New York City nightlife may be temporarily paused, but inside the storied Chelsea Hotel the few remaining residents and their guests don’t need crowds or clubs to rage on — they have themselves and the ghosts in the walls.
“My first night here was Friday the 13th … so we had a seance,” guest and artist Caroline Caldwell tells The Post of her coronavirus lockdown at the hotel-turned-artist-haven that once housed Madonna, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and many others.
She and her quarantine-mate, longtime resident Tony Notarberardino, rummaged up an Ouija board and summoned the spirit of one of the hotel’s more famous residents, Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, whose destructive relationship was the subject of a 1986 biopic set in the hotel.
For the record, Notarberardino says Nancy revealed to them in the seance that Sid didn’t, in fact, kill her. (In 1978, Spungen, then 20, bled to death in the hotel. Vicious was charged with her murder, but less than four months later he was found dead in an apparent drug overdose.)
At the hotel — which is locked in construction limbo as tenants sue the owner over seemingly endless renovations — Caldwell and others are embracing the weirdness of the coronavirus pandemic. The souls of tenants past permeate the building with so much wild energy, Caldwell says, she’s found herself more inspired in quarantine than pre-pandemic.
“Something about this space, it’s such a portal to this creative spiritual realm. It really feels like being in this channel, it just moves through you. I’ve never been more productive,” says the Bed-Stuy resident and assistant to artist Swoon. The moment shelter in place measures began looming for NYC, she jumped to shelter through the storm in the landmark Manhattan building.
“As soon as I heard that quarantine was a possibility, I raced my ass over here,” she says. “If I’m going to get trapped somewhere, I either want to live like exiled royalty or die like a rockstar.”
Now, her and Notarberardino pass the days in his apartment, the former residence of Dee Dee Ramone, by dressing in costume for every occasion: meals, mornings, midnight cocktails, performing the works of past hotel tenants — such as reading Leonard Cohen’s poetry, playing Bob Dylan on the guitar or singing Patti Smith tunes — watching old movies and planning another seance for the upcoming full moon.
Notarberardino hardly feels trapped by lockdown orders.
“I never want to leave anyway,” he says. “To me this is real. When I step into the world it’s an illusion.”
In quarantine, he’s been processing years of undeveloped large format film in his bathroom darkroom and making progress on a book about the hotel which he’s been working on since moving in.
The hotel, Caldwell feels, has cast a protective spell on her, keeping away coronavirus anxieties and maintaining her spark to paint and practice tattooing on the canvas of her body.
“It’s been a deeply healing energy. It makes me want to be creative in a way that’s uninhibited by fear,” she says. “I might be the only person who hopes that quarantine lasts longer, so I can stay here.”
Occasionally they venture outside to restock on food and wood for the fireplace. As exercise, Caldwell has been running up and down the hotel’s 10 flights of stairs — Notarberardino keeps score.
They have become entirely nocturnal and keep no schedule, except for the weekly cyber parties which happen through a connecting door, in Joplin’s former apartment.
“We’re staying next door to the nightlife queen, Susanne Bartsch,” says Caldwell of the legendary event producer, known for her parties at the Copacabana in the 1980s.
From her unit, Bartsch has been airing a prerecorded episode of her show “Strip Down” every Friday, and hosting the decadent livestreamed party “On Top” on Thursdays.
“I’m taking the party from the club to the couch,” she tells The Post of the live, virtual events. “You feel like you are in a club and you don’t have to take a taxi to go there.”
While not generally a fan of technology, Bartsch — a Chelsea Hotel resident since 1981, where today she has four units — felt the need to support her community from quarantine, and was blown away by the response to her digital events.
“People were reaching out, telling me how much it meant to them, how they felt hopeless, how amazing it was to dress up with nowhere to go,” she says. “We have to keep living.”
The extrovert admits she has lost all concept of time while sheltering in place, but maintains hope for humanity in general and New York City specifically, despite it all.
“I’m not really afraid. I know we’re going to get through this and we’ll come out stronger.”