Ace in this case...

As I had mentioned in my previous post Ace Is The Place the Ace Hotel's lobby is one of my favorite creative atmospheres. Many media outlets categorize this specific place as a communal work space, which is what drew me to the hotel in the first place. So let me tell you about my first experience doing work at the Ace...

Ace Hotel NYC Front Desk

Late one chilly February evening last year after leaving my busy job as head hostess in a trendy SoHo restaurant, I had a paper to finish for one of my communication courses that semester. So after skimming a few late night spots that Google threw at me, this particular place seemed promising, little did I know what was in store. Walking through the doors around 11:00 p.m. I noticed a spot at a table next to a lovely corner bookshelf, which I snagged right away. Sitting next to me was a peculiar character, who furiously typing on his computer gave me the impression that he was a writer. A lanky man, with greyish hair and dark features surrounded my papers and books was a writer indeed, a conspiracy theorist writer at that and the second-coming of Christ and the person that "predicted" 9/11 - what a guy. So after about 30 minutes of a conversation that started with this mystery person asking me about the book I'm reading - aptly titled The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, here I was 2 hours later asking him what the point of his manifesto that he'd been writing for 10 years was. Not to much surprise, the point never surfaced, but at OK! magazine article with his photo in it did. I have since attempted to find it, but this stranger never actually introduced himself.

In the midst of the conversation, which at a point steered towards fractals (see video below) and the fact that the universe is a spec amidst a never ending pattern, little did I know I entered a never ending conversation until I made the conscious choice to leave (one of my better ideas)

Leaving the building, a person that was sitting at the communal table who I happened to make eye contact with amidst the insanity that I had endured sparked a conversation over a cigarette (don't worry, I've quit since) and what he was doing at the Ace was not writing a conspiracy theory, but attempting a art concept based around the Six Degrees of Separation which was a concept touched upon by Gladwell in the book I was reading at the time. Mads Madsen (yes, that's his real name) has since been one of my very close friends that I have pursued a few artistic projects with, we also shared a studio space for a while. By the end of our conversation, I had given his The Turning Point, without ever finishing it because the coincidence of the situation had been just too great. So circling around to why his project was so relevant, is that he had given a thousand dollar Contax camera to a stranger in the lobby of the Ace during a party and told the stranger to take a few photos and pass it along. By the end of the night, lo and behold, on just trust in humanity Mads got his camera back with a full roll of film resulting with the room buzzing about the concept of the camera. Not only did this experiment bring people together, but it proved that a space and its ambiance does have an impact on how people act and interact within its borders. 

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