This is a solid brass lions head that held a velvet rope banister one of many that went up the winding lobby of the Harkness ballet theater in Lincoln Park NYC. 
One of two outside doors to the gibbons hotel in Dayton Ohio. This was the first hotel we conducted and the stain glass windows were bought for 1,500 dollars and later in 2008 were sold at the wood and nickel auction house in cincinati OH, for 22,000
Claudia trying to tame me down on the boardwalk of the Traymore
An aerial view of the Atlantic City hotel prior to its implosion.
Clem Long Apraising a cutlass vase in 1950
I was watching Larry King live prior to the miss. America pageant and there was a big hullabaloo about how spicy the pageant became.
The show led you to believe that there would be a lot of cheesecake backhoes bikinis and cleavage walking up and down the stage.
Of course all the horny men would watch the pageant including myself that normally didn’t give a shit.
I watched and didn’t see any of the above with the exception of a brief collage of hundreds of photos of different beautiful women instead of showing them live and I couldn’t believe the stupid answers that these beautiful girls had in their interviews especially the winner miss Michigan that blurted out something about eating a pizza.
I know Donald Trump in a business sense since I liquidated many of his hotel contents and always bragged about what a great person he was to do business with. I remember his biggest trait when you talked with him is that he was a great listener and would constantly ask what you thought. For instance, before the New Jersey casinos opened he asked my opinion if it would work and or would real estate values go up, and would people be happy. My answer was yes to the first two and no to the third. I was correct especially the part about people being happy that lived there because instead of their business getting better the restaurants barbershop bars went broke because everyone went to the casinos.
Another time when we were walking through his hotel on one of the upper floors he pointed out how the conduit crossed the hall several times on each floor and his plan was to put mirrors in the ceilings to cover those conduits, I explained that I thought it would look nice but it would be very expensive since there were over 40 floors of hallways.
A funny thing that happened was when we were having a new years eve party with my employees in the New York lounge off the lobby floor. Everybody went to bed and we didn’t realize we left a big mess until next morning and when my crew went to the lobby to clean it up lo and behold there sat Donald Trump. His only remark was “How come I wasn’t invited?” and not another word was said.
We were closing the deal on the Commodore Hotel on the sidewalk outside standing by his limousine (His limousine is where we got more work done traveling from his office in queens to the hotel site) negotiating on the commissions and after we finally settled he suggested that we add an additional 10% and pay it to him for consulting fees. I didn’t like the smell of it because he had partners and the cloud of mystery it would leave over my company employees.
I’ve always received positive letters of recommendation from him on all of our sales and it also brings back memories of every deal we closed he always seemed to wiggle our fees down 25,000-50,000 dollars so he would look good for his partners.
He would really be pissed off he knew I visited his Taj Mahal with a group of friends and won 22,000 dollars. The Taj Mahal host and manager comped us on everything they tried their best to keep us to stay longer even to the extent that he would helicopter us back home to toms point. I told them not to be concerned with us getting home because one of my guests was the sheriff of tom’s point.
Another time while we were doing his hotel in Atlantic City I won another 50,000 in the playboy and the playboy comped us to another casino that had a reputation for excellent food.
Donald Trump never did intervene at any of the sales we conducted for him and was a great person to work with. My motto was do everything you say you’re going to do and that surely worked for Donald.
When the sale was being completed at the commodore he asked us for a bid to broom clean the hotel which means to remove all the debris carpeting the plates glass mirrors loose plumbing furniture fixtures and equipment. I said we’d do it for 20,000 dollars and he exclaimed he had another person that would do it for less but finally approved my offer I was tickled to get the deal but my oldest son Frank surely did resent cleaning up all the floors and the sweat and tears that went into it, he was pinch hitting for me from middle state Tennessee college where he had a scholarship to play football. My other son Jim really got the blunt of it while pitching plate glass mirrors into the dumpster he accidently got a big cut on his but and was rushed to the hospital by cab, the cab driver was afraid he was gonna bleed all over the cab and the hospital thought he was a wino bum that wouldn’t have the money to pay his bill and he was telling me about how many problems he had at the emergency room to get admitted. I was scared to death of losing that part of the job because I knew there was still a lot of stuff in the hotel that was sellable.
