BlackBook Magazine

Checking in at West Hollywood's Boys Town Inn. (BYO bed sheets.)

By Michael Ruffino

Ramada Inn, Los Angeles, above.

The Ramada Plaza Suites Hotel West Hollywood, north of Fairfax, east of Beverly Hills, west of Hollywood, and south of the mountains, is in Boys Town, so called because it is usual in the neighborhood bars and clubs for men to endeavor unconnected to the presence of women. The hotel identifies just Hollywood, of course, recommending Dan Tana‘s or The Palm to some, nothing in particular to others. The hotel also identifies its facing street not as Santa Monica Boulevard but as “world-famous Historic Route 66,” on a giant plaque outside the lobby. Management is obviously keen on that mildly absurd point of interest-an employee directing us to nearby Spanish Kitchen instructed, “a left on Route 66, which is right out front here, and a right at CVS.” As he did, the lobby’s automatic doors dismissed a teen demimondaine past us, past the giant plaque and out onto Historic Route 66, where with a terminal-sounding sigh she climbed into a Chrysler Sebring (henceforth Sigh-Bring), where an irreparable bald chap waited at the wheel. We note that Route 66 is also called The Mother Road, sometimes for all the wrong reasons.

The hotel has elsewhere tried to elevate itself, introducing “new mattresses, a spa-inspired bathroom experience with a Moen Revolution showerhead, a curved shower rod, and fluffier towels.” Ali, a Turkish hulk who looks like he knows something about curved shower rods, let us into our room at 2 a.m., through desperate rowdy-ism in the hall (Jaegermeister everywhere, an Englishman covered in blow, screaming). Ali flicks on a dirty plastic orb. A suite, if defined not by us but by a small coat area/kitchenette/foyer probably known around the adult film industry as “catering.” The carpets and bedspreads, designed with indications of a severe personality disorder—Joan Miro’s, specifically.

In lieu of the usual camp hotel-room prints there are empty gray walls, and a stain on the headboard freezes us with wonder. We don’t know what the towels out-fluffed by comparison but the layer of what the Rolling Stones call “short & curlies” might have provided their edge-in fact, the more we looked around, it was as if our room had been served us with a “topping.” We see (are made to accept) that “new” mattresses can mean “other” mattresses without being untrue, and that “a spa-inspired bathroom experience” might describe as well the scene in David Cronenberg’s latest (Eastern Promises) where a naked man gets half his blood kicked out of him. We could not make out the logo on our showerhead, but in our gray room with its one bolted window into a dark ventilation shaft-the sinus-clogged with huge nondescript machinery, we could only imagine the Moen Revolution too being crushed by the State. Not every room is a lair, we think: but every lair is a room.

We smile, thank and tip Ali, and place our light duffel on the closet shelf, destroying it completely. Ali immediately offers to go buy us cigarettes at the store. We don’t smoke, but we certainly like the cut of Ali’s jib, so we let him choose the brand.

True, we might recommend the place because Ali returned from the store with wine also; because the elevator doors have not in three days opened in front of anyone sober; and because behind the chair by those elevators, third floor, Sunday morning, we found a Hollywood souvenir coffee cup with what looked like 22 Vicodins in it—just sitting there, like mints. But this Ramada, which otherwise seems to have drawn architectural inspiration for its new façade from the bottom of a YMCA swimming pool, where we are encouraged to “relax” at the brand new lobby bar behind which there are no bartenders serving any beverages of any type, ever (decommissioned, no further explanation), and where we are urged to “coddle” ourselves in the whirlpool (why heat it just for the eggs?), was recently awarded the chain’s own “prestigious” President’s Award by a management Star Chamber, operating as they do from an undisclosed location in Palm Desert.

We expect to soon hear of a Pulitzer for O.J. Simpson and a Grammy for Britney Spears. Or either for both, perhaps: “Oops, If I Did It Again.”