Karen’s Quirky Style Luxuriates at the Hotel Chelsea Rooftop Spa & Lobby Bar

At the Hotel Chelsea you can check out any time you like, but you won’t ever want to leave. With the recent opening of the rooftop spa on the eleventh floor of the hotel at 222 West 23rd Street, there’s even more reasons to visit and linger.

The spa offers luxurious facials, massages, and other healing therapies such as reiki. And as a special treat for New York apartment dwellers, you can enjoy the lush green oasis of the rooftop garden after your treatment. It’s not the same as living in the pyramid penthouse that used to be here (and is now the hotel’s fitness center), as did Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, but you might hear ethereal tinkling laughter from past rooftop occupants and celebrants.

I felt it was my duty to you dear readers to splurge for a spa experience. My last facial was in the mists of time before the pandemic, so I was excited to receive some pampering, and I was not disappointed. My aesthetician, Elyse, began by giving me a foot soak and mini foot massage while she examined my face and devised a customized facial for my unique needs. Her touch was divine and for an hour I floated on a cloud of bliss. My skin was unusually clear, smooth, and plumpified for days.

Afterwards, I rehydrated in the rooftop garden, then went downstairs to dehydrate with a Chelsea Morning cocktail in the Lobby Bar—one of my favorite places in NYC. I stayed at the hotel and had my first brunch of the year in the Lobby Bar, and I brought my crew back here to shoot this month’s column. I love hanging out in the solarium at the back, and we did the shoot in the adjacent garden.

Amy and I ordered cocktails right away, but Phil, being conscientious, abstained until the photos were taken. Then we shared exceptional crudités with saffron aioli and savory yogurt and the best fries in New York—delightfully skinny, salty, crispy, and tender inside. I keep coming back for these fries and for the extraordinary truffle ice cream with truffle toffee and Maldon salt. Not just any salt—not the passé Himalayan salt—but salt gathered from the high-salinity banks of the River Blackwater in Essex, England! Hmm.

If you have a fat wallet and the urge to buy into the mystique of the Hotel Chelsea, it’s a place to find sybaritic pleasure. I’ve been fascinated with the hotel since I saw the 1986 film “Sid and Nancy,” and even more so after reading Patti Smith’s 2010 autobiography “Just Kids.” But it must be said that this lounge of luxury—eclectic though it is—is not quite in the spirit of the original hotel.

Founded with the highest social ideals for cooperative housing, and run for 43 years by Sidney Bard—who allowed literally starving artists to pay their rent in paintings—the hotel was a community of eclectic creatives who fought and loved and lived and died here. Though some of the original residents still live at the hotel in rent-controlled apartments—and it’s still a place to inspire artists such as this humble author and billionaires like Taylor Swift—today’s starving artists wouldn’t be able to afford a carrot here. I want to love it, I do love it, but it leaves a strange taste in my mouth, like the lingering twang of the truffle ice cream.

Style Notes

Popsicle-toned chartreuse double silk georgette blouse and fuchsia 4-ply silk crepe miniskirt with silk chiffon trim from Andrea T New York at 147 West 35th Street (by appointment only). Ballet-slipper pink Prada 5 1/2″ satin pumps from the delightful Collette’s Basement, 10 Main Street, Southampton.

Karen Rempel is a New York-based writer, model, and artist. Her Karen’s Quirky Style column illuminates quirky clothes and places in Manhattan. For past stories, see https://karenqs.nyc.