Hotel Hell

Philadelphia, downtown. December. An army of nerds descends upon the city.

The Marriott and its associated bunkhouses buzz like massive corporate hives of gastro-intestinal distress and emotional overload (masquerading as hipster dufus wit around the lobby bar). Imagine: a legion of English graduate students with their panties in a bunch over the do-or-die paranoia which precedes the publish-or-perish desperation. It is as if the quadrant of blocks surrounding the hotel has become a giant sounding-board for dork horror and kung-fu erudition. And in the midst of this subdued bedlam, a liter of Diet Coke from a vending machine costs two dollars! Noon-to-noon internet costs ten dollars! And this is on top of a hundred and fifty friggin’ dollars per night for a squishy bed, a shower, lousy cable TV, and suckling at the tit of the Pay-per-view god.

Besides the shivering, under-paid doorman, the main difference between the Philadelphia Marriott and a Motel 6 is the lobby, which in the Marriott gleams like a giant upside-down bathtub and is decorated like a wedding cake or a set out of Logan’s Run; I half-expect fairies and water-sprites to flit about the ceiling. And, lest we forget, at the moment we are discussing, this cavernous glittering modern marvel reverberates with stressed out dweebs in a rage to prove their savage intellectualism. It is pretty, pretty, pretty, but you can’t sleep there. And yet: Parking your car for three days costs over a hundred dollars, and I’m amazed we weren’t charged for riding the elevator or using the can.

But who is to blame for this orgy of inflation? We are. Americans. The freedom to spend inherent in a democratic, capitalistic, technocratic society. The men in the monkey-suits will always win as long as we are willing to pay over a hundred dollars to sleep in a bed changed nightly by under-educated, under-paid, exhausted, overtly-resentful people. The yuppies in their beemers and Porsche 9-11s can sit their lean sports-club asses in seat-warmer comfort as they whoosh down the corporate superhighways of night for the duration of the reign of the ruling un-elite: the educated proles in their rage to rise.

Of course…it was nice to wake up someplace that was clean…and capitalism has the advantage of a Starbucks in the lobby one short elevator ride away…and the lobby was awfully nice…