This Aint No Holiday Inn, James Lough
This Aint No Holiday Inn, James Lough
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This Ain't No Holiday Inn
Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel, 1980–1995; An Oral History

Author: James Lough

Narrator: Paul Boehmer, Gabrielle de Cuir, Robertson Dean, Justine Eyre, Alex Hyde-White, Jim Meskimen, Arthur Morey, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki, various narrators

Unabridged: 8 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/17/2020


Synopsis

During its heyday, the Chelsea Hotel in New York City was a home and safe haven for Bohemian artists, poets, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, and Dee Dee Ramone.This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic façade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.Providing a window into the late Bohemia of New York during that time, countless interviews, and firsthand accounts adorn this social history of one of the most celebrated and culturally significant landmarks in New York City.

About James Lough

James Lough is the former director of the creative writing program at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he currently teaches full-time. He is the author of Sites of Insight, which won the Colorado Endowment of Humanities Award. He is also the winner of the Frank Waters Southwestern Writing Award for short fiction. Additionally, he is coeditor with Alex Stein of two anthologies of aphoristic and short-form poetry, Short Flights and Short Circuits, published respectively in 2015 and 2018 by Schaffner Press. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

About Paul Boehmer

Read by John Rubinstein, Robertson Dean, Alex Hyde-White, Stefan Rudnicki, Paul Boehmer, Jim Meskimen, Arthur Morey, Gabrielle de Cuir, and Justine Eyre

About Gabrielle de Cuir

Gabrielle de Cuir, award-winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills. She was a cowinner of the Audie Award for best narration in 2011 and a three-time finalist for the Audie and has garnered six AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her “velvet touch” as an actor’s director has earned her a special place in the audiobook world as the foremost producer for bestselling authors and celebrities.

About Robertson Dean

Robertson Dean has played leading roles on and off Broadway and at dozens of regional theaters throughout the country. He has a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from Yale. His audiobook narration has garnered ten AudioFile Earphones Awards. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he works in film and television in addition to narrating.

About Justine Eyre

Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She is multilingual and known for her great facility with accents. She has appeared on stage, with leading roles in King Lear and The Crucible, and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men.

About Alex Hyde-White

Alex Hyde-White is an actor and a producer of two films and hundreds of audiobooks thru his label Punch Audio.

About Jim Meskimen

Jim Meskimen is a stage, film, and television actor who has appeared in many well-known movies and television shows. He acted in Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon for director Ron Howard, both of which were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. His television appearances include The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Friends, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, and Parks and Recreation. He is also a painter, award-winning audiobook narrator, and audiobook director for Galaxy Audio.

About Arthur Morey

Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.

About John Rubinstein

John Rubinstein is an actor, composer, and director who won a Tony Award for his starring role in Broadway’s Children of a Lesser God. He has narrated dozens of audiobooks, earning several AudioFile Earphones Awards and being named a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2013.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennie on August 19, 2015

I really liked reading about the interesting characters living in the Chelsea in the last throes of it's heydey. However, bad editing on Kindle version. Additionally, if you want to read about how New York changed during the late 1980s-90s, you pretty much won't find much of that here. There is an aw......more

Goodreads review by Kenya on November 07, 2015

This would have been perfect if the information was presented in a different format. The author checks into the hotel himself and does flashbacks from other's interviews. I would've rather it just been presented as a typical history of the hotel verses back and forth. It got a bit dense after a whil......more

Goodreads review by Angie on February 09, 2016

This book was a short oral history of some of the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel from 1980-1995. I have read other books on the Chelsea and enjoyed them more. This title did mainly deal with characters I wasn't super familiar with other than Dee Dee Ramone and the Beat poets.......more

Goodreads review by GK on October 12, 2018

Just when you thought you knew every story ever told about the Chelsea Hotel, it's time to check into "This Ain't No Holiday Inn," and what tasty tales are told. A fast, fun, scary read that's hard to put down. The book picks up speed as it unfolds; here are conversations from the last days of the g......more

Goodreads review by Glorianne on March 02, 2015

I wrote this whole great review, and then my laptop, had a hissy fit and I lost it, in more ways than one.....anyway the book was great...it brought me home to a time that I loved. running wild on the lower east side....23rd street was as high up as, we went....so far this is one of the better books......more


Quotes

“I think the Chelsea would be a trifle wearing as a place to live, but it’s a blast to read about.” Palm Beach Post

“Throughout the book, Lough provides some wonderful descriptions of the building itself, which has come to mean so much to so many people.” Beatdom

“This exuberant oral history focuses on the period 1980-1995, arguably the landmark’s final stretch as a haven for bohemian misfits. Lough arranges anecdotes from interviews with dozens of hotel ‘veterans, ' whose memories are peppered with cameos of famous fixtures…Lough’s conversational style connects narrative threads as he bemoans the creative conditions in contemporary NYC and wonders can ‘counterculture survive in an atmosphere almost entirely comprised of wealth?’" Publishers Weekly