Travel Tip
If a $150/night hotel near Central Park in New York City sounds too good to be true….. it probably is!
I’m here for the ‘Sputnik Mania’ premiere at the IFC tonight. I jetted in for only two nights. Looked for a hotel on Expedia. Most hotels in the SoHo area start around $295/night. Last time I was here I found one on Expedia for about $160, close to Central Park, and it was a real score. That one (Park 76) had increased to $280 this time. So I picked another close by, the Belnord on 87th St, which is only $150 per night with free Internet. How for wrong could I go?
I was a little concerned when I walked into the lobby and it looked more like a taxi office. The clerk gave me the key to my room, on the 5th floor. He said he had to warn me there’s no elevator. Boy, I’m feeling glad all I have with me is a small rollaboard, unlike last time I came through NY on my way to TED with a keyboard flightcase packed full of equipment. And my torn calf ligament is close to completely healed. Still, I’ve carrying my laptop and a chunky hard drive as I’m hoping to get a couple more TED tunes mixed over the weekend. So I start climbing the 10 flights of stairs. The place looks like a building site—door framed half finished, dust everywhere, plastic sheeting. I get to the 5th floor, naively hoping that this one will be habitable; but it’s no different from the other floors. Now I realise to my horror that the clerk had pointed me down a different corridor, presumably with its own staircase! Standing there dreading the double trek back down, around and up again, I am approached by a Hispanic workman in overalls. I tell him my room number and he confirms my worst fears. But, ‘come!’ he says, and even picks up my case. I follow him through the rubble to a fire exit, and it opens onto a corridor on what presumably is the correct side of the building.
I find my room, and it’s a bare shell with a bed and a lamp. It’s hot in there, but the window doesn’t want to open, and I can tell that if I was to force it, the mini air conditioner would plummet 80 feet to its peril into the alleyway below. So I turn on the a/c but it’s one of those units that has a terrible, irregular rattle. And there’s no desk—so much for mixing this weekend! Nor, for that matter, is there a bathroom. Ugh. I call down to reception. It appears none of the available $150 rooms have bathrooms, you have to share one with everybody else on your floor. Oh well, at least my room is right opposite it.
But wait, it gets worse: the one shared bathroom has a problem with its lock. You have to slam the door repeatedly to get it closed enough so that you can lock it. So this means that every time anyone goes to the bathroom all night, I hear three minutes of repeated door slamming! This, combined with mild jetlag, assures me a rotten night.
But I’m up again at 6 and I head to a Starbucks around the corner (I know, I know) with my computer. I get some breakfast in me, and now things are looking up. I plug in my MacBook and my brand new MBox ProTools Micro. This is basically a little USB dongle that lets you use ProTools without being connected to any of their hefty hardware.
With occasional refills of capuccino I spent a very happy morning mixing a song of Rachelle Garniez’ called ‘Hello Cruel World’ on headphones. This needs to get done for potential inclusion on a BluRay disk of the TED Conference. It’s amazing what a good mix can do. I saw a QuickTime clip of us playing it at TED with the audio mix that was recorded live to camera. It was a long way from anything Rachelle would have been proud of. And I’m ashamed to say I seriously buggered up the second verse. I was playing a kind of saloon bar honky-tonk piano, and as I’m anything but fluent in that style I had a brain fart in the middle and played utterly the wrong notes. Ah, but that’s the beauty of multitrack recording: I simply cut and pasted 3 beats’ worth of my piano from the first verse into the second, and wa la. I checked it in sync with the QuickTime and it still works fine. Rachelle, incidentally, looks absolutely stunning. She’s one of those naturally videogenic people. And out of her mouth comes a growl like Tom Waits, it’s fantastic.
Now back at the hotel, all is all quiet and there’s just time for a nap before I head down to the Village for David’s premiere. He got a nice review in the New York Times today and he should be well pleased. He asked me to invite some of the ‘influential people’ that I know. I managed to knock off emails to David Byrne, Moby, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, but it remains to see if any of them will show up.
‘Sputnik Mania’ screens for the next 2 weeks at the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village.
I pictured a grizzled old man yelling out “Did ya get ma Cheeze-Whiz, boy?” when you walked into the lobby.
Wow Thomas. Your blog reads like a script from Fawty Towers! Good luck with the premier. Is the music you performed at ICA actually included in the soundtrack of the film that’s being screened?
Have a safe stay and a safe journey home.
Andrew
I can’t understand why you stuck with staying at that…… ‘hotel’!?
Well I won’t complain next time I’m at a Travelodge.
