How I feel right now: this about sums it up.
Story in the morning. I'm going to bed.
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Comfort Inn, Jamaica, Queens Delenda Est
25 Oct 2007 03:18 am
Comments (11)
A few years back the family and I stayed in a newly opened motel near JFK before getting an early morning flight to Arizona. It may have been the Comfort Inn, I'm really not sure. In any event it was not inexpensive. And when you're paying good money to stay at a hotel or motel, you do not expect that the hallway outside your room will absolutely reek of, er, Number Two
The lack of decent hotels in Queens is a mystery. Many people--tourists, visitors on business, visiting family members who can't fit into the apartment--would gladly pay rates only slightly under Manhattan levels to have decent lodgings in Queens. Preferably near a subway line, and with not-too-expensive underground parking. Jackson Heights would be perfect. But nothing fits the bill, at least not yet.
Far and away the best complaint letter I have ever seen. I almost feel sorry for Night Clerk Mike.
Rich,
It's called zoning.
try: ht tp://ww w.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17856491&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574907&rfi=6
see spa_ces in link
I do not feel sorry for Night Clerk Mike, with the exception of the fact that he has to live his life working as a night clerk at a third rate hotel by the airport in Houston, TX. Night Clerk Mike and his ilk are evil hell-spawn and he deserves all the misery he gets in life.
Rich and Peter,
I have lived in Queens all my life, and there are some decent inexpensive (or at least much cheaper than Manhattan price) hotels. However, the ones near the two airports are not inexpensive and most of the other decent hotels are not in tourist areas. And, for many of these hotels there is only bus and not subway transportation to Manhattan (although any long time Queens resident would tell you that the express bus beats the subway hands down), and most tourists only look for subway transportation. But if you know where to look you can find a decent inexpensive hotel in Queens with easy public transportation (either bus or subway) to Manhattan. Check out some of the ones in the Bayside area between the Cross Island and Clearview near Northern Blvd as well as the ones in the Long Island City and Sunnyside area.
You mean you feel snobby and full of resentment at the working class?
Yes, because selling hotel rooms out from under guess is typical proletarian behavior.
ZH: The problem is that the Northern Blvd hotels aren't chains and it's not realistic to expect out-of-towners to have any confidence in them from what little info is available online. (Not that chains provide any guarantees, as Megan's story illustrates--though I'm relieved that the Hampton Inn, my favorite, panned out for her!) And preferring subways to buses is very sensible for out-of-towners, since buses run on schedules and one doesn't know the schedule, whereas subways are more or less continuous including during off-peak times. Long Island City is too hit-and-miss a place to be an optimal hotel location, though the proximity to Manhattan is attractive. Jackson Heights is my preferred choice because it's culturally interesting in itself--I doubt I would even go into Manhattan if I could stay there for a couple of days of eating and shopping!
"Yes, because selling hotel rooms out from under guess is typical proletarian behavior."
Selling hotel rooms out from unders guests to higher bidders is typical entrepreneurial behavior.
Being placed in the line of fire over the consequences is a typical proletarian task.
The powerpoint is cute, and reminds me of an old friend, who I doubt many in this neck of the woods would find cute.
He was an old army buddy named Higgins.
Higgins was unique in my experience in that when confronted by another male in one of those escalating-toward-a-fight-posturing-then-finally-backing-down scenarios that were quite common among early 20's guys around females and or alcohol, he would typically completely skip the escalating steps (and ignore the backing down) and just slam people in the face.
He was also a little ahead of his time regarding fighting style. The UFC/MMA trend was a decade off. Yet he favored the use of knees and elbows.
But what made him interesting to me was not his violent streak, rather his quasi-philosophical rationale for it.
Paraphrased, it was:
"I hate propriety. I love helping people understand their assumptions are wrong and social calculus is tricky business."
Like Mike, Higgy's opponents didn't understand who they were dealing with.
I think the two examples are more akin than they might seem at first glance.
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revenge is a dish best served in bullet points
Posted by Gabriel | October 25, 2007 8:07 AM