One More Tete-a-Tete For The Fabled Vicious Circle At The Algonquin Hotel

Al Hirschfeld was never a member of the Vicious Circle, the storied gathering of writers, actors and wags who traded lunchtime barbs around a round table at the Algonquin Hotel. But it’s easy to imagine he might have been.

He knew the group’s acid-tongued members personally, including critic Alexander Woolcott, playwright Gerald S. Kaufman, New Yorker editor Harold Ross and serial quipper Dorothy Parker. Read more

Bad News for The Broadway: Another Hotel Gets Zapped for Fining Guests Who Write Bad Reviews

Last week brought news of yet another hotel that decided the smartest way to guarantee good reviews was to fine guests who write bad ones. The latest chapter unfolded at The Broadway, a budget bed and breakfast hotel in the North England resort town of Blackpool that charged an English couple 100 pounds (about $157) for calling the place “a filthy, dirty, rotten, stinking hovel run by muppets” on Tripadvisor. Read more