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April 7, 2018

Facebook 5 YEARS AGO TODAY - That's all for April 7 - Ginger Alden, Weegee, midnight miles mingus monk

 Doug Meet's photo.
 
 

5 YEARS AGO TODAY

Ginger Alden (born November 13, 1956 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American actress/model who is best known as the fiancée of Elvis Presley at the time of his death.
Ginger Alden and her family have exclusively chosen Essential Elvis magazine, Great Britain's official publication, and ElvisNews.com to print her first fan-based interview.
elvisnews.com
Doug Meet updated his cover photo.

Doug Meet updated his profile picture.
'round bass certainly charlie coltrane coltrane's commit composer django dolphy drums hall happiness harold horn instrument jazz jazzbos jimmy lovelace mabern maestro mccoy midnight miles mingus monk monk's monterey montgomery musicians piano pointing popcorn purist recorded recordings saxo session ssp suicide thelonious thumb toca trane tyner unique vinyl wes wes'
That's all for April 7.

April 6, 2018

Homeless Man Saves Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, etc. Chelsea Hotel Doors from Garbage--Auction April 12th

What Is the Door to Jackson Pollock’s Room at the Chelsea Hotel Worth?

Close up of the hotel's facade, 1977. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Close up of the hotel's facade, 1977. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
Bob Dylan’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.
Bob Dylan’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.
This month in New York, one man’s trash becomes another man’s auction lot. In a city known for both its garbage-lined avenues and its glimmering, eternal sense of possibility, it should come as no surprise that a shrewd homeless man, Jim Georgiou, has partnered with Guernsey’s auction house to sell off 52 distressed wooden doors previously tossed to the curb.

These, however, have a more interesting pedigree than your typical household fixtures—cultural figures from Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol to Bob Dylan and Patti Smith have all lived behind them.

Georgiou and his dog, Teddy, lived at the iconic residential Hotel Chelsea for about 10 years following the September 11 attacks. Georgiou consistently struggled to pay rent; he had to move out due to financial hardship around late 2011. Around this time, hoteliers Richard Born and Ira Drukier (best known for their trendy, upscale properties such as The Jane, The Greenwich, and The Maritime) were beginning renovations on the famed space, which they acquired in 2016.

According to Guernsey’s, Georgiou was selling records and living along 23rd Street, not far from his former home. He spotted the discarded doors, and, recognizing their sentimental worth, decided to preserve them. Georgiou enlisted a few friends and transported 52 doors to a storage facility in the Bronx.

 
A bit of history is in order. Hotel Chelsea opened in 1884 as a cooperative and quickly attracted the city’s creative set. From the beginning, the top floor was devoted to 15 artist studios. In the early 20th century, the building served as a luxury establishment. World War II brought a dive in quality and rates—and an increase in bohemian tenants. Mark Twain and O. Henry lived at the Chelsea, which also housed Thomas Wolfe as he wrote his 1940 masterpiece, You Can’t Go Home Again. Leonard Cohen immortalized his one-time home (and his romance with fellow resident Janis Joplin) in his song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2.” Smith recounted in her memoir Just Kids how her former Hotel Chelsea roommate, Robert Mapplethorpe, took his first photographs here.
 Janis Joplin’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.
Janis Joplin
Jim Marshall
Heritage Auctions
If the hotel served as a major site of creation, it also inspired reckless, storied destruction. Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick once accidentally set her room on fire, and the poet Dylan Thomas nearly drank himself to death (he downed 18 whiskies in a nearby bar and fell into a coma).

In 1978, Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, was found stabbed to death on a bathroom floor. He was charged with her murder, but died of a drug overdose before the case went to trial.

Georgiou was well aware of these legends. He began a multi-year research project to determine which of his doors belonged to which resident. Combing through archival materials and speaking with library desk clerks, he began piecing together the details. Reading about Warhol, for example, Georgiou discovered the room number in which the artist had filmed the avant-garde, era-defining Chelsea Girls in 1966.

All the doors are battered, with white paint chipping from many of them. Some even feature spray-painted Xs, ostensibly to signal them for removal by the construction crew. The number 211 still marks the door behind which Bob Marley once stayed. An especially decrepit, plain door tagged 126 once opened onto quarters belonging to boldface tenants like Bette Davis and Iggy Pop. A spray-painted O and a series of scratches distinguish the door once opened by Cohen, Joplin, and Joni Mitchell. Madonna, Isabella Rossellini, and Shirley Clarke all stayed in 822. As Georgiou worked, what had initially looked like damage became meaningful evidence of celebrity wear and tear.
Installation view of the doors, on view at Ricco/Maresca. Courtesy of the gallery.
Installation view of the doors, on view at Ricco/Maresca. Courtesy of the gallery.
Finally, Georgiou called Arlan Ettinger, the founder of Guernsey’s, to discuss how to sell these relics. Ettinger was quickly onboard. “Perhaps more than any other building in recent American history, the Chelsea has been home to some of the most interesting, trendsetting people who worked there, played there, had orgies there, and—not to be proud of—but in one or two cases got murdered there,” he told Artsy.
In doors, there’s both the forbidding and the inviting,” Daniel Kershaw, who designs exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has previously noted. “I’ve always felt that the most wonderful transitions that doors provide are those which give you an element of surprise, that what’s on one side of the door is so vastly different than what’s on the other side of the door.”
Gallerist Frank Maresca, who is exhibiting the doors beginning April 5th at his Chelsea location and co-hosting the April 12th auction, developed a display strategy to enhance this sense of revelation. He’s suspended 22 of them from his concrete ceiling at Ricco/Maresca with cables and stainless steel. The setup will resemble what he describes as “a labyrinth, a maze, a houseful.” 
Jackson Pollock’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.
Tennessee Williams’s door at the Chelsea Hotel. Courtesy of Guernsey’s.
The hotel holds personal significance for the gallerist, as well. Maresca himself calls El Quijote (the ground floor eatery at Hotel Chelsea, which shuttered last week) “the very first restaurant that I ever ate in in my life.” In 1967, at age 17, Maresca began working for advertising photographer Irving Schild. With his boss, he sometimes socialized with the Hotel Chelsea set. “The doors radiate the essence of the Chelsea Hotel,” Maresca said. “I would call them plain and gritty.”

