Volume Number 1 Issue Number 9 / November 24 -30, 2006
Cocktails at the Y and conversing on gentrification
Chelsea Now photo by Steven LeBoyer
From left: Dorte Saust, George Chemeche, Cindy Gallop and Ed Hamilton at Gallop’s apartment.
By Vivienne Leheny
It was not an auspicious beginning.
On Oct. 6, Ed Hamilton came across a magazine photo spread featuring the home of fellow Chelsea resident Cindy Gallop. What he saw incensed him. So he posted an unflattering entry about his neighbor on “Living With Legends” — the unofficial blog of the Chelsea Hotel that he writes with his partner, Debbie Martin. Hamilton wrote that Gallop had “turned the place into a warehouse collection of worthless junk that she calls art.” That “place” was her 3,500-square-foot condo in the converted building across from the Chelsea Hotel that had housed, until recently, the beloved McBurney YMCA.
The Y’s 2000 decision to sell its grand old building on 23rd St. at Seventh Ave. to a developer intent on marketing condos to, in Hamilton’s words, “soulless yuppies” infuriated many Chelsea residents. Six years later, it still rankles. With the sale, the neighborhood lost more than just affordable services and housing.
“The sense of community was unlike that at any other gym,” said Martin. “We were a family there. And we can’t recover that.”
When Hamilton read how Gallop had transformed the space that once served as the men’s locker and shower rooms into a showpiece designed to evoke the feel of a “Shanghai nightclub at midnight,” he went ballistic.
“Imelda Marcos checks in to the Y,” trumpeted Hamilton’s headline on the blog. He was referring to a backlit case running the length of the lacquer-black interior that displayed 250 pairs of Gallop’s stilettos. Noting that her art collection included a gold-plated chainsaw sporting the Gucci logo and a genuine AK-47 bearing the badge of Chanel, Hamilton concluded Gallop was telling the rest of us to “Kiss my rich ass.”
Later that day a comment on Hamilton’s entry appeared on the blog: “On the assumption that you live just across the street, I’d like to invite you to visit my apartment and share a free and frank exchange of views on the development of the Y (you might find our views on this more similar than you think). I’ve only lived in Chelsea for eight years, but I love this neighborhood too and would like to meet you, if you can bring yourself to face Imelda in the flesh! All best wishes, Cindy Gallop.”
Hamilton and Martin assumed it was a joke posted by one of their offbeat readers. Hamilton wrote a second entry challenging the authenticity of the comment and “Cindy Gallop” responded again, reiterated her offer and extended it to any former Y members that Hamilton and Martin cared to invite.
They accepted and on Thursday night, Nov. 16, this disparate group of people suspended hostilities, broke bread (in this case, salmon on toast), shared wine and swapped stories of the changing neighborhood.
What possessed Gallop to open her home to these strangers? As the former U.S. chairperson of advertising powerhouse Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), she has a pretty good handle on public relations.
“I wasn’t fazed by Ed’s original comments,” Gallop said. “I could understand how someone who was unhappy about the development of the Y could read [the magazine photo spread] negatively. I am a great believer in opening up direct channels of communication to correct misperceptions.”
She quickly disarmed her guests with a story about how her parents met: “My father was staying in Singapore at the YMCA and he and another man there went out to a dance hall one night. He saw this beautiful Chinese woman across the room. He turned to his friend and said, ‘I’m going to marry that woman.’ And he did. So it makes sense I should be drawn to the Y.”
Gallop graciously conducted a tour of the loft’s open space design.
“I have a thing about taxidermy,” she noted, as she gestured toward the bear rugs, tiger-head chair throws and a mongoose and cobra eternally locked in combat and stationed on the coffee table. Her guests shared her appreciation for the artist Paul Richard — Gallop has several of his paintings displayed, including a portrait he did of her with the mongoose and cobra in the background.
As Hamilton, Martin and the other guests got their bearings (the abundance of pelts was a bit disorienting), they identified where the lockers and the old shower stalls had been located. Gallop was disappointed the developer had torn out all of the Y’s fixtures: “I would have loved one of those showers!”
Hamilton admitted to some trepidation before meeting Gallop, recalling the chainsaw and AK-47 in her possession. But it was “very courageous of her to invite us over,” he said. Notably, he was the one guest to drink water all night, presumably to remain alert to the “possibility of ambush” by Gucci.
But no ambush occurred. In fact, Gallop reported she’s a big fan of Hamilton and Martin’s blog. She even offered some professional advice, suggesting they “ride the wave of publicity” that would inevitably come to the Chelsea Hotel with the release of “Edie” — the biopic about legendary Chelsea Hotel resident Edie Sedgwick.
“I really like [the blog’s] intentions,” Gallop said. “As someone who loves Chelsea, I thought, these are my neighbors and at heart we feel the same way about the neighborhood.” By the end of the evening, it was clear this understanding was mutual.
Maybe there’s hope for that mongoose and cobra after all.
