"'Everybody was really competitive, even though there was nothing to win.' Disillusioned, he turned to music. 'I thought, as long as I’m going to be here, I might as well be in some profession where I can make a living,' he said with a laugh.... Like many old tenement apartments, Mr. Hell’s has its bathtub in the kitchen.... 'I love my apartment. I have no complaints about it'.... And his needs have evolved along with the neighborhood. 'Now I have an apartment where they actually keep the heat on, I can get the most fantastic food within walking distance, I’m central to all the stuff I love to go to in Manhattan, and I don’t want to go out on the weekends because it’s such a frenzy of college kids and bridge-and-tunnel people and tourists.... But I don’t want to go out anyway. I have everything I need right here.'"
I love articles like this — a real person in their natural habitat. It gets my "interior decoration" tag, but it's so much more interesting than those words make it sound.
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23 comments:
I dont understand these people. Why arent they going places, doing things, that will give them something to write about?
If you are going to be depraved, even, why not do a Rimbaud and Verlaine, join a revolution, shoot your friends with revolvers, take drugs in Ethiopia and abuse the natives.
That at least yields material.
Is his daughter also a Hell?
Interesting. Thats quite a big 1 bedroom apartment for NYC. He has a loft, wonder whats up there. More books?
Hell’s dump was Hell.
Persona Life: "In 1976, Hell dated Nancy Spungen for a few months before she moved to England.] Hell was married to Scandal's Patty Smyth for two years during 1985–86, and they had a daughter, Ruby."
Translation: He's Gay.
Last time I was in a tenement apartment in that part of NYC, there were three locks on the door, a shared toilet for everyone on the floor, and an unlocked building entrance that smelled of urine. The bathtub was in the kitchen with a sheet metal lid that made it a counter. Rent was $12/mo, IIRC. I wonder if it was rent controlled?
Caleb Simpson takes videos of people and their apartments in NYC.
This is my absolute favorite:
https://www.tiktok.com/@calebwsimpson/video/7337737652260670763
Ocean: "Translation: He's Gay."
The article says there's workspace in the apartment for his current girlfriend, Katherine Faw, who is his daughter's age and hot, as is Ms Smyth and as was Ms Spungen. (Note: Patti Smyth of Scandal, singer of "The Warrior," is not Patti Smith of the Horses album. Two very different Pattis.)
He doesn't sound gay to me. CC, JSM
“Patti Smyth of Scandal, singer of "The Warrior,"…”
I was just playing “the warrior” yesterday because I was listening to Pete Hegseth talking about the warrior culture he had going in the department of war and the song played in my head to the point where I needed to actually listen to it. Great song.
Prof, I concur! Often dismissed as mid-80's schlock. But it's really good mid-80's schlock. And of course a girl like Ms Smyth, with a band called Scandal, could sing the phone book and make it work. CC, JSM
What happens to all those books when he dies? My local library no longer accepts book donations, and in fact sometimes offers some books for free to patrons to clear some shelf space. My kids have no interest in my books—"My house is too small and I already have all the books I need."
Perhaps he should start auctioning off the most valuable ones, the ones with author inscriptions.
Nice article, thanks for the link.
I'm the opposite. I need room, lots of room, acres, a horizon with miles of world between me and it. I even felt claustrophobic living in rural western Pennsylvania, because the rolling hills usually hid the horizon and you couldn't see more than a mile. I want 20, 30 miles of open space and no human sounds. I want to see the zombie hordes coming hours before they get to me.. I don't have it now, but I always wanted a house with a view like that where I could sit on the porch and just watch many square miles of land laid out before me. I'm glad we are all different. It leaves my dream a possibility.
I'm guessing he's got a rent-controlled apartment. It explains why he's stayed there so long, and why it looks like crap.
I had to google Patty Smyth after reading "Mr. Hell was briefly married to the singer Patty Smyth", to make sure that wasn't a typo. It wasn't. Ms. Smyth is now married to John McEnroe.
That’s quite the punk apartment Richard Hell has been curating for 50 years. I’m guessing his ex-wife Patty Smyth left him because she didn’t want to raise her daughter there, and that Richard Hell has spent the last 40 years breaking up with girlfriends when they can’t stand it any longer and insist on painting the place.
The bathtub in the kitchen is due to the New York Tenement House Act of 1901.
The New York Post says bathtubs were put into the kitchen for reasons of available space. I suspect it was for the convenience of heating the bath water on the stove.
By some metrics, he's had a successful life. Nonetheless, I don't think warped floor boards are the foundation for a happy life. I wouldn't want to live there on a rainy day after my girl friend broke up with me...... I hope he doesn't leave any food laying around. That apartment is a rodent magnet.
A gift link that actually worked for me. Wonderful stuff. I remember my first visit to an apartment with tub in kitchen. It was the first room into which the entrance door opened. I was surprised to see it, especially since there was a plastic sheet around it -- they must have put up a shower device -- and it seemed like a strange temple zone. But it was indeed practical in its way. A different way, and not a bad way, either. Richard Hell and the Voidoids.... I remember, though I never went to any of their shows. Only bed in sight in his apartment looked pretty small, a single? Or was it up in the loft? The New York scene is a lot of stuff from people who live in their own heads and try to communicate about it in one medium or another; and then sometimes swap stuff, as he describes. Being New York City elevates the weirdness into something art-adjacent and they live for that category.
I saw the Voidoids once in NYC. Gawd that was so long ago.
I can't imagine living in that apartment.
"Ms. Smyth is now married to John McEnroe."
They're quite a fiery couple. I heard them interviewed on a podcast a few years back.
I can't enjoy the pix without signing in, so will accept what everyone else reports.
I keep adding to my personal library, both paperback and hardback, in full knowledge that it will be a white elephant for whoever survives me. Some of it, at least, could be of interest to the public and university libraries but most of it will probably be dumpsterized.
Sad.
Can't say he's not true to his scene.
I just see all that flaking paint and wonder, "How much lead dust this man has injested"
Looks like where an old person eating on $64 a month would live.
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