BS: Motel/Hotel Hell

Subject: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: frogprince
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:45 PM

A while back, some of us were swapping some horror stories about lodging experiences. The gnu of the north has one outstanding one that I may paste here if he doesn't beat me to it. But I never got around to telling about the Hotel Marion, Chicago.

It was either the fall of 1964 or the spring of 1965. A fellow Navy seaman apprentice and I were roaming around in Chicago on liberty. We were about to look for lodging for the night when we met two other sailors who told us they found a cheap room at the Hotel Marion, by the Northwestern station. So we went and checked in.

The lobby looked old, plain, and inexpensive, but decent. Then we got upstairs. The halls looked a little shoddy. Then we got to the room.

The carpet was somewhat worn; actually there were good sized areas worn through to bare floor. There was a bathroon style sink on the wall; the wall was rotted through around it so you could have stuck your hand through.

If we used the toilet (down the hall) I guess it wasn't really as bad as some I've seen. But I remember the shower as the highlight of the experience. An old fashioned sign, the kind in the shape of a hand with pointed finger, indicated "shower". It hung pointed to a door in the hallway. The door opened to what could have been a small broom closet, lined with tin, with a shower head. There was plaster piled on the floor; it couldn't have been used in years. Had it been working, you would have had to strip naked in the hall (or back in the room, or somewhere) to use it.

The bedding was actually clean, with only a few small frayed holes. The place was entirely quiet and peaceful. But I resisted the temptation to go back.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 09:55 PM

Man, you have just jinxed yerself, F-prince... By writing this you have to know that you have begun a torturous journey back to the Hotel Marion...

Hope they have spruced it up for ya'...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Mar 13 - 10:24 PM

How about the Central Hotel in Glasgow?

Tripadvisor via Footstompin

The floor being closed due to a gruesome suicide was well known at the time, but I don't know anybody who stayed there.

The worst I've experienced was in Ordu on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, where I got dropped off at 4am in 1981 because the bus company had told me the wrong journey time. It was pouring with rain and there was only one option. The roof leaked and a streamlet ran across the floor under the bed and out the door into the hallway. The mattress seemed comfortable enough at first, but it was actually a stack of very thin mats, forming a gigantic flea sandwich. I spent another night there (after getting a large can of insecticide from the local pharmacy and blasting every layer of the bedding with enough chemicals to stop a locust plague) but spent much of the intervening day dodging police informers.

This is my Tripadvisor review of the Hotel Avion, Brno.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:21 AM

Juneau, Alaska's Buddy Tabor wrote this:

Motel Lonely

This motel's lonely, the walls are thin
Love's in the next room, here it can't get in
It pounds on the walls and the window panes
The stars are shining but you hope it will rain

Now the angels sit on the ceiling fan blades
Listening to the promises being broken and made
Watch young lovers consummate their vows
While in the very next room, they hear the lonely howl

And the stains on the sheets are of promises kept
And the stains on the pillow are of tears that are wept
And we all rub shoulders at the checkout desk
In this motel of love and rundown regrets

It's all about the numbers and the luck of the draw
They assign you a room at the end of the hall
You turn the key and you open the door
Your heart starts breaking, 'cause you were hoping for more

And in the morning the maid comes to clean your room
She brings her vacuum, her mops and her broom
She cleans up heaven and she cleans up hell
But your story is safe here, she never will tell

And the stains on the sheets are of promises kept
And the stains on the pillow are of tears that are wept
And we all rub shoulders at the checkout desk
In this motel of love and rundown regrets

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 03:37 AM

Even the supposedly "modern" motels offer their little quirks. At one where I stopped in to go to a meeting, I noted that although the layout resembled an ancient Cretin maze, there where no signs or other directions to show where anything was. Even after asking at the desk, the "banquet room" was at an opposite end of the "main building," requiring three unmarked turns to get to the pass-through to the "adjacent (unmarked) spire" where the room for the meeting was.

The attendant at the front desk had said "take the elevator up to the room" but hadn't said how far up. There were 7 floors (and again, no visible directions). I found a party going on in a room about 80 ft down the hall and around the corner from the elevator on one of the floors, so that's where I went to my "meeting." There were a couple of other "expected guests" there, so it was either the right place or they were lost too.

On the way out after the meeting, I noted that there were multiple external doors convenient to the parking for those staying at the motel. Since a little fresh air seemed like a good idea I exited not far from the meeting. All of the doors were unmarked, so it occured to me one would need to be careful to remember where they came out; but the one I went out through locked behind me. (When I heard the lock drop, I looked to see if there was a passcard slot to let people with a "room key" back in, but couldn't find any evidence of one.)

