November 28, 2005
On that dreadfully cold morning some days ago, I see a police car with a fat officer's (FO) arm stuck out the passenger-side window. The cop holds a large cup of coffee, its steam rising in charming snake-like swirls:
ME: You're going to have iced coffee in about 30 seconds.
FO: That's what I was hoping for.
No mention was made of donuts.
Tags:
donuts, fat, iced coffee, officer
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Posted on 11/28/2005
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November 25, 2005
A Night at the Hotel Dixie
This was a great letter in today's paper about the wacky Hotel Carter I blogged about:
To the Editor:
Your article about the Hotel Carter ("What Do You Expect for $99.23 a Night?," news article, Nov. 20) brought back some memories for our family. We stayed there in the early 1970's, when it was the Hotel Dixie.
My newly married sister was arriving from Scotland with her new husband, and since we couldn't attend the wedding, we decided to splurge on a night in the big city after picking them up at Kennedy Airport. The attractions included the location, the price and the promise of free parking.
We checked in and found the condition of the hotel much as it is today - maybe worse.
When we went to get our car out of the parking lot, we were told we would have to pay $10. My husband challenged this and was told, "Yes, it is free to park, but you have to pay to take your car out."
Once he recovered, my husband responded by saying, "That's like promising free rooms, but then charging $20 for the towels." To that the answer was, "Well, we never thought of that."
By the way, my sister says she still hasn't forgiven me for having her spend the first night of her honeymoon at the Hotel Dixie.
Elizabeth Russell
Berkeley, Calif., Nov. 21, 2005
Tags:
hotel carter
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Posted on 11/25/2005
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November 20, 2005
The Hotel Carter, a former welfare hotel in the heart of Times Square has a lot to offer. Or it doesn't. It depends on your perspective! It is about as cheap as a room can get in Manhattan without fear of being assassinated or robbed. This hilarious article in today's newspaper is great. It all depends on your perspective: When I travel through Asia, I know that what I pay is what I get. Whether it's a luxurious $250/night hotel in Bangkok or a $5 rural flophouse in China, it's all about what you pay. Well, why should it be different in Manhattan? I remember in the 1980s when Times Square was disgusting, seedy, full of pimps and prostitutes. Were those the good old days? It depends on your perspective! Anyhow some of these rooms sound tolerable and some sound awful:
• As a guest of the Hotel Carter, you may or may not have your room cleaned. You may or may not find the multicolored, multipatterned carpet on the floor and the walls agreeable. You may or may not have a working television and telephone. You may or may not have a smooth check-in, since the front desk keeps track of reservations without the benefit of a computer system.
• Room 1105 was not so much a room as it was a place to lie low. It took eight paces to walk from one wall to the next and 21 paces to get from the door to the window. The telephone was dead. It sat on an old desk, its drawer broken and placed on the stained carpet, a copy of the Manhattan white pages, 1994-5, among the contents inside. The room was lighted by a bare bulb on the ceiling, and the headboard of the bed was a rectangle of blue carpet nailed to the wall. There was a big moldy splotch on the ceiling above the bathtub.
• There are certainly other budget hotel rooms in the city that are smaller, shabbier and do not come with their own private bathrooms. The price of Room 1105 - $232 for two nights for one occupant, after taxes - made it among the cheapest of the city's 71,000 hotel rooms. The bed was firm but comfortable, and the room muffled the noise of the city, the only sounds an occasional siren and the drip-drip-drip of one of the bathtub's leaky handles.
I think I have to check out this hotel. It reminds me of the nearby hotels, which I hear used to be welfare hotels. Where there were plenty of pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers hanging out there. Very colorful! Where there were there big holes in the wall. They looked like battle scars from some war, big gaping holes full of mold and trash. Anyhow that Times Square is gone. Fortunately the Hotel Carter at least has a little 'memorabilia' of that era. Heh heh. I see all these images in books about Times Square.
Tags:
cheap hotel, hotel bargain, hotel carter
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Posted on 11/20/2005
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November 09, 2005
Never mind the politics or other food news, I don't care about the Michelin guide either. The really interesting thing was a full-page ad in the New York Times food section today featuring restaurant owner Nino holding up a bottle of San Pellegrino in one hand and a bottle of Panna in the other, declaring, "Water is free!" Say again? Free bottled water? Now I had not ever heard of his five restaurants before—two on the Upper East Side, two in Midtown, one near NYU. Free bottled water? This is probably more revolutionary than the Michelin Guide to New York. "I have decided to offer my guests the finest bottled waters from Italy—sparkling and still—with my compliments." How long can he do this? Why is he doing this? A very clever move, one must say.
Tags:
free bottled water, michelin, nino
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Posted on 11/9/2005
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