21 February 2006

the les as a tourist destination

the madre was in town this weekend and decided she wanted to stay at a hotel. she asked me for suggestions, and i booked us at the hotel on rivington. why? because i wanted to see the inside, and i couldn't resist the idea of experiencing the neighborhood from inside a big glass tower, as though it was an amusement park. it's funny, and kind of sad, that there's this posh hotel in the middle of what used to be a bunch of crack houses. not that i'm advocating crack houses, but it sort of signals the end of an era for the neighborhood. once that blue thing is up, it's over. that's why i love park slope, it was never hip enough to get overrun by that certain kind of person who just wants to live in the hip neighborhood because it's hip.

anyway, here are some details and pictures of this bizzare and stinky place.

the first thing i noticed was a pungent, extremely unpleasant odor in the hallway. mom thought it was urine, but i know the smell of urine, and this wasn't it. i thought it smelled more like shit. eventually, we pinpointed it, the smell was vomit. mom said it was probably new carpet, cause sometimes that smells bad.

i've slept in a lot of different beds in my life. this was in the top five. unfortunately it (and the gorgeous down pillows and duvets) was so comfortable i kept waking up thinking, "ohh, this is great". but that's ok.

the curtains are controlled by a switch. yes, i spent about 10 minutes playing with the button. bzzzzz. bzzzzz. automatic curtains are fun.

the mini bar was pretty hoity toity, and annoying. stocked with requisite starbucks coffee drinks and coke, there was also courvosier, sofia wine (that canned stuff that the coppola kid "makes"), bloody teany tea drinks, two kinds of champagne and fancy nuts.

if you are skimming this, make sure you stop here and pay real attention: i was excited about a kit kat and picked it up only to discover that some very cheeky person had carefully opened the package, taken out ONE BAR and replaced it. ONE BAR. how do you eat one bar of a kit kat? and what kind of nerve is that?

i managed to break the nozzle for the steam shower, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't my fault. they had awesome bathrobes that were like duvets you could wear.

and now, the view:

1 comment:

Nilphoenix said...

I know what you mean about neighborhoods, and wanting to keep the "trendies" out. Well, not that you want to keep them out, but that you want to preserve a neighborhoods character in a way that it wouldn't appeal to them all that much. I grew up in Jersey City, and, for most of my life, it was a town known for being working class, and a little dangerous. Back when I was in college, I would tell people that I grew up in Jersey City, and they would look at me as if I just told them that I grew up on the West Bank! LOL It wasn't as bad as they all thought it was, but that reaction is totally different from the reaction that I get when I disclose my beginnings today. Before moving to Florida two years ago, I was working in Manhattan, and people there thought that I grew up in the height of luxury and culture! That's because of the developments that have gone on over the last 10-15 yearse, the rising property values, and the much more upper-middle-class people that have been moving in. Unfortunately, what they don't take into account is that the people that made these neighborhoods great places to live get forced out. Then, you're just left with the boring folks who followed the artists, poets, and good working class people into a place, and the people who inspired them to live there are forced to move on to better, and cheaper, places. LOL Vicious circle. Vicious circle.
Just look at the East Village. How many artists can afford to live there anymore?