Thursday's Just Hotel Stories

SFHotelStories is committed to exploring what I like to call the Venn Diagram overlap San Francisco and hotels.  But hotel is in the name so I could not neglect some intriguing hotel experiences which I have come across over the years.  Mainly it's anecdotal from friends and family, but since I am what some of my friends call, "Concierge to the world, " I feel compelled to share some true, and even scary stories, that people I know  (including myself) experienced in their respective hotels.  

Hotel Boheme is in the heart of North Beach, our old Italian neighborhood, but North Beach is also famous for being the nadir of the Beat movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Classic literary works like Jack Kerouac's On The Road, and Allen Ginzbergs' Howl introduced this little working-class enclave to the world, and the Hotel Boheme embodies this history. 

My niece's fiancé had never been to San Francisco and asked me for some recommendations for quirky, off-the-beaten-path Bed & Breakfasts or little inns.  I sent them a list which included the Hotel Boheme, which is where they chose to stay.  All the rooms at the Hotel Boheme are named after famous Beat writers, which I thought was just a theme.  Some Las Vegas hotels have Elvis and Sinatra suites because they were Vegas mainstays, not because they actually stayed in those rooms.

What I didn't know was that the Hotel Boheme was actually a real boarding house in the 1950s, and the Jack Kerouac suite was so named because he actually lived in that room.

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A friend of mine went to a wedding in Atlanta GA and stayed at the historic Ellis Hotel with her boyfriend, while her parents stayed in the adjoining room next door.  She noticed a quite specific odor burnt wood, like the kind you smell at a campfire, emanating from the air conditioner when she turned it on.  Later that night she was awakened by a phone call from her mother, who wanted to know why she was knocking on the door.  My friend informed her mother that they were both in bed, and nowhere near the door.  Here's the freaky part, my friend could hear the knocking over the phone in the background, but heard noting in her room at the same time.

Weird?

When they called their concierge to ask about these anomalous happenings, he sheepishly revealed that the hotel is not only haunted,  but has been the subject of scientific inquiry, as well as TV shows from around the world on the paranormal.  Numerous journals and websites dedicated to the subject of haunted hotels confirmed its extra-spectral activity.  Upon further research I discovered that the Ellis Hotel was the scene of a horrific fire in 1946, and  not just any fire.  It is considered the deadliest hotel fire in American history, claiming 119 lives.

So that scent of burnt lumber she smelled from the air conditioner was just a natural phenomenon, or the ghostly presence of some wrestles spirts?  You be the judge.

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In the 1990s I went to Portland OR for a four-day getaway.  In the Airport was a video kiosk which listed hotels by cost.  I naturally scrolled down to the cheapest one I could find and booked a reservation at the Ben Stark Hotel.  I could tell upon my arrival that the Ben Stark had seen better days.  The carpets were worn, and the Hippie/Grunge dude working at the front desk in a Pearl Jam T-Shirt didn't reflect the old-world accountments of this once classic hotel.  But the rooms were clean and had a history in their yellowing wallpaper.

If you remember the 1989 film, Drugstore Cowboy, the story revolves around a gang of drug addicts in early 1970s Portland.  Matt Dillon plays the ringleader and is an acolyte of Tom the Priest, played by Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs.  After having a conversation about films made in Portland with the rocker-dude behind the desk, I learned that not only did they shoot the film at the Ben Stark Hotel, but in the room I was staying in.  If you are a film AND hotel nerd like me, it doesn't get any cooler than that.

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Not one, but TWO hornet's nests on my balcony

My girlfriend and I recently stayed in a name brand motel with a kitchen.  She has Celiac disease and can't eat in most restaurants.  Therefore, we have to find accommodations where we can cook.  I am not the kind of person that demands to see then manager if I didn't get a pillow mint with my turndown service because I know what it is like on the other side of that desk.   Yet I think if I had two or three of these problems I could have lived with that, but all of them!

Upon our arrival we found the deadbolt missing from the front door and a dead cockroach on the floor.  When I tried to contact the front desk on the unit phone, I only got a busy signal as it was disconnected.

The front desk agent was rightly bothered by our first impression and moved us to a different room right away.  In the second unit we were moved to, we found there was no still deadbolt on the door, the stove didn't work, and the refrigerator smelled like rancid food. 

The next day we were then moved to a third room but found the stove and the phone didn't work there as well.   Also,  the television was stuck on the menu page and was not programmed for any other channels, I couldn't change the channel, but I could listen to a looped video encouraging me to download their "Value points."

We were then moved to a fourth room with similar problems:  The refrigerator in this unit also smelled of old food, the kitchen sink had no hot water, and we found an even larger infestation of cockroaches.  In addition to that we found not one but two hornet's nests on the balcony, making it impossible to sit out there.

The staff did their best to accommodate, and the manager did not disregard our plight.  But at a certain point we just couldn't load up and move everything again!   In the end, we just put up with the nonfunctioning aspects of the room.

It turned out that none of the four rooms we stayed in had deadbolts, working phones, or hot water in the kitchen sink. I've stayed in rundown inns in the Middle East, where the toilet was just a hole in the floor and two small pedestals to place your feet, and that would have been preferable.