Instead of closing the hotel down I left a couple sales people in the lobby accumulating goods from all over the building and we sold after the sale tens of thousands more dollars of goods than we thought we would.
Fred Trump his father had a fire in one of his large rental complexes in queens and he came to the hotel and talked with me about needing some of the fine stuff we had to sell. I could see he was going to spend between 50 and 100 thousand dollars and I called over one of my best sales people and introduced him to Fred Trump. I told him to walk him through the hotel and take care of him and all his needs.
In ten minutes my sales person came back surprisingly and I asked him what happened with mr. Trump? My NCL salesman promptly said he was taken care of. I asked “How’d you do that?” Well he said “I showed mr. Trump a few of the guest room suites he said he needed 50 rooms and I told him that his time was too valuable to be walking around this hotel buying used furniture. I told mr. Trump that I knew what he wanted and I would pick it out for him guaranteeing his satisfaction.
I told Don Trump about this transaction and the first thing Don said in a jokingly manner “Don’t give him any discounts!”. Don was having an auction of one of his condominium units in trump towers west palm beach and me and my wife attended and his auction was a success and I introduced Don to my wife and she’s been in love with him ever since. Donald never really did like to shake hands with people for sanitary purposes I guess but lately I found after working so closely with him in the past he won’t return my phone calls. I’m going to do a story about the Commodore and I wanted his input in maybe recommending a ghost writer and publisher to help me with it.
I always liked to go to the Commodore from my office in Dayton OH, because it was only a one hour trip to Manhattan. I’d drove to the airport jump on a plane catch a heli-copter at LaGuardia that landed on the pan am building go down the elevator and a short walk to the Commodore. This surely made me feel like a big shot 40 years ago (I have to admit it was two hours to the Commodore but there was a one hour time change).
I have to admit to Don that it was a feather in my cap and I will always be proud to have been the auctioneer (liquidator) that handled the largest hotel contents sale, I forgive the Donald for his poor marketing on the pageant (but I won’t forget him) although I’m sure it made the ratings skyrocket.
Maybe I’m wrong, what do all you bloggers think when you didn’t see any live cheesecake at the pageant.
Anxiously awaiting your response,
Clem D. Long
Auctioneer and Hotel Liquidator
Creator of Hotel Liquidation Industry
Founder of three generations of Hotel Liquidators
2 comments:
I was married to Mike Kabealo when we were working for The Donald and I will never forget Evona! She was new to New York and so was I but it was obvious that they were going somewhere with her beauty and his connections!
Donald went to school with my husbands cousin of the same name and said to Mike "Your not Mike Kabealo". He was so intimidating we almost believed him...
We were alone together in the old managers office at the Commodore in the lobby when we met as we were the onsite connection for our liquidation company. It was an eerie setting because the 600 rooms were empty because the hotel was closed to start the renovation project and the lobby lights were turned off.
It was just the four of us in this intimate space making business connections and small chat. Two different worlds coming together to make a change in the scheme of things in New York. We were midwesterners in the big city and they were the big city.
Donald was hoping to turn the economy around in the Big Apple during the Recession of the 1970's and this was one of his first projects. He had an agreement with the city to get a twenty year tax abatement for his efforts in renovating the Commodore and part of the agreement included the city cleaning up Grand Central Station which was attached to the building. They left after our brief engagement and I never saw him often during the sale because we worked with his point man on the project.
Mike and I stayed at the hotel in a room up on the third with one other person who had a rental agreement that was still good. They let her stay until it ran out because she had lived in the hotel for 20 or so years.
The whole effort took over a year and in that time we had a son (another Mike Kabealo) who lived with us on the job and learned to walk there. We were living our lives together working many happy hours under the tootle ledge of the Trump organization and our growing liquidation company.
Later we declined jobs with the Trump Organization. As family members of the liquidation company we were in a good position to move up in the company. Watching mothers push baby carriages down the streets of Manhattan was not appealing to us being from a small town in Ohio.
If we only knew then what we know now! No regrets... It is all good!
I met John and Yoco Lenon during the opening of the Commodore Hotel Liquidation Sale. Clem Long asked me if some guy and his wife could line jump,saying his name was John Lenon. I told Clem, "let me take care of it". I met John Lenon at the from door, told the security police to let them both in. Lenon replied, "thank you very much", then he dissapeared into the sale.
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