This Hampton Inn is indeed downtown, it's near a peep show, a hospital with well-lit windows (I can see they have therapeutic florescent lights -- and apparently late visiting hours), and an adult book store. It makes me think of Emmers and that snooty "I won't stay at a hotel within 25 miles of an adult entertainment complex" look she gives near Super 8's and Fort Wayne on road trips.
The best part about being a professional tourist is that you can roll up into a town, ANY town, and inform people, natives, locals, etc as to what they are really seeing. As a person of the creative class and citizen of gen X and owner of a digital camera, I am able to see things that mere mortals cannot. Like for example when I arrived at this Hampton Inn in downtown Louisville, I let all the hotel staff and the other tired travelers waiting to check in, know that I thought all the ice was just beautiful. Oh look how it hangs off the trees and gives weight and light and majesty and glistening holiness and celestial meaning to everyday structures.
And then as if on queue, the elevator door opens and a family of - I don't know - ten-to-twenty small children pile out of the elevator holding each other and pillows and pajama pants, they walk past us through the lobby. Probably going to split a tiny bag of gardettos or cut up a Twix from the vending machine. The one front desk girl with what I thought was some seriously unprofessional greasy hair turns to the other front desk girl (a hefty broad with a spunky short hair red dye jobbie) and says something about how their power is still out. And everything makes sense. All of these ragamuffin families and greasy haired workers and paper plates in the hotel bar! This isn't a family place. This city is (half) out of power. It is a good thing I came to tell them about the ice. They say it's been here since Tuesday but honey, I just arrived. This is the first I've heard of any storm. I'll let you know how long it's going to be around.
I'd been on the road for hours and didn't feel like waiting in the peep-show bar to get a cheeseburger so I got a pizza at a Papa John's and a glass (a smudgy glass) of wine from the hotel bar. The security guard, who looked like an anorexic face-lifted Dennis Leary and who shoulda been out guarding my car because I had to leave half of my worldly possessions in there (ten bags by BB's count), is at the bar and tells me that he heard red wine is healthy, that its good for you. I ask him if he has been reading Prevention Magazine from 1998. No I didn't but I did see the Pistons lose to the Celtics and I did hear the security guard tell me that he hadn't had a drink in ten years and - a look at the watch - two weeks, six days and eight hours and he still missed it. Sobriety is a conversation killer in every venue and circumstance 'cept talk shows and meetings. I wanted to talk about the ice or Corvette Museum or just eat pizza by myself. I made sure my second glass was a heavier pour because the bar was closing and I had to take it on the run and BeTnE* was calling and I had to whisper to her that I was and am drunk in the hallways of the Hampton Inn alone.
