslovakia to stay here,” he said of the hotel’s various resident artists. “They don’t care that the kitchens are old and the bathrooms are funky.
“There’s plaster all over the front hall that just falls every day, no matter how many times it gets vacuumed up,” he said, pointing to the decaying infrastructure in his own foyer. “But still, it’s a magic place to live.”
LIKE MANY CHELSEA residents, Mr. Paxton had some gripes about BD when the new managers took over last summer from the eccentric Stanley Bard, who had run the place for nearly 50 years and was largely responsible for upholding the arty vibe.
He was particularly put off by the new boss’s bedside manner. Or lack thereof.
Literally: When the often bed-bound ex-singer called down to the front desk to request a few repairs, BD’s much-maligned director of operations, Glennon Travis, personally came to Mr. Paxton’s bedroom with a demand of his own.
Pay your rent, he told the gravely ill man. Or else.
It was the dawn of a new era at the formerly laid-back Chelsea, where tenants once reputedly handed over original artworks in lieu of rent, albeit not Mr. Paxton specifically.
A wealthy friend long ago agreed to support the fading rock musician in his final days, paying his monthly $5,000 rent via easy payments by credit card, which Mr. Bard or another hotel employee would regularly come to retrieve while Mr. Paxton, who even went blind for a time, remained prostrate.
“He would bang on the door. Or he’d send somebody up and they would pound on the door, saying, ‘Stanley wants the card! Stanley wants the card!’ And my home nurse would take it down.”
Somewhere along the line, the easy credit proved too tempting, and somebody with access started adding additional charges while Mr. Paxton was stuck in bed—oftentimes multiple charges for different amounts on the same day, he said. A recent tally of his American Express account showed nearly $200,000 in charges from July 2005 through June 2007.
Fed up with the erratic charges, his benefactor abruptly stopped paying last summer. “I was so embarrassed that it was happening that I can’t even call the guy,” Mr. Paxton said. “I put myself in his shoes and it looks like somebody’s just going crazy with his credit card. I probably would’ve done the same thing.”
Another friend recently offered to have Mr. Paxton move in, which he has politely declined. “I’d feel like it was somebody bringing home a pet—a sick pet,” he said.
He is banking on a stay of the eviction, or at least negotiating a more reasonable rent, given the alleged overcharges in the past.
He even hopes to one day return to work in some fashion: “As it is, I’ve had enough illnesses that my career as a singer is over, because little girls in the Midwest don’t buy sexy CDs or angst-ridden CDs from guys who are dying,” he said. “But I can at least protect the memory of it and, if I live, launch a new career as a writer. Until I’m dead, I’m going to assume that I can get some sort of career going again. I’m not going to give up hope totally.”
Copyright © 2008 The New York Observer. All rights reserved.
