A decade or so ago, I stayed in the Carlton Arms “Hotel” near Gramercy Park a few times. It is towards the hostel end of the spectrum (though some rooms have their own bathroom), and I wouldn’t eat directly off the floors, but each room has been decorated by a different artist and it’s pretty cute. It was well under $100 back then and Google suggests it’s not much more now.
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Well, the least terrifying thing was Dude-in-Suit.
Dude-in-Suit didn’t belong there. I heard him come in with some companions the first evening I was there. I gathered that they were all lawyers, which is about as true as it needs to be. None of these gentlemen ever shut up. I was in town to see some shows (a few at the Bowery Ballroom, which is about a block and half from this place), so I went out for the evening. When I returned at about midnight they were still talking, but soon retired to try to sleep.
Because there are no ceilings, just chicken wire installed at the top of each “room.” everyone can hear everything everyone else says (and, as you’ll later understand, does).
Someone, somewhere, began to snore. Loudy. Cartoonishly. It sounded like Fred Flintstone. Or Captain Caveman. A thunderous arpeggio of honks and nasal cacophony followed by fluttering coos and lilting, nonsensical babble. Man-in-Suit sprung into action. He stalked the filthy hallways, calling out to the sleeper, knocking on walls, and generally being much louder and more annoying himself. Half the floor was calling for his silence, and for a few minutes he was quiet, but only because he had gone to complain to the dude manning the front desk (from behind bulletproof glass, of course). Man-in-Suit was by this time beside himself. “This is ridiculous!” he laughed, because for him this scenario was obviously beyond unacceptable. He explained that he and him companions were to wake early, and so must of necessity rest immediately. He couldn’t believe what this establishment put its paying customers through and continued, for several more minutes, exploring all of the various ways in which the evening had been unpleasant for him. Most of his statements were punctuated by one junkie or another loudly threatening him, which was amusing to the rest of us, so we laughed. The hotel’s front desk man understood little English, so he did a lot of laughing, too, because he thought the snoring was funny. Eventually, the front desk man went away and Man-in-Suit was led back to him room by him companions, one of whom gave him some earplugs.
There was some disgusting stuff, too, like bloody needles in the shared bathroom and condoms on the hallway floor (after two nights there, it was clear that a few sex workers were doing some healthy business here).
The worst night was a sleepless evening, despite my wearing earbuds, of hearing the gentlemen in the room next to mine have some really loud, extremely expressive and rough sex. The older of the two had a vocal tic like the main skeksis in The Dark Crystal, though baritone and somehow threatening. The other was either a teenager or in his early twenties. I’d see him walking around on the floor at various times during the day wearing only his underwear. That night he was crying. Constantly. And either just calling the guy “dad” or actually addressing his dad while whimpering. It was bone-chilling. I just lay there thanking my stars that I was just visiting.
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This reminds me… our local dive hotel recently got bought out and renovated… and it’s now this:
(Note, an annoying pop up comes up when you pull up the page with a loud PING, FYI).
Prior to the renovation:
Before he died, GG Allin stayed there, and I thought there were pics, but I can only find pics of him at the Clermont Lounge (which is still there…).
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Reminds me of a hotel i stayed at in Tulsa a couple of years ago. Really nice place, half of it are condos and half of it are part of the hotel proper. My one knock against it is that it tries to include a lot of modern decor into an obviously art deco building and ends up being kinda tacky but the building on the inside is gorgeous
http://www.themayohotel.com/gallery-en.html
Before the building was renovated it was unoccupied for almost 30-40 years, glad they were able to bring it back from a grim fate.
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Carlton Arms! I remember that from the Let’s Go guide, but never stayed there. Most of the times I went to NYC I was lucky enough to stay with friends, but one trip they were already having guests and I stayed at the Herald Square Hotel (old Life Magazine building). It was, I think, $75 a night for a room with private bath and cockroaches.
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Some people pay extra for the roaches
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Have 600 bonus points for ‘nitpick’.
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I’ve tried sleeping on American trains, no thanks. 
Wow, what a great idea! You could even rent those out, come up with a clever name, like, I dun’t know, Airbed and Breakfast!
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Checking is simple enough-
As someone with 20+ years in the industry, though, I’ll let you in on a little secret- EVERY hotel gets them on occasion. Even 5 star, $800 a night places. A good establishment trains their housekeeping staff in what to look for, brings in dogs to inspect regularly, and has a containment and cleaning procedure in place so that when it does happen, it’s immediately dealt with and doesn’t spread.
Aside from that, though, I always check three places when I stay in a hotel- look under the bed, check for dust on the top of picture frames, and check the little ledge at the top of the shower for soap chips or shampoo bottles.
If housekeeping is maintaining those three things, it’s reasonably safe to assume the rest of the room is clean.
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Hôtel… hostel.
potato, potato.
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Note there’s also the Hotel Carter, although I don’t think that hotel is still open. It was consistently ranked among the dirtiest hotels in America by Tripadvisor in its last years. It sold in 2014 for $192 million.
Haven’t stayed in the Bowery Lodge, but I did stay in the Cecil Hotel in downtown LA once. This was the hotel where a body was discovered in the water tank and was the inspiration for the “Hotel” season of American Horror Story. I stayed before that time, and encountered neither ghosts nor bedbugs, fortunately.
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What, are you suggesting that there is some kind of common vector infecting these places? What might that be?
I loved learning the origin of the circumflex, in French class – and how once you know it used to be a deleted “s”, so many French words make sense – arrêt, forêt, hôpital, côte, etc.
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I stayed in a church basement in Brooklyn years ago; can’t recall if any homeless were also nearby, but I seem to recall they just came for dinner, or at least they were in another room; it was a class trip, and we brought our own bedding. It was great! That, and I was offered a pad to housesit once for someone in the same building as Kim Cattrall overlooking Central Park or thereabouts. Boy, that would have been something! (They found someone else to water the plants).
Am I the only one who’s getting a kick out of the positively worthless bar chart that he’s making in the video?
3 categories: Quality of accommodation: obviously very low, very low score;
Price: Is super cheap, so -clearly- very high score;
Location: arbitrarily allocating 6 points to Chinatown for being great but not super great, but greater than right-down-the-middle-5-points-because-nobody-ever-picks-5-ever-anyway
Thus, *drumroll * 16.5/30 points, perfectly ambivalent score for the thing that was obvious to begin with. Science, people!
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