The Chelsea is a very special place. I was lucky enough to be born and live there for the first chunk of my life. The long term tenants are incredibly interesti

The Chelsea is a very special place. I was lucky enough to be born and live there for the first chunk of my life. The long term tenants are incredibly interesting people. Though it's known for its artist population, there are all sorts of folks that live there, writers (like my mom), musicians, painters, sculptors, but also psychologists, dentists, designers, architects (like my dad) and entrepreneurs. My next door neighbor was an excellent painter named Herbert Gentry [1] and his wife Mary Anne Rose. To this day a small globe encased in an epoxy resin cube that I used to play with as a child while visiting him and he subsequently left for me in his will sits on my work desk underneath my monitors. Across the hall were a pair of sisters that lived together and ran their own business designing and selling, quite successfully, bizarre and gaudi sunglasses! I think the HN crowd might really have enjoyed them actually. Halloween as a kid in the Chelsea was amazing, people would go to incredible lengths when opening the door for the horde of child sized monsters roving the beautiful wide hallways (The same hallways where I learned to roller skate!). I remember one resident that opened the door hanging upside down as Dracula. He was using one of those door frame mounted sit up devices, but the interesting part was he had somehow rigged his cape to fight gravity as well. Fishing line maybe? Stanley was quite the character. He's one of the first people, outside of my family, that I can remember meeting. He was one of the reasons the Chelsea is still so interesting to this day. It was a very different time. The artists could negotiate their rent payments with him and he was used to it. Now I doubt you could get away with that anywhere in Manhattan. It really was kind of like his own little menagerie. Anyways, really cool place. If you're ever walking by, I'd encourage you to step into the lobby. I'm not sure what it looks like now, but there used to be some pretty visceral sculptures and other pieces of art in there. (1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Gentry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Gentry