Pool Post Mortem

UPDATE -- Both Elevators Are Now Out of Service!  People are huffing and puffing up and down the stairs.  The Service Elevator is being overloaded with equipment for fashion shoots and will probably soon be out of service too!

I didn’t get a chance to check out the Pool Art Fair which took up most of the 1^st and 2^nd floor guest rooms over the weekend, but a few of our local critics weighed in: “Mediocre, what passes for art these days,” one had to say.  “Loved the video on the first floor,” another reported.  (I noticed that a none-too-subtle critic had crossed out the “P” in Pool and inserted an “F” on one of their signs.)  And on Sunday morning, one sleep-deprived short- term guest asked me if I was the person who had held that all-night party in the room next door to him.   (Really, is it worth it to annoy and inconvenience all the other guests and residents in the hotel just for the sake of a bunch of day trippers?) While walking down the stairs there was almost always a bottleneck at the second and first floors. Luckily, I live on a higher floor--although many art fair attendees seemed to feel they had the run of the hotel.  One thing is for certain: many of the people who stopped by did so mainly to get a chance to look at the hotel.  A couple of our neighbors reported that people attempted to walk into their apartments, saying things like, “Is there art in here?” (At the previous Pool show, residents complained that people were running up and down the fire escapes, whooping it up—and probably that was going on at this show as well.)  What are we now, zoo animals on display?  Many residents tried to head off the inevitable breakdown of the elevators by encouraging the visitors to use the stairs.  We hope that BD made enough money from these art folks to cover the cost of repairing the elevators – as one is currently out of service and the other is acting mighty screwy.   

Comments

[Old & Crabby]

BD has no clue how to manage this hotel. Of course an event which attracts thousands of people over a period of days will stress the infrastructure and result in a financial loss for the hotel.

Caught the tail end of the Pool Fair and what embarassing way to sell out the Hotel. Generally unaccomplished 'art', interlopers walking into residents' residences who were apparently never informed that folks actually live here, and now a diminuation of services for everybody i.e. the elevators buckling. All somebody has to say is the show was 'curated' by resident theif David Elder to make the story complete. And what was with the U-Haul parked in front all weekend...is that the best we can manage for the Chelsea?

It's all PR. Elder is trying to show he gives a shit about art, economically packing his beneficience to artists into one weekend, all the while plotting to throw real working artists out into the street and figure out how to best vampire off the financial proceeds of a hotel and its legend which he had nothing NOTHING to do with creating or maintaining. Quite pathetic really.

I heard the fire marshall showed up on the first day of the event. Overcrowding in the lobby created a fire hazard?

[Victoria]

Enough about David Elder. Can he really take credit for anything real? I don't think so. He will never be validated.