So—who wants them? “You can never predict who buyers might be,” said Ettinger. He says that gallery owners, noted photographers, and even the head of a bank have already expressed interest. Estimates are very broad, from a door affiliated with Pollock  ($5,000 to $100,000) to one bearing associations with both Brian Jones and Liam Neeson ($2,000 to $20,000). Proceeds will benefit the charity City Harvest and Georgiou himself. In the future purchasers’ homes, the doors may serve as reminders of a bygone era, inspiration for creative practitioners, or anthropological curiosities. 

New Yorkers, after all, are uniquely primed to revere these battered totems and yearn for such a grungy, authentic past. Dylan, who started to write his 1966 record Blonde on Blonde while staying in the Chelsea, perfectly captured the tension between presence and absence, desire and detachment, and dirt and romance that characterize the city. 

In one of his best-loved songs from the album, “Visions of Johanna,” he sings, 

And the all-night girls, they whisper of escapades out on the D train…The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain / And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
 
Alina Cohen

"Go Long! Predictors of Positive Long Distance Relationships" the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy


 

Long Distance Relationships Can Actually End Up In Marriage

It has been universally acknowledged that having a long distance relationship is not such a good idea, especially if there is no known end-date to the separation. Endless phone calls, expensive plane tickets, low satisfaction - the list of negatives can go on and on. 
 
You have to be really very brave and mature to start a serious long distance relationship, even in the age of FaceTime and Skype. Probably the idea of any type of relationship developing and existing solely over the Internet is already enough to turn even the most romantic person into a hopeless pessimist. 
 
After all, communication and commitment are already a bit of a challenge when we live in the same geographic area with our partner, so how possibly could anyone expect a positive relationship outcome when face-to-face communication is not an option?
 
Surprisingly to us, a new joint study by Canadian and US scientists came to the conclusion that long distance relationships (or LDRs, as they are sometimes called) don�t necessarily spell disaster for your relationship and can actually end up in a happy matrimonial unit. The experts at Queen's University in Ontario, and the University of Utah, closely analyzed more than 700 individuals in long distance relationships, and 425 people in "geographically close relationships." The participants included students and non-students of both genders, and a wide range of actual distances were taken into consideration. 

First, the participants were asked to answer questions about their attitudes toward long-distance relationships, after which they had to fill out few sets of questionnaires designed to assess the quality of their relationships:
  • An assessment that measures sexual, emotional, social, intellectual and recreational satisfaction;
  • A scale of their commitment;
  • A scale that measures communication levels in a relationship;
  • "Dyadic Adjustment Scale," which measures partners� disagreement on things, such as showing affection or handling finances;
  • "Dyadic Sexual Communication Scale," which analyzes how well partners communicate about their sexual satisfaction;
  • Analysis of female sexual satisfaction;
  • Analysis of male sexual satisfaction;
  • Analysis of the amount of psychological stress, anxiety, and depression an individual has experienced in the past month.
The results revealed that those couples who were engaged in long distance relationships, were no less satisfied with their unions when compared to those couples who shared the same geographical proximity. In fact, the experts said that comparing subjects based on their sexual orientation, relationship composition, and student status revealed very similar relationship patterns. 

These outcomes indicate that being in a long distance relationship does not necessarily guarantee negative relationship outcomes.
It was found that the factors that predicted positive relationship results were not measured in miles. For instance, those individuals who felt more optimistic and secure about the future of their relationship had better quality relationships. Which is to say, it is not the geographic distance apart that matters, but the emotional distance when together. In addition, the study found that greater was the distance between the partners, greater was the intimacy, communication and overall satisfaction with the relationship.

So how to make a long distance relationship work? The experts say that the key to avoiding destructive thoughts or unwanted actions is to keep the relationship on track, which most probably will require plenty of effort. Given today�s technology and social media, communication and connection with one another is quite easy and costs almost nothing. 

Psychologists highly recommend that partners, while communicating, really find out about each other�s day and daily activities because like every successful and healthy relationship, a solid foundation based on the day-to-day sharing of each other�s ups and downs is key. 

Consequently, if partners do not communicate fully, it will have a negative impact on their health. The stress that results from worries over fidelity, trust and where the relationship is heading can lead to sleepless nights, weight loss, anxiety and even depression. And while all these signs are concerning, psychologists say that there is no official data suggesting that they are dangerous, however they could be associated with a permanent break-up.


Finally, it is very important for the health of the couple and their relationship to eventually live together in the same geographical proximity in order to figure out if their bond can survive pressures of everyday life. 

It is not like a weekend where partners are happy and devoted to each other and then for the rest of the week they miss each other and cannot wait to meet again. Things might be completely different when people move in together and start communicating on a daily basis. 

It is critical to find out if the relationship is going to survive. It is encouraging that marriages following long distance relationships have the same success rate as unions established in the same area code - provided the partners don�t get married as soon as they move in together. If they move in together first and it works well, the experts say, then the future marriage would work as well as any other marriage. 


The study, "Go Long! Predictors of Positive Relationship Outcomes in Long Distance Relationships," is published in the Journal of Sex and marital Therapy.

i was made foreman of a glazier co. tonight outside in the parking lot