Anyone who went out to their car to get another suitcase would be required to walk (with whatever they went to get) completely around the entire "complex" (up to as far as 3/8 mile - 0.6km from the door I used) to the front entrance to get back into the motel, and then renegotiate the clue-free maze for about an equal distance back to their room.

This was at a "major chain" generally considered a little "upscale," at the local airport. The place was built perhaps ten years ago, but apparently they "haven't quite gotten organized."

Since I can't walk fast enough to work up much of a sweat, I didn't need a shower, and the booze was too high priced to imbibe enough to require potty relief. I didn't inspect the "facilities" which I'm sure were quite modern (although I didn't see one when I had passing thoughts about possible pending need - they seemed to be hidden too).

(I'm not sure whether the place had three swimming pools, or if I just went past one on three different sides getting to the meeting.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: gnu
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 05:37 AM

froggy... is that the one where I put my foot thru the floor or the one with no water which required moving the desk chair to pass between the desk and the bed? The last one was where, arriving at 1:20PM, being the only one in the "restaurant", I did paperwork during over an hour wait for a burger. I went to the kitchen door and was informed it was almost thawed out. I left.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 05:54 AM

About 20 years ago now, we took our kids to Paris and stayed in the very inappropriately named Hotel PERFECT! We had asked for adjacent rooms to be near the kids, then 14 and 7. They were, technically, I suppose, being one above the other on different floors. The rooms and bedclothes were dirty, stale urine smell in the shower rooms, and cockroaches running loose. The rest of the hotel was occupied by a school party of teenagers who communicated by screaming at each other late at night between balconies from floor to floor ( pre mobile phones!). The only good bit was the breakfast: a boulangerie right next door so the bread was very fresh, and lots of hot chocolate which kept the kids happy. We complained afterwards to Paris Travel Service, with whom we had booked; their answer was basically you get what you pay for, for a 2- star hotel.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 06:14 AM

Morocco, lone student trip, horrible filthy room, bedbugs! (Get bar of soap a bit wet, turn on light suddenly, slam down the soap on the things and they stick.)
Spain, cockroaches big enough to kick you to death. Not worried, so let them wander about. Horrible crunching sound when you trod on one with bare feet though.
Travelodge, Leicestershire, dirty smelly bedding not been changed. No-one on duty so slept on floor.
Senegal, out in the bush, lone trip, no electricity, plastic jug to wash myself with well-water, mozzie net so no bites, spotlessly clean and slept like a log.
So, it can be done, if the proprietors have standards.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:13 AM

Gotta love the places that when they change the sheets it means the bottom sheet goes to be washed and the top sheet becomes the new bottom sheet. Of course, things could be worse.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Charmion
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:50 AM

The Walker House Hotel in Toronto, summer of 1975. Location perfect: next block over from Union Station, kitty-corner from the Royal York. A very different standard of accommodaton, however, with a price to match: ten dollars per night.

Dark, rickety, worn in every possible way, bathroom down the hall and sink in the room -- sorta like the no-star hotel in Paris where they charged me 5 francs a night because there was no key for my door, but not quite so clean. Come to think of it, not nearly so clean: the window was almost opaque with what looked like a century's worth of railway effluent.

Oh, and the noise. Round about midnight, I concluded that ten bucks was the all-night rate; the place obviously survived on the hourly rate.

No wonder the desk clerk looked at me so squiggle-eyed; I was probably the only woman he'd ever checked in with a suitcase.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 08:59 AM

This oughta bring back a few memories, Charmion.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:09 AM

I've never had a really bad experience with a hotel or motel's actual facilities or amenities. My nightmares have all been caused by other guests. Like the time we stayed at a budget motel near Orlando while, unbeknownst to us, there was a national amateur rugby tournament going on and most of the other guests were participants. The rooms were all ground-floor and each had a large plate-glass picture window. Did you know that rugby players really enjoy testing the tensile strength of such windows by throwing one another against them at 2:00 AM? Our window must have passed the test as the guys all bounced off of it instead of crashing through it.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 10:50 AM

Grand Hotel, Brighton, 2009. Got the bags out of the car and lobbed the keys to one of the door staff. He handed them back saying the valet parking service had ended. Had to park the car myself.

Disgraceful.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:15 AM

Grand Hotel, Edmonton, 2008. Heard shots at about 3:30 am. Went back to sleep.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:15 AM

Hotel Seville, Harrison, Arkansas. Looked magnificent at first glance but it was cheap - Which should have been a dead giveaway. Private 'club' bar so at least you could get a drink in this dry county. The 'balcony' where my cousin and I sat to drink our bourbon out of tea cups so no-one would notice was a flat area on the roof accessed by climbing out of the window. The doors would not locj and various old-folks wandered in and out of our rooms until we wedged it with a chair. It was pretty dirty in parts and when I saw the funereal black and purple draped shower I refused to go in it for fear that Mr Bates would enter with a carving knife:-) We left before breakfast but noticed the same old folk who had the night wanderings were all sat on the landing having a breakfast of toast and peanut butter. A look of folorn hope seemed to cross their faces as we passed. But maybe that was just my imagination...

