Celebratory butter cream with chocolate filling.
Not many guests check into hotels long term unless you count inventor Nikola Tesla, who lived for a decade at The New Yorker, or Cole Porter, who stayed for years at the Waldorf (the hotel lent him a grand piano). Read more
Times Square as seen from R Lounge.
This is what Times Square looks like from a window table at R Lounge, the Renaissance New York’s second-floor restaurant and bar with the flashy address – Two Times Square. Talk about the thick of things. Read more
Don’t tip the Yotel robot
We’ll never know the identity of the enterprising employee who cleared his throat, stared down a guest and was remunerated for carrying a bag. But by the 1820s tipping the porter, like signing the register, was a ritual at hotels in New York and other big American cities.
Blame it on the buildings. Carrying bags wasn’t a problem for guests staying at small, squat colonial inns and taverns. But hotel architecture changed in the 1790s, with the advent of full-fledged hotels with complicated floor plans, writes A.K. Sandoval-Strausz in Hotel, An American History, a fascinating look at the evolution of the hotel. Read more
It’s not news when a hotel room serves as a backdrop for a movie or photo shoot. But a play?
Welcome to Room 620 at the Hudson hotel. As noted previously, Green Eyes, a rarely seen one-act by Tennessee Williams, written in 1970 and published in 2008, is performed in this snug little suite through January 23. Fortunately for claustrophobic types, the play is short – just 35 minutes – with just two characters, a warring pair of newlyweds honeymooning in a seedy New Orleans hotel room. Read more
Ever wondered how King Kong perched on top of the Empire State Building might look rendered in gingerbread?
Me, neither. But King Kong is just one of seven movies interpreted in grand-scale gingerbread in the second annual holiday gingerbread exhibition at Le Parker Meridien hotel. And the result – an Art Deco gingerbread skyscraper with a frosted ape balanced atop a fondant finial – is scrumptious. Read more
Q. When is a can of tuna more than just a can of tuna?
A. When it’s grouped with more than 4,000 others to create a grand-scale sculpture of New York’s Standard Hotel, aka The Candard Hotel. Read more
I find it really hard to get excited about a new banking product, even when there’s a hotel connection. But I can see the appeal of a new credit card that made its debut yesterday. Read more