Urban bytes: Interviews in Pittsburgh and Beyond.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Photographs:Digging Pitt in NYC and The Chelsea Hotel


No interview...photographs only this time. The images are from:

1) The opening of an exhibit in NYC by Digging Pitt gallery...the Blogger Show in the front gallery, and an assortment of mostly Pittsburgh artists is in the back gallery. This NYC showing will be up through November 30th, 2007.
Address: 170 East 2nd St.
The gallery is in the East Village ...an area that, while still avant-garde, is continuing to gentrify with an almost shocking vengeance! It makes me think that I want to get back there as much as possible while the remnants of the old cutting edge NYC are still around!

For more info on Digging Pitt in NYC go to (and scroll down)
http://diggingpitt.blogspot.com/

2. The Chelsea Hotel (small unrenovated section+ main staircase).
NYC's Chelsea neighborhood seems even further along in the gentrification process. The London Terrace, where a girlfriend of mine lived decades ago, is now a chic address for the wealthy or those aspiring to be wealthy.

Down the street from the London Terrace is the famously counter-cultural ....The Chelsea Hotel...now a $500 a night and up lodging... ..(renamed The Hotel Chelsea). Also it is currently up for sale. I had an opportunity to photograph one of the 5 rooms (and an adjoining hall) that have not yet been renovated...and they certainly exude the sex, drugs, and rock and roll style of the old Chelsea. The final image is of a hallway in the main hotel.
For more info on the Chelsea:
http://www.hotelchelsea.com/history.php
(Two interviews will be posted on Urban Bytes in December: Barbara Garcia-Bernardo , The Beauty and Brains Behind Get Hip Records and Victor Navarro Jr.- Artist, Writer, Musician, Survivor of the 60's, Coffee Shop Denizen, and Muse to the Avant-Garde )