Chelsea Guitars shares storied previous as they glance forward to the long run at now renovated Chelsea Lodge

CHELSEA, Manhattan (WABC) — At Manhattan’s legendary Chelsea Hotel, suites get started at $700 a night time and go up from there, which is ironic when you take into consideration that for the far better element of a hundred years, the place was acknowledged for currently being a low-cost enjoy to keep for starving artists! Now, just after a renovation costing hundreds of millions of dollars, a person shopkeeper has been allowed to remain on in the building to supply a backlink to the hotel’s storied previous.

Dan Courtenay has shared a hamburger with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and Chinese meals with Joan Baez. Each legends bonded with him around a shared really like of good guitars. Several know these instruments much better than the proprietor of Chelsea Guitars. “Again in the working day guitars were intended to be loud, quite loud,” Dan points out to me at his workbench where innumerable devices have been fixed.

His little shop is a mecca for all types of musicians. “Jackson Browne will come by a large amount, and he’s a excellent man, and he is a person who’s interested in the world around him. I got to meet up with these guys that experienced such expertise, that’s an awesome issue to be about.” But, Dan is extra than a mere fan. He’s more like a trusted advisor, “and, I will argue with you even however, you know, you’re a popular man if I think you’re mistaken,” the proprietor tells me, “but I believe which is why persons come below.”

Originally from Queens, Courtenay has been in enterprise at Manhattan’s Chelsea Lodge for a few and a 50 % decades. “It is like any little business enterprise in New York. What hurts is the expenditures just maintain coming: not complaining, just explaining.”

Outdoors the shop, a statue of Marilyn Monroe he found in Lengthy Island reveals the way into the slim place that utilised to be a tailor’s store in advance of the full hotel was renovated over the study course of the past fifty percent dozen many years. “I know a large amount about the creating,” Courtenay reminds me. “I know a lot about the persons who were being in this article so which is why I’m a connection.”

He’s a url to the hotel’s bohemian past when Patti Smith and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe have been pals. He wrote a memoir primarily based on that time identified as “Just Youngsters,” Courtenay notes, “Most of the people today now are newer. 34 decades is a very long time although it went by,” he states with a snap of his fingers, “like that.”

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