Gentrification jackpot: the Bowery House becomes homeless themed upmarket hotel

[editor]

This is a really interesting piece about some particularly tacky gentrification in NY.

The Bowery House opened in 2011, on the top two floors of a building on the Bowery formerly known as the Prince Hotel. The Bowery is a lengthy street running through the centre of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and has long been a place of refuge for the city’s homeless population. Dozens of ‘flophouses’ were built there during the Great Depression, including the Prince, providing cheap living spaces for poverty-stricken New Yorkers. By the 1950s more than 200 residents were crammed into the Prince’s tiny wooden cabins, paying a few dollars a night for a bed, a shared bathroom and a ceiling made out of chicken wire.

The Prince was sold in the mid-90s, and stopped accepting new residents. By the time plans to convert it into a hotel emerged, there were barely ten residents left. The hotel developers moved them all onto the second floor, and turned the cabins on the higher floors into upmarket ‘tribute’ versions of the rooms downstairs. Guests at the hotel, who pay anything up to $154 a night to ‘live out their flophouse fantasies’, therefore now climb past a floor of chicken-wire rooms inhabited by real-life ‘bums’ in order to reach their ‘authentic’ cabin beds.

One room has even been named after ‘one of the most colorful longtime residents’, although no-one is sure whether so-called ‘Charlie Peppers’ is aware of the ‘tribute’ being paid to his ‘colourful’ life. But whether he knows or not, his poverty, and that of his neighbours, is now a cultural niche to be mined for profit. It’s probably one step up from being thrown out on the street altogether, but there’s a peculiarly insidious violence about a vulnerable person’s entire existence being exploited as a tourist attraction behind their back.

- See more at: http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=13143#sthash.xNYif82X.dpuf

 

[JTG]

Wow

 

[JTG]

No other comment at this stage

 

[editor]

No other comment at this stage

It's a bit much to take in, isn't it?

Guests at the hotel, who pay anything up to $154 a night to ‘live out their flophouse fantasies’, therefore now climb past a floor of chicken-wire rooms inhabited by real-life ‘bums’ in order to reach their ‘authentic’ cabin beds.

 

[8ball]

Wow

Seconded.

 

[Dan U]

fucking hell. some level above that pub in Deptford named after the job centre.

 

[porno thieving gypsy]

What sort of person has a "flop house fantasy"

 

[Belushi]

I no longer know what's real and what's satirical.

 

[killer b]

I just visited the website, and it doesn't seem to trade on it's history at all, and starting at $59 a night doesn't strike me as upmarket.

http://www.theboweryhousehotelnewyork.com/index.htm?lbl=ggl-en&gclid=COLF6IbduMACFZMRtAod-xoAbQ

just looks like a hip backpacker place to me.

 

[isvicthere?]

I no longer know what's real and what's satirical.

^^^^this. It reads like a daily mash story.

 

[killer b]

that's because its about as made-up qs a daily mash story

 

[Belushi]

Yeah, the website certainly doesn't match the claims in the story

 

[salem]

Reminds me of the South African shanty town themed place.

http://www.emoya.co.za/p23/accommod...accommodation-experience-in-bloemfontein.html

"Now you can experience staying in a Shanty within the safe environment of a private game reserve. This is the only Shanty Town in the world equipped with under-floor heating and wireless internet access!"

 

[killer b]

Yeah, the website certainly doesn't match the claims in the story

liberal clickbait innit.

 

[editor]

that's because its about as made-up qs a daily mash story

Here. Read. The hotel may have (wisely) changed since, but the story is real enough.

On Bowery, Cultures Clash as the Shabby Meet the Shabby Chic
On the Bowery, on the second floor of an ancient flophouse, nine men pay less than $10 a night to sleep in cramped cubicles topped with chicken wire. Half the stalls in their shared bathroom are missing doors, and their halls are lined with spooky rows of empty cubicles whose last occupants either took off or died off.

Directly above them, on the third and fourth floors, stylish young men and women pay $62 to $129 a night for a refined version of the gritty experience below. Their cubicles have custom-made mattresses and high-end sheets. Their shared bathrooms have marble sinks and heated floors. Their towels are Ralph Lauren.

The alternate worlds within 220 Bowery rarely intersect, although the hotel’s flophouse aesthetic is meant to create a “living history” vibe that is “equal parts museum and hotel,” its developers say. One of them, Sanford Kunkel, goes so far as to describe the men below, living in walk-in closets, scraping by, as “an asset to the property.”

An example of this is the hotel room called the Peppers Bunk, named after “Charlie Peppers,” among the building’s “most colorful longtime residents,” the hotel’s publicity material explains. There is, in fact, a silent, unapproachable tenant named Charlie who does, in fact, eat lots of peppers. He has not been told by the hotel that a room upstairs is named after him, or that he is considered colorful, or that his cubicle lifestyle is being used as a P.R. come-on.

But Charlie has, at times, expressed his displeasure with the flophouse homage above him. Before the hotel, called the Bowery House, opened in midsummer in Lower Manhattan, this man of few words walked up to a couple of its workers and said, simply: Leave.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/us/at-bowery-house-hotel-flophouse-aesthetic-of-old.html

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Surely they shouldn't be living out their flophouse fantasies with custom-made mattresses, high-end sheets, marble sinks, heated floors and Ralph Lauren towels

 

[killer b]

Here. Read. The hotel may have (wisely) changed since, but the story is real enough.

