ArtBlog

St. Martin’s Lane Hotel Redeemed

I take all (well, almost all) of my previous negative thoughts back.  The hotel’s concierge service is amazing.  I asked for a restaurant reservation with 30 minutes to spare at prime time.  What kind, Beth asked?  Trendy, but quiet enough to talk, great food, not a chain.  A couple of phone calls later, Beth had me a reservation at Origins in the private club, The Hospital, the exact restaurant I would have chosen if I knew it existed.  Local cuisine.  Beautiful presentation.  Fantastic service.  A delightful 10-minute, interesting walk from the hotel.  I couldn’t have been happier. 

The Tube, Community Property, and the Brooklyn Public Library

Even though I spent almost three and half hours in total on the Tube yesterday, it wasn’t until I found myself with nothing to read that I learned something profound about community property.

Upholstered seats.

I looked around.  I was the only person with a beverage (a Starbucks at that!  Embarrassing…believe it or not, could not find a non-Starbucks between St. Martin’s Lane and Piccadilly). No gum.  No scratchiti.  No mystery fluids.  No cops.  No cameras.

Derrida I’m not. I kept searching for meaning in the purple and magenta pattern of that upholstered seat (I didn’t say it was St. Martin’s Lane).  It then occurred to me that upholstered seats on public transport in some way reflects the respect of its users for each other, unknown strangers who would inhabit the same space seconds, hours, days later, trusting each other to leave it the way they themselves would want it the next morning.

The contrast to New York is too obvious to discuss.

In that moment, I felt awe that the humble upholstery would reflect the care and concern of each and every user.  What public resources in New York engender a similar level of respect by its users?  Perhaps the Brooklyn Public Library.

I’m on the Board of the Brooklyn Public Library Foundation.

ExCel Centre – Docklands

I can grudgingly accept that Canary Wharf is in London.  But to say the Docklands is in London is like saying that the New York Jets play in Manhattan.  45-60 minutes from Soho by the Tube.  And I was advised by a BBC exec not to take the National Rail for fear of being mugged.  Charming.

Style and Discomfort at St. Martin’s Lane Hotel

If style and comfort compete on the battleground of hotels, style wins at the great expense of comfort at St. Martin’s Lane, a Morgans Hotel in the Soho area of London. 

Puddles of light on the floor illuminate room numbers set in contrasting strips in the carpet and serve as the only light along long dark hallways which, like the rest of the hotel, is semi-gloss white.  Room doorways are alternate blue and orange with glowing blue or orange keyholes.  The rooms are entirely white with a window wall that takes up one entire end of the room.  Good thing, because the room is only about 5 feet wider than the bed, with a compact bathroom tucked in behind the bed’s headboard.  What serves as a closet is a curtained alcove. 

Harold Lloyd could have scripted my first couple of hours in the hotel.  I arrived on the redeye and 90 minutes after clearing customs, delayed by the apparently incessant signal problems on the Tube, I checked into the hotel several hours earlier than their normal check-in time.  As I was undressing to take a quick nap, an attractive young blond woman burst through the door.  I was astonished.  She was nonplussed. With a ‘sorry’, she brushed past me, around the bed and into the bathroom.  Moments later, she emerged.  “Towels”, she said as she scooted by.  I started undressing again only to have a knock at the door and a burly young man came in carrying tools.  “Broken phone”, he said.  Two trips later - followed by an aircon repairman, the concierge with a SIM card, and two trips from housekeeping with an American power converter and a complementary card to the Business Center to compensate for the non-functioning wireless service – I managed to squeeze in a 20-minute nap. 

FOOTNOTE: why do their mattresses feel like cardboard?  Must be the same mattress vendor as that hotel in Zhuhai, China.