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: frogprince
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:52 AM

Pete, that has to take the cake; absolutely the worst.

gnu, it was the foot-thru-the-floor one that I remembered.

So far I've miraculously missed any adventures with bugs or vermin in a hotel or motel. So far.

My worst experience related to service was in Barstow, CA., a few years back; don't remember the name of the motel, and don't know that I'll bother to look it up. The room itself was just another moderately crummy place that should have been cheaper; marginally usable internet connection, after fishing for an extension cord with an open socket to plug into. But breakfast was allegedly included. We went to the office/breakfast area and found...a transparent tupperware
container with a box of cereal inside. Absolutely, literally, zip nothing else there; no other food, no liquid, no dishes or untensils.
No staff, or anyone else, in sight. We went out and found breakfast. Came back to pack up and leave. Went to the office, still not a living soul in sight, "breakfast" still just the same.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Charmion
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 12:38 PM

I remember a bed-and-breakfast in Gettysburg where breakfast consisted of a box of yesterday's Little Debby doughnuts and a jar of instant coffee. Period. Not a pleasant prospect when one's low-food light is flashing.

Lesson learned: avoid tourism destinations until tourist season actually opens.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Charmion
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 12:44 PM

Thanks for the Flickr link, Guest. That is, indeed, the place. Note the complete absence of street people in the photo; back in them days, "vagrancy" -- i.e., begging -- was a Criminal Code offence.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: gnu
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 01:33 PM

froggy... Makkovik, Labrador. Susie's. Breakfast: seal. Lunch: seal. Supper: seal. Day two, after lunch, I asked if there was anything else. Caribou stew. YES, PLEASE! No meat, just caribou fat. I arranged for our crew to eat with the contractor's crew (there is a GREAT STORY behind that! From seal to T-bone(s) for brekky! AND MILK!!!)

Third day on the airstrip... it was hot and I filled a Kent County Canteen (screw cap beer bottle in a wet sock tied to one's belt) with water from her washroom sink. Passed out on the job and was rushed to Susie's. I was delerious. She asked my questions as she was the medic for the town because she was a grandmother and spoke English, Norwegian and Innu. She determind the cause immediately due to her in depth experience. It seems a number of guests over the years had drunk her tap water or brushed their teeth with it. She explained that nobody ever died from it... they usually got too sick before they drank enough of it to be able to drink any more.

I could also explain how I suddenly ended up nearly a foot high while still in my bunk in the trailer when the TNT was touched off for installation of water and sewer. Simple mixup. I scared shitless... ah, I had an extremely heightened sense of awareness... but I was fine. The toilet in the washroom next, not so good. Still had to use the metal can/plastic bag after connection.

But the icebergs just metres away from shore were majestic!

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 02:33 PM

Isn't it funny that, having spent countless nights in pleasant, clean and peaceful hotels over the years, it's the ghastly, weird and wacky ones I remember with a certain fondness? And if you're a seasoned traveller, you learn not to throw hissy fits if things are a little grotty (or even very grotty!) If you're really tired, you'll sleep. And worse things happen at sea etc etc. My old dad would have said, "Character-building!"

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 07:41 PM

I have stayed in really good hotels and really bad hotels. If I have to pay for the room I choose the cheapest place that doesn't have roaches or bed bugs. If a union is paying for it, two and a half stars is good enough. If a government is paying for it I will stay in three stars. I usually keep it at that because getting dressed up to me means making sure my fly is zipped, my ears are clean, my hair is ruly and my nose is wiped.

However, there was a time when a national broadcasting company flew me to town to sing at a prestigious event--one of those 'the world is watching' type things. After I arrived I was informed I'd have to wear a tuxedo for the performance. I agreed on the condition that I'd do so if I could wear a bunch of grapes where the tie would have been. They were aghast and said no. I returned to the hotel and invited eight musician friends (folk, rock and blues) to come to a party. We charged about $350/400 to the room (big bucks in 1967) on wine and hard liquor--mostly me with the wine and my blues friends with the hard liquor; the folk and rock people sipped beer and smoked whatever--and everyone in the rooms below, above and on that floor had a good time until about three in the morning. Twelve years later they spent a pile of money to record me doing some of my songs. They had the good sense not to mention the previous incident--as did I.

