1/26: The Chelsea with Gabrielle Macafee

Wishlist Interviews: Part 3

Jan 26, 2025

I’ve never been to Paris, but I’ve been to The Chelsea with Gabrielle Macafee and that’s pretty damn close.

Let me pause and make an important distinction: call her Gabrielle or Gab but never Gabby.

It was last Sunday and we were texting each other as we made our separate commutes into Manhattan. We were both running late and “fuck the train!” sentiments were exchanged. I was the first to arrive and I was intimidated to step foot on the hallowed ground of The Chelsea. I was concerned the hotel itself could sense this was my first time visiting.

“Gabrielle Macafee?” I said to the hostess at the front of the café. She whisked me to the back room with arching ceilings and chairs with rich fabric. Gab’s name must be dog-eared in the system because when they saw she made a reservation, they saved the best booth in the restaurant for us - one of those womb-like spots that’s enclosed on three sides. I began reading a book as I sipped on drip coffee that came in its own silver pot. Gab made her entrance shortly after I settled in.

Her head popped over the side of the booth and we greeted each other with a flurry of exclamations about the weather and what we were wearing and how lucky we were to get this booth and how happy we were to see each other.

I first met Gab when she was working at El Pingüino in Greenpoint. A mutual friend, Jess, introduced me after telling me all about her project, Lucky Dinner Club. We chatted for a bit and I discovered she was an Aquarius, but the conversation was brief. It was her shift after all.

We continued orbiting each other, going to similar parties, hanging out with similar friends. We occasionally sent dms on Instagram and I wrote about Lucky Dinner Club events in Wishlist. Last September, we finally met up at Cecily and got to know each other. Turns out we have very similar stories and know what it means to use metamorphosis as a survival technique. A few months after that, I was Jess’ plus one to a Lucky Dinner Club event. It was incredible to see Gab in action. She becomes the embodiment of hospitality. Her home, where the event took place, transformed into a rich feast with friends and strangers who quickly became friends. Gab presided over the homemade gnocchi in the kitchen and a perpetual breeze wafted through the railroad apartment as guests crawled in and out the window to smoke on the fire escape.

Everything about Gabrielle is epicurean. She has a lust for life, gobbling it up until its last lipidic drop streaks down her chin. Her insatiable appetite makes those around her realize they’ve been starving.

This desire to experience it all, wide-eyed, makes her an incredible storyteller. We know we’re going to be chatting for a while so we choose our brunch items as soon as we can. Café Chelsea specializes in French cuisine. I pass off the responsibility of ordering to Gab. Saying anything French scares me. I’m afraid of mispronouncing a word because a francophile might be lurking around the corner, ready to pounce on my plebeian sensibilities and Texas upbringing.

We ordered the Pain Perdu (delicious french toast with mascarpone filling) and a Croque-Monsieur (a sandwich with rosemary ham and gruyere).

We caught up on the facts of life. TikTok had been banned the night before and at the beginning of our conversation it hadn’t been reinstated. We discussed how we felt about censorship, our government’s double standard for sharing data, and of course where we were when the app stopped working. Gab told me of a TikTok she once made that went viral. Most of the comments were from the girlies, being supportive and hyping her up but, “a few times I got very scary incel-ly comments about how they wanted to test my brain in a lab and how I was a pathetic excuse for a human being and my father hated me.” She said she couldn’t imagine posting similar videos to Instagram given their lack of content moderation.

Then we made our rounds talking about what New Yorkers like to discuss most: our careers. Gab wants to get into food styling and writing about lifestyle and traveling (if you have a lead on something, hit her up). She expressed how it’s been a slow start to the year in events world, an unfortunate downside to the industry, and how she is antsy to dive into something new. She said, “most of the things I do now are because I had the willpower to do it. I’m not really scared of rejection anymore… at all.”

Until the next step is illuminated, she’s hanging out in her gym’s sauna, cooking, and planning for her birthday. Due to a scheduling oversight, she’s going to be working on her birthday this year, playing piano at The Nines. She’s kicked around the idea of renting a room at The Chelsea and throwing a party like she did last year.

We covered a lot of ground in our conversation, the brunch rush swirling around us as we spoke. Towards the end of the meal, Gabrielle brought up a friend she made at the hotel, a woman named Susan. She was an artist who had lived at The Chelsea since the 70’s which meant she had a rent stabilized apartment.

Gab was a regular and Susan’s artwork hung on the hotel walls. They were circling each other, bound to meet. She told me all about celebrating Susan’s birthday several years ago, surrounded by twenty-somethings in the Lobby Bar. She was a night owl whose circadian rhythm naturally synced with Gab’s hospitality shifts. They would spend hours talking.

