What, My Grimy Hospitality Is Too Good For You?

Each day walking down West 43rd Street to work, Times employees pass by the Hotel Carter. One day, a young writer can no longer resist the urge, and feels compelled to write a human-interest feature about it that barely conceals outward disdain for and condescension towards the place:

People have been saying for years that the old Times Square – the seedy, lowbrow ancestor of what is now a largely sanitized, Disneyfied tourist haven – is dead. But those people have never spent a night at the Hotel Carter. The 615-room hotel at 250 West 43rd Street offers travelers a cheap room in an expensive city, and something more: an adventure. In the middle of Manhattan and at the neon-bright Crossroads of the World, the hotel has been a little-known source of grimy hospitality, low-budget accommodations and equal numbers of satisfied and dissatisfied customers from around the world.

As a guest of the Hotel Carter, you may or may not have your room cleaned. You may or may not find the multicolored, multipatterned carpet on the floor and the walls agreeable. You may or may not have a working television and telephone. You may or may not have a smooth check-in, since the front desk keeps track of reservations without the benefit of a computer system.

In short, you may or may not have an enjoyable stay. The answer depends on which room you get – the top floors have numerous large recently renovated rooms with splendid views – and on your answer to this question: What do you expect for $99.23 a night?

. . .

Room 1105 was not so much a room as it was a place to lie low. It took eight paces to walk from one wall to the next and 21 paces to get from the door to the window. The telephone was dead. It sat on an old desk, its drawer broken and placed on the stained carpet, a copy of the Manhattan white pages, 1994-5, among the contents inside. The room was lighted by a bare bulb on the ceiling, and the headboard of the bed was a rectangle of blue carpet nailed to the wall. There was a big moldy splotch on the ceiling above the bathtub.