That has nothing to do with anything except when you're homeless, even a flop house is good. When you are well-off, a five star is just the way it should be.

###############################

Charmion, retirement sure seems to fit you well. I hope things are great.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Elmore
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 09:45 PM

When moving from New Hampshire to Georgia recently we had 2 cats with us. This meant staying in 3 of the nastiest motels I've ever been in. Don't travel with cats.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Mar 13 - 11:51 PM

Seoul, Korea, 1969: the room wasn't bad, the bedding was clean, the pillow was stuffed with rice husks (very, very hard!). Have you ever used one of those floor-mounted, urinal-on-its-back, squat toilets? Move away from it when you flush. Move away QUICKLY.

Ketchikan, Alaska, 1982 or thereabouts: I don't remember the name of the hotel, but the guy in the next room spent the night shouting at some friend two floors below on the sidewalk to get a case of beer and he'd drop a rope and hoist it up. I have excellent reason to believe both were inebriated.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: gnu
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 05:33 AM

Thread drift, and DOWNER thread drift, at that... ya know, I know what the OP is about and I have chimed in but reading a few of the posts above reminds me that some of the posters in this thread slept in conditions that make the worst of h/motels look like a mansion. I often think of my uncle sleeping in puddles in the cold with only a tarp to keep the rain off of him in the winter of 44/45. Or, when he just couldn't take it anymore, sleeping on his motorcycle if there wasn't any gunfire nearby.

Can't say it enough... thanks.

Told ya it was downer thread drift.

I now return to regular programming.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 08:49 AM

Military sleeping arrangements are in a class of their own. By age 23, I had learned to conk out at will, wherever I happened to be, requiring only a horizontal orientation of the body. A favourite spot was the front seat of a deuce-and-a-half (2 1/2-ton truck), but to get that one had to accept the responsibility of minding the radio.

People would even sleep under vehicles, despite the true horror stories of soldiers run over and killed, at a rate of (only) about one every 10 years.

In 1940, my Dad was drafted to an elderly destroyer, HMS Wrestler, that pre-dated the Jago messing system, under which each division of the ship's company had a dedicated living space. The matelots basically slung their micks wherever they could find six feet of room and divisions gathered almost religiously for meals, not least to keep track of everyone.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 09:12 AM

Super8 Motel, Watertown, Boston, Mass.2001.
Grubby, dirty, smelly, etc etc etc. Filled in one of their cards, stating my displeasure. never heard another word.

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 09:38 AM

I have slept:

--on two duffel bags full of steel helmets while riding the back of a deuce-and-a-half.

--in a covered foxhole in Colorado after the detonation of a (simulated) nuclear bomb nearby.

--in a Quonset hut in Korea with the oil stove out and the outside temp at better than -25F.

--on an air mattress floating gently upon a sea of mud inside my tent.

--outside, in a cloudburst/tornado-spawning storm, after a temp drop from the mid-90s(F) to the upper 40s (F), with nothing but my clothes and my M1919A6 machine gun to comfort me.

--literally in the mud when the temperature was in the 30s (F).

--outside in a snowstorm wrapped in a wool blanket.

--inside, during a tear gas attack (woke me up!).

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Edthefolkie
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 10:09 AM

Not exactly a hotel, but we booked a house in the west of Ireland at the height of the boom, when everybody was moving into new bungalows and renting the old houses to the English. When we got there we found a nice mound of steaming peat outside, original (not replica) brass beds, etc etc. The best bits were a shower draining into a hole in the ground, and an old fridge which had been sprayed with green metalflake car paint to resemble a Smeg (not). Said fridge's door was held shut by a brick. Nice week there though, the kids loved it!

Then there was RAF cadet camp at Binbrook - alarm clock was Lightnings taking off on reheat!

In the seventies, many friends stayed at the immortal Pensao Borges in Regua, north Portugal. See excellent shot, probably from one of the bedroom windows!

http://plumbloco.smugmug.com/Trains/Spain-Portugal/16749950_4MNXfB/1269100685_2rRzH3m#!i=1269100685&k=2rRzH3m&lb=1&s=L

I have seen some interior shots - nothing seemed to have changed since about 1925. The wallpaper hung off in strips - the sink and shower were fed by a tank above the bathroom window which was in turn fed by the roof gutters. A rope was pulled to release the flow.

Which reminds me, I think I have been given the photos concerned, must have a ferret about!

Subject: RE: BS: Motel/Hotel Hell
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 29 Mar 13 - 10:27 AM

Attending a Union District Council at The Grand Hotel Scarborough, North Yorkshire, there was a long dead seagull on the bedroom windowsill, it was still there when we left.

The food was fecking awful.

The Union booked it again one year later, the menu hadn't changed.

Dave H