Friday 2nd November 2012

Hotels are at the core of Poor Little Rich Gay Life.

I know, I know. Bodies are still not recovered from the dèbris on Staten Island among other places.

Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist at present weirdly blended with (his perf. features a storm) as well as commanding all New York’s admiration, is full of hotels. It was him who said: ‘5 stars, Heaven, 4 stars, Hell.’

The Poor Little Rich Gay hotel – what is it exactly? Is it boutique? On the whole, yes. The Poor Little Rich Gay must be clasped on a hotel bosom, not parked on the 30th floor with room service. However rich and final the outpouring of luxury, it’s as nothing if there is no sense that some quite impossible person, perhaps the designer once and then the room manager subsequently, has stood before every lighting fixture, every tap, every towel, every flower arrangement, and said, ‘It must be this way and not that.’

6 Columbus, that being its address although in fact in 58th Street, is only 14 floors. It’s done in the Sixties style, which means brown, dark grey/blue and parchment. Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist of international renown, wouldn’t take it because of the Sixties style. He stayed at the Shoreham in 55th Street, also boutique and entirely cream and with a difficult coffee machine in the breakfast room.

I thought the corridors of 6 Columbus quite menacing and Psycho or Cohen Brothers. They are lined with a woven paper painted over in heavy navy blue.  Everything dark. But good. I think once the hotel was another hotel, a run-down place of desperation, with invisible permanent residents presumed to be rotting in their rooms.

Especially now, with bodies still unrecovered elsewhere in New York. Poor Little Rich Gays, unlike the Earls’ Court Gays, do not slam out completely with money or willpower the elements beyond control or the painful poor life. Some Poor Little Rich Gays are more poor than rich anyway.

At 6 Columbus, the rooms have no hint of country house but the carpet could not have been more comfortable. Plain but with squares woven into it. I’m not sure how to describe. And the bed linen! So much to be learnt! The thread count, probably uncountable, and some exquisite soufflé pad laid over the mattress to lie on.

America is a nation devoted to bed linen and hot water.

The bathroom I loved. It had a window and simple elements – just navy tiles, grey marble mosaic floor and plain white fittings of unusual design. The colours and crystalline quality of the floor aligned with the refreshing tones and materials chosen through centuries for the watery places.

Do you know? I hope I’m not losing my Poor Little Rich Gay grip. But I must mention it. The tiling module in the bathroom was not perfect and the grouting just a wheeny bit messy. Bruce MacBain would have had something to say.

But I was not enraged. I failed to demand a reduction. I was consoled. Comforted by a touch of scruff, I felt that maybe my own home would just about do.

Finally in the breakfast room, you go Japanese. It’s done as Sixth Century Japanese, entirely in wood. Quite beamy. The booths all wood with integral benches.  I’m assuming 6th century Japanese. But what do I know of Japan?

The actual breakfast comes in a black lacquer box. The coffee, or tea, goes into impossible stone mugs, impossible to lift and, with a squared-off rim, to drink out of. The Gay Mother was on and on at them about the lack of hotness of their water for tea.

The stone mugs made the hotel for me, more than anything else.

6 Columbus Hotel, Manhattan. New Heights of Bed Linen

Delightful Bathroom at 6 Columbus, Manhattan

Comforting Mis-Management of the Tiling Module and Grouting at 6 Columbus, Manhattan

A Leak Sprang from Here and Dripped into the Bath Below in My Bathroom at 6 Columbus, Manhattan. I Failed to Demand Money Off

Lacquer Breakfast Box in Japanese Style at 6 Columbus, Manhattan. This is the Yoghurt and Granola option. Otherwise You Could Have Japanese Porridge. Impossible Stone Mugs also in Shot