Motels

June 7, 2003 2:27 PM

Joshua Allen has had to live in a motel while he looks for somewhere to live to accompany his new job. He seems to have found all of the minor irritations: "The toilet seat won’t stay up. I have a smallish heart attack when it slaps down while I’m in mid-stream, not paying attention. I feel obligated to clean up after myself since I’ll be running into the maids all month. I desperately want them to like me, to confide in me about the other guests, the things they find in the rooms." He doesn't include the one I encountered in Paris, "The way the maid leaves your room unlocked all day while you're out after making your bed..." Luckily I had all my valuables with me...
posted by feelinglistless (7 comments total)

Been there, done that. When I first moved to the U.S. I was on a 6 month contract. Nobody would rent to a swarthy Canadian for only 6 months. As a result I spent $37.95/day living in a hotel for 6 months.
posted by substrate at 2:44 PM on June 7, 2003

in London I lived in a mini for 5 weeks (mid winter). I'd pray for a toilet seat that slapped down 'mid stream'.. ha!

The maid should lock the door though...
posted by dabitch at 3:05 PM on June 7, 2003

Quit job. Get on welfare. If that doesn't work, live on streets and dumpster dive...then begin blog and wait for book offers.
posted by Postroad at 3:10 PM on June 7, 2003

I feel "exultant," too, in motel rooms, although I've never stayed in one longer than two weeks. That was in some town in Wyoming where I played in a bar on the other side of the parking lot.

I feel like I'm the King of the World in a motel because when I was a kid we couldn't afford rooms for eight so we camped everytime we took a road trip. Motel rooms for the whole family, then, felt like a night in Gay Paree. Even the sleazy ones. Still do. Except the rooms that cater to smokers.
posted by kozad at 3:24 PM on June 7, 2003

Heh, this is cool. I've just lived in a motel in Hollywood (okay, Studio City, but let's not quibble) for five weeks. What an experience. All of the staff speak Spanish, with perhaps a smattering of English, so conversations were reserved to simplistic English words being spoken VERY LOUDLY, and the odd 'Olá'.

That said, I seem to have got along with it a lot better than this guy. I preferred the toilet to the one back home, and the paper was okay. The bed was reasonably comfortable, larger than that at home, and I slept like a log every night. On the last night I did have two rather zealous lovers one or two rooms away shaking the walls, but hey, that's LA.

What I was most upset about was the quality of water. I don't know about the rest of the US, but faucet water in LA is vile. This forced me to fill up a large bottle at the water buffalo, and lug it back to the motel every night, or alternatively buy giant jugs of Arrowhead at Ralph's.

Oh memories.
posted by wackybrit at 9:01 PM on June 7, 2003

Hotel room bathrooms are, in my experience, key locations for the "minor irritants" and some not so minor ones, as well. I say this after my experience at a (quite nice, not cheap, major chain) Center City Philadelphia hotel this past weekend. I came perilously close to going butt over teacup in a shower that was far too steeply pitched and lacked anything by way of anti-skid texturing or material. I don't think it's too much to ask to have a safe shower floor.

It would've also been nice to have some kind of hook or somewhere to hang my washcloth in the shower while washing my hair so that it didn't end up swimming on the floor in the soup of shampoo suds and previous guests' pubic hairs, but one quibble at a time.
posted by Dreama at 9:44 PM on June 7, 2003

It would've also been nice to have some kind of hook or somewhere to hang my washcloth

Over the shower nozzle or on the shower curtain rod works every time for me.

I just wish they'd standardize the faucets -- I shouldn't wish that I had a graduate degree in fluid dynamics just to take a friggin' shower.
posted by Vidiot at 6:12 PM on June 8, 2003