I’m scratching with excitement.
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i’m itching to know more
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It’s definitely spreading.
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I’m working in Brooklyn right now and I want to run and leave and never come back after reading this. And I’m nowhere near that hotel.
Is this even legal?
So, theoretically, if someone were to be considering visiting NYC around January 21st 2021 or thereabouts, how would you avoid horrible places such as this? Do you just pay way too much money and hope?
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I hear some people are bugging out
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If you’re staying in a hotel the recommendation is to put your luggage in a tub, if the room has a tub. So in the worst case scenario that the room is infested you can at least avoid bringing them home.
Beyond that i don’t know what other things to look out for or what to do.
So you’re saying I need to keep my luggage in a garbage bag, bring my own disposable bedding, and set off a bug bomb in the room before I settle down.
“some instructions in Cantonese, or Mandarin.”
OK, not that I speak either, but when printed they’re basically the same, it’s the verbal part that’s different.
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less running and more like crawling away.
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bug bombs do nothing. My downstairs neighbors “Self-medicating” for bedbugs is what caused our persistant infestation. Garbage bag is advisable, and wash and dry everything upon return (it’s the heat, not water that kills them, gotta melt that waxy resistance layer). But really, Airbnb.
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Yeah I’ve stayed in hostels where the basic rate doesn’t even get you a private room. Generally a whole different price range and expectation of accommodation compared to a hotel.
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If we get our asses in gear and build our house upstate, you can Airbnb my 1 bed in Brooklyn, 25 mins from midtown Manhattan by train. As a bbs friend (the only kind that matters) you’ll get the special airbnbbs rate! Apologies for the clownishly oversized “IF” preceding this offer…
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If your budget is truly $45/night, you’re not going to find much better than this. There may be some hostels with shared rooms that are more reputable than the place depicted here, but even those will probably cost a bit more than $45 and they’re not likely to be centrally located. Real estate in Manhattan is just too expensive to rent decent rooms for that price.
That said, January is generally pretty slow in the NYC hotel biz, once the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center comes down a few days after New Year’s. And there are usually plenty of perfectly nice hotels available that time of year for well under $200/night, and sometimes even under $100. And I’d MUCH rather pay $150/night for a clean, safe, quiet room with my own bathroom than $45/night for what they show in this video.
You probably won’t find those rates way in advance, though. My recommendation would be to start looking about 6 months before your trip. Find a cancel-able rate that you’d be willing to pay if nothing better came along and book that as a backup, but keep looking every month or two to see if you can find something better. Be sure and check apps like HotelTonight. If you have the time and inclination, you can also find great deals using Priceline’s Name-Your-Own-Price feature, but wringing maximum value out of NYOP has a steep-ish learning curve (you can start at betterbidding.com and biddingfortravel.com, where folks post their past NYOP bids that you can use as a guideline). Note that HotelTonight and NYOP and similar deals are all nonrefundable.
If all else fails, there are a bunch of mid-range hotels these days in Long Island City (the neighborhood in Queens just across the East River from Midtown Manhattan) and Jersey City and Hoboken (towns in NJ just across the Hudson River from Manhattan) that require only a short subway (Queens) or PATH train (NJ) ride.
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I’ve stayed at Pod 39 a number of times. It’s what I would consider the bare minimum for a true “hotel” room (private bath, expectation of cleanliness, etc) and I would say it exceeds expectations. It’s like staying in one of those demo rooms at IKEA. Tiny, but clean and simple enough not to have a hive of creatures under the bed. I think it’s as good as it gets in Manhattan. Prices aren’t much cheaper in the Burroughs in any proximity that makes it reasonable to access Manhattan. You can easily spend an hour or more on the subway from a part of Bklyn or Queens that would be cheaper and then you’re faced with taking a long subway ride late at night to a poorly-lit neighborhood with an (hopefully!) empty platform. It would almost be worth staying upstate in an AirBnB and taking the train/bus. It takes me two hours on the nose to get to Port Authority from my front door and I live in a picturesque little mountain town.
I’ve also stayed in the “nicest” hostel in NYC. Nope. Don’t even think about it.
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Because nobody has ever gotten bedbugs from an Airbnb?
I wish I could stay in a hotel with a hammock instead of a bed. It seems more hygienic; it can be easily washed, no place for bugs to hide in, no dirt hiding underneath. Hammocks are also comfortable to sleep in.
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