When Susan’s health took a turn for the worst, Gab was with her. She was the one who called the ambulance. She recounted the harrowing experience of navigating New York’s healthcare system and trying to contact Susan’s family to let them know what was happening. Gab visited her regularly in the hospital, occasionally singing to her, even though Susan could no longer communicate due to being intubated at the beginning of her stay. Six months of hospital visits had gone by and Gab was packing for an extended European stay. She was going to visit Susan one last time before she left but was running late due to those last-minute errands that creep up before a trip. When she finally arrived at her bedside, the doctor was in Susan’s room. They nonchalantly said, “Oh, you’re just in time. We just put in her vocal trach 15 minutes ago and she is speaking again.” Gabrielle sobbed. It felt like a gift. She was able to have a conversation with Susan for the first time since she checked into the hospital.

Gab left for her trip the next day and shortly after she received the news that Susan’s health declined and she was moved to a hospice center in Staten Island.

Her friendship with Susan changed her life and she compared it to a New York love story, crediting The Chelsea for being their matchmaker. After brunch, I asked Gab to show me Susan’s painting. It was hanging on the second floor and shocked my senses with its deep hues and complex textures. While she was traveling, she would send Susan pictures of what she saw and Susan would respond with cropped screenshots of a flower or trees she liked from the images. “I’m sketching this right now,” she’d say.

Walking around the hotel and hearing about its significance in Gab’s life felt sacred, like she left a door cracked open, a sliver of light grazing my face.

Our tour ran into another impromptu tour given by Man-Laï to wanderers she discovered in the banquet room. Man-Laï is one of Gab’s friends, neighbor to Susan, and a resident at the hotel. We stayed in the hall and talked about Trump and the inauguration, taking turns to roll our eyes. We all shook our heads at the state of the world, making comments like clucking hens. Biggie, Man-Laï’s stout, small dog, circled our feet, dodging our attempted pets with impressive nimbleness.

Man-Laï excused herself and Gab and I stayed in the banquet room, watching Biggie run back and forth through the lobby. Gab told me about a date at the hotel bar that ended with a man giving her a sticker that said “sexy trouble” in pink cursive.

We’re cackling when her phone screen lights up. “Oh! You’re about to meet another Chelsea regular,” she tells me as we make our way to the Lobby Bar where Man-Laï told us to meet her. Biggie’s already there thanks to the dutiful hotel employees that reunited him with his owner. We shuffle past the commotion and say “Hi” to Man-Laï again before heading into the plush salon.

Skye is reclined on a zebra couch. He’s writing something on a lined notepad with a heavy brass pen.

We make ourselves at home in the surrounding chairs after a brief round of introductions. Immediately, we’re submerged in his world. He’s just gotten back from Paris and he paints every anecdote with generous strokes. He tells us of the rabbit he ate for Christmas and a cheeky birthday gift and the best place to drink the most expensive cocktail in Paris (“20 euros! Tops!”). He’s a sculptor and uses a single wire to construct elegant portraits but we caught him naked today without his pliers or spool. He tells Gab about a hotel that once was a brothel that she has to stay in on her next trip. One caveat: she must bring a lover. Sleeping alone in a room of a retired brothel is a cardinal sin.

Predictably, we broached the subject of the hotel’s crackling energy. It surfaces with a familiarity that indicates it’s a regular topic of conversation. Skye says he doesn’t “want to become just a piece of furniture” in The Chelsea. There is a force that beckons to people under the striped awning at its entrance. They stay in this world until they become a fixture of the building itself like a painting on the wall or red booth.

I check my phone and see that it’s after 3 pm. I have to head back to Brooklyn so I say goodbye Skye and Gab and follow the maze-like hallways to the lobby. There is something otherworldly about the space. Even as I recall the 4 hours I spent breathing in its air, there’s a feeling I can’t kick, a taste I can’t quite identify, a haze that strokes the edges of my memory.

Skye called it a “vortex” and while the word often has a more ominous connotation, it reminds me of being a child and reading a Wrinkle in Time. There’s mystery, there’s danger, there’s hope, there’s love. It’s dripping with a similar decadent sheen as Gabrielle herself. They’re both magnetic, pulling others into their stories, their feasts, their revelry.

Walking out of the hotel, my boots scraping on the salt and the snow beginning to softly fall, I was grateful to have glimpsed their singularity.

Which brings me to the main event ⬇️

Gab’s Wishlist

Thought Starters

Jean-Luc Godard Films

This is her highbrow answer. So highbrow, in fact, that I had no idea what she was talking about. She generously explained it to me and now my homework is to watch a couple French Noir films.

“I’m just trying to get my brain out of the monotony and into France, you know?”

Grey’s Anatomy

This is her lowbrow answer. She didn’t need to explain anything to me about this one. “I’m watching it until my eyes fall out. I’m waking up at 5 in the morning seeing my buttered toast, dinner for one, on my stomach and watching Meredith Grey go through it again.” She’s been wondering if her love for this show is scratching an itch for med school. Her friends are trying to convince her to become a butcher instead.

Products

Isigny Ste Mere (French butter)

You can find this at fancier grocery stores and Gab is personally obsessed with the unsalted kind. “Even if I’m not doing well financially, I will buy this butter because it’s so good. It’s nice to put on toast, eat it in bed, let the crumbs flow down your body. I’m a butter believer. I’m a butter woman.”