I’m in New York, staying at The Ace Hotel just off Broadway on 29th Street. This city is so overwhelmingly huge that I’ve felt a need for context way beyond anything I’ve experienced before. Unfortunately, The Ace’s welcoming bumph details very little of the building’s history, mentioning only that it started life as Hotel Breslin in 1904 (shown above) and that the current owners attempted to retain as many original fixtures as possible, namely the lobby’s ‘ornate coffered ceilings and mosaic tile floors’. But the web reveals more.

The name Hotel Breslin evokes pre-Jazz Age Manhattan, a city forging upwards and outwards at breakneck speed. Buildings like The Breslin became the bones of the city, enduring structures on which we drape temporary furnishings. Their survival, or otherwise, is governed by chance - the confluence of opinion, influence and relative disrepair. The building once known as Hotel Breslin remains, even as what it once was disappears. But some of its stories persist, helping to shape the present, providing a little of its form even.

Here are some of those stories:

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Much like The Ace today, Hotel Breslin was initally painfully hip. In a fascinating piece documenting the protracted dispute between long-term tenants and the developers, the NYT notes the following:

Soon after opening, it became one of New York’s best known hotels. Notables like Diamond Jim Brady frequented the Dixie Room, its fashionable dancing and dining spot. The Breslin also catered to visiting foreign businessmen; in 1907, for instance, executives of Fiat, Renault and other foreign carmakers gathered there to discuss their coming exhibition at Madison Square Garden.

As the years passed, in part owing to the Breslin’s proximity to Tin Pan Alley on West 28th Street, the hotel also acquired a reputation as an artists’ hangout. It housed characters like Patrick Roche, a cafe proprietor and fight promoter, who used to sit in his favorite chair in the lobby, now painted the same faded pink as the hotel exterior, and receive actors and fighters who were down on their luck and needed his help.

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In its declining years, the hotel also hosted one Harry Everett Smith, American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic. The blog Celestial Monochord has more, including the following from Allan Ginsberg, an acquaintance of Mr Smith’s:

Then Harry went into a funny kind of amphetamine tailspin.  He got really paranoid and got moved out of the Chelsea, I think, or expelled or something.  He couldn’t pay his rent, and wound up in a series of other hotels, including the Breslin Hotel, by 1984.  But he wouldn’t talk to anybody, wouldn’t talk to me, maybe because I didn’t supply him with money, because I was broke at the time …

I didn’t see Harry for a long while and began visiting him again at the Breslin Hotel, on 28th Street and Broadway.  Same problem, still wanting money …

In that room at the Breslin, the whole room was taken up with shelves of books and records, then a movie editing table, and a tiny bed.  I have some photographs of that, of him pouring milk, The Alchemist Transforming Milk into Milk.

In that bathroom he had a little birdie that he fed and talked to, and let out of his cage all the time.  When his little birds died, he put their bodies in the freezer.  He’d keep them for various alchemical purposes, along with a bottle, which he said was several years’ deposits of his semen, which he was also using for whatever magic structures.

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The New York Observer, reporting on the difficulties in getting The Ace up and running, tells how hotelier Alex Calderwood struck a deal with another of the building’s former tenants:

For example, there’s this woman: She actually lived here for a long time, then decided to move, but she still lives in the neighborhood. She owns a glove factory across the street. It’s been in her family for years and years and years; I think it’s the oldest glove factory in Manhattan. We met her and she’s great. … So we’ve put together a program where we’re going to have a bespoke glove service for the guests. We’ll do the fitting here and the next day the gloves are waiting in your room.

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I don’t know if the glove service ever made it off the ground. I hope so. I like the idea of owning a bespoke pair of gloves made in Manhattan’s oldest glove factory that I bought in a hotel that was once a different hotel.

June meandered along, rather purposeless at first, but still pleasant. Barbecues with friends, the quiet routine of work, home, work, home. I started watching late-night repeats of Star Trek The Next Generation, unable to resist the nostalgic fix.

Last weekend was a little more purposeful though. The Sophster and I travelled to the Danish island of Bornholm and bought a Border Terrier puppy we have named Bobby, after my grandfather. Like my grandfather, he seems to have a rather mischievous sense of humour. Which is a polite way of saying he’s a little bastard.

I made it to the Friday parties at this year’s Distortion Festival here in Copenhagen. It was a lot of fun, hanging out with some great friends, drinking some beers, people-watching. They describe it as a ‘loosely orchestrated street and club festival’ and that sums it up perfectly.

One friend noted that the festival shows Copenhagen at its relaxed, accepting best. Indie kids, white kids, club kids, Asian kids, families - anyone and everyone happily mingling on the streets. No aggression, no bad vibes.

The rest of my pics from the night are here.

This is a beautiful piece of advertising, made even more powerful by the choice of music. The sense of pathos is greatly amplified - narrative and soundtrack working together perfectly to form a truly poignant whole:

It was an odd month. Not much happened, the weather especially forgettable. For all that, there were moments worth remembering:

This is my mate Dean.

Sometimes, when he’s a little drunk, he pokes me in the ribs, puts his arm round my shoulders and asks: ‘You know what I like about you geez?’

‘What’s that then?’ I say.

‘Everything’, he tells me.

I had my hair cut today. My barnet is now so reduced that I’ve eschewed my hairdresser in favour of a barber whose services are a third of the price. Soon clippers will suffice and I’ll be able to skip the chair once and for all.

It’s a thought that leaves me sad.

I can remember my grandfather taking my cousin and I to get haircuts when we were young boys, five or six or so. He took us to a place called Don and Dario’s, Italian brothers whose trade was decimated when the local Marconi’s factory was closed. I was young. The memories are hazy. I remember looking at the newspapers and periodicals, feeling overawed. I also remember Paul Hardcastle’s 19 playing on the radio one time.

As the years passed, we got too old for our grandfather to take us. I went to a place in the town centre called Cutmore’s. A smoky little room at the top of a flight of stairs off an alleyway.

I went there the last time I went back to England. I think I wanted to see if I could remember. Much was familiar: the dated pictures of men’s hairstyles, the linoleum, worn and discoloured around the chairs from the barbers’ gentle tread, the haphazard formation of combs and scissors on the counter. Dax wax in blue tins, neck brushes, Wahl clippers and tissue boxes. My hair on the floor.

Pure Ecstasy - Voices [part 3 of 3] from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

This is a wonderful record store recording of Pure Ecstasy performing the beautiful track, Voices. The band come from Austin, Texas, and have already been listed as one of Pitchfork’s ‘Rising‘ acts.

The film itself comes from Yours Truly, a creative collective from San Francisco.

YouTube comments never let me down. In this case, the dude might be right. Marvellous ad from a couple of years ago by Butler Shine:

Copenhagen’s one and only shop dedicated to fixed gear riding moved into new premises on Saturday and I popped along to say hi. Here’s a few pics:

Henceforth you can find them in Nørrebro at Rantzausgade 2.