Dude. Duuuuude. Hotel Hell. Today’s unfortunate lesson (but great story) is: there is no such thing as a hotel bargain in Manhattan…
Yeesh. Seriously, this sounds like most hotels I used to stay in when I traveled in rural parts of the Soviet Union. Except there, you just pretty much expected it. Hope you’re having a blast tonight at the IFC showing. Maybe afterwards, Moby will go out busking with you at a choice subway station…
Oh man. Yeah could have told you no such thing as a deal in the city any more. Too bad you could have stayed at my mother in law’s terrrifc little flat next door here on E14th and 1st Ave. for nothing…
BTW say “Sputnik Mania” last night( Friday) .and it was a marvalous film .Sorry I missed you but, my wife and I had a great time. The film was truly impressive and I learned a thing or two I didn’t know before about the era and the players involved, and it was also very entertaining! I was quite surprised actually at how truly objective the film was in it’s handling of the material, which honestly I wasn’t expecting. I am so disappointed with many so called unbaised documentaries these days ( M. Moore , Fox, etc ) that pass themselves off as the truth when in fact they are just propagada for what ever agenda they support right or left. Whatever happened to objectivity and just letting the facts speak for themselves and letting people decide for themselves?!
I talked for quite a while with David about this aspect of the film at the after party over at “Vol De Belge”.All the while sipping a few “Sputnik Vodkas”. Good stuff!
I was quite flattered he took time to listen to comments even though he was obiously quite busy that night. He truly appreciated my coming out afterwards to discuss his film at length. I also had a long discussion with his wife about Autisics and the Neurodiversity movement ( another subject I find facinating ) as I thought this would be a pretty timely and very interesting idea for a film.
Oh btw I had a good laugh when he told me that the Sputnik at the theater on display was actually bought on E-bay from a Russian who some how “had found it”. Hmmm probably like my Soviet space helmet I got off E-Bay that was no doubt “found” too.
)
Oh yeah. I learned a similar lesson a couple of years ago when travelling to San Francisco to see your show at the Independent (didn’t know at the time you’d be coming to the Denver area 3 times that year).
I booked a room at the Hotel Renoir based on the picture and 3 star rating by users of Travelocity. The picture made the place look like a charming “boutique” hotel with tourist milling about outside for the reasonable rate of $79 per night.
What you couldn’t tell from the picture is that the tourist were what appeared to be crack addicts and that the picture was taken from the roof of a giant porn theater across the street. I didn’t even dare get out of the the car and promptly called Travelocity to get my deposit back. They were good about it and I ended up staying at the Radison in Japan Town for what turned out to be a very reasonable $149 per night.
The lesson learned – read the user reviews. Sometimes a picture is not worth 1000 words if done creatively and a three star raiting shows that users are a bit more forgiving than others.
If I had read the posted reviews I would have known about the seedy neighborhood (but apparently very good Brazilian restaurant next door).
Interesting story about the editing there Winston Smith
Next time try the Union Square Inn (E. 14th Street). Reasonable rates and nice clean rooms (and the location can’t be beat!).
Hope the turn out for the show was great.
Beech
It would be odd if you’d had to *search* for a Starbucks,
hee hee. Your tale of your virtual cappuccino I.V. [now *there* is
an idea, huh?] reminds me of what happened the last time I went
to my local Second Cup [the Canadian equivalent of
Starbucks, which you may already know]. I’d asked the barrista
for a new orange-flavored frozen coffee drink that they were
advertising, but they’d run out of orange syrup, so I just said “a mocha, please”, referring to “mocha Chiller”, but he thought I
meant a Moccachino (sp?), so that’s what I ended up with. I
should have been more specific, so mea culpa.
Anyway, it tasted pretty good, but my first sip would have
knocked me flat on my butt if I hadn’t already been seated.
I had a lot of energy after that…usually the strongest thing I
drink is hot chocolate.
Glad that your calf muscle is coming along so well!
Peace and coffee strong enough to dissolve a stir-stick,
Kara
Oh noes!! Sorry to hear about your bad hotel experience! At least you were only there for a weekend… :/
…and what’s wrong with Starbucks??
Four Season’s is just a cab fare away…….
(not a bad name for a short story!)
That’s a good story.
Was Clancy Brown next door with a funny look in his eyes?
Looking forward to the TED videos.
Wow. You’re a stronger man than I. I would’ve gotten the hell out of there in a hurry. Hope it all ended well enough.
Did any of your invited guests make it to the screening?
So funny..(in retrospect of course)..I stayed there a year ago, your description is completely accurate with no embellishment. I was actually put up there by a filmmaker that I was working for. He was also staying there, 5th floor also. Unfortunately he weighs around 160+kg (up towards 300 pounds) so my whining about the stairs fell on receptive ears.
Very glad to have found your blog.
Cheers
Brett