Yeah. I read. I don't think it really changes anything.

So, just to recap, an ex-flophouse has been done up in a style that's sympathetic to it's original use, has opened it as a hotel with very reasonably priced beds (£35 - £92 for comparison - that's far from 'upmarket') and has let some of the old residents stay there for peppercorn rents instead of turfing them out on the street. Have I got that right?

 

[salem]

Yeah. I read. I don't think it really changes anything.

So, just to recap, an ex-flophouse has been done up in a style that's sympathetic to it's original use, has opened it as a hotel with very reasonably priced beds (£35 - £92 for comparison - that's far from 'upmarket') and has let some of the old residents stay there for peppercorn rents instead of turfing them out on the street. Have I got that right?

Interesting take on it. I think whether it stands scrutiny depends on whether the owners are letting the old boys stay on out of charity or obligation. I suspect the latter and they came up with the branding to take advantage of a bad situation. Even if they've chosen to let the old tenants stay on out of charity then it doesn't really excuse them using one of their names without permission or leaving the old cubicles in a bad state.

I suspect this current setup is a cheap and temporary 'pop up' solution until they get all the old tenants out and refurbish it properly.

 

[Manter]

Interesting take on it. I think whether it stands scrutiny depends on whether the owners are letting the old boys stay on out of charity or obligation. I suspect the latter and they came up with the branding to take advantage of a bad situation. Even if they've chosen to let the old tenants stay on out of charity then it doesn't really excuse them using one of their names without permission or leaving the old cubicles in a bad state.

I suspect this current setup is a cheap and temporary 'pop up' solution until they get all the old tenants out and refurbish it properly.

It's been refurbished- it's part hotel, part museum according to the website, and no mention at all of flophouse fantasies....

 

[killer b]

Maybe. Who knows (although it's been an arrangement that's lasted 3 years so far)? Either way, it's far from the gentrification jackpot claimed in the OP.

 

[editor]

Maybe. Who knows (although it's been an arrangement that's lasted 3 years so far)? Either way, it's far from the gentrification jackpot claimed in the OP.

That's what the two articles claimed and, frankly, I'm more inclined to believe what they're saying above your personal, long distant take on events.

Did you not read the bit where both articles claimed that a hotel room had been named after one of the longterm homeless residents there?

And what about Charlie Peppers?

Mr. Kunkel displayed a photograph on his smartphone of Charlie sunbathing on the roof. He described the man as cocky, volatile and uncommunicative. And no, he had not told the man of the hotel room named after him. “I don’t even think he knows he’s called Charlie Peppers,” Mr. Kunkel said.

A touch of irritation could be heard in his words. Here is why: At least twice, he said, the man called Charlie Peppers has smashed the sleek neon sign that announces this new, flophouse-chic hotel to all who walk the Bowery.

It looks like it has changed now, but that doesn't make the original story any less accurate or made up, as you claimed.

 

[killer b]

That's what the two articles claimed and, frankly, I'm more inclined to believe what they're saying above your personal, long distant take on events.

Did you not read the bit where both articles claimed that a hotel room had been named after one of the longterm homeless residents there?

It looks like it has changed now, but that doesn't make the original story any less accurate or made up, as you claimed.

What made me go about the article you posted wasn't whether the old guy had been asked if they could name a room after him (although I note, the writer hadn't asked him either - the resident's opinions are notably absent throughout the critical pieces you cite. Funny that). It was the way that a crass review by an unrelated website was being presented as the hotel's promotional material, and the idea that £35 - £92 a night is upmarket, despite it actually being no such thing. It's lazy, dishonest writing with a clear agenda - and if the writer had to stretch the truth so tightly to make his point, then perhaps it's because there wasn't so much there for him to go at in the first place.

 

[editor]

What made me go about the article you posted wasn't whether the old guy had been asked if they could name a room after him (although I note, the writer hadn't asked him either - the resident's opinions are notably absent throughout the critical pieces you cite. Funny that). It was the way that a crass review by an unrelated website was being presented as the hotel's promotional material, and the idea that £35 - £92 a night is upmarket, despite it actually being no such thing. It's lazy, dishonest writing with a clear agenda - and if the writer had to stretch the truth so tightly to make his point, then perhaps it's because there wasn't so much there for him to go at in the first place.

So you're going to sidestep all the other issues presented in the NY Times piece then?

 

[killer b]

I'm talking about the dodgy shit in the article in the OP, not whatever you've desperately googled to support your case after it was challenged.

 

[ska invita]

i know someone who stayed there last year - it was the very cheapest hotel they could find, cheaper than the YMCA even. Room was tiny, which was fine, but the ceiling is missing and you can hear what everyone else is up to. Nightmare. Had to get earplugs to sleep. But it was cheap by NY standards - under £40 a night

I know there was no thrill of staying in the bowery house (which theyd never heard of before) etc, it was just a cheap spot to stay in an expensive city

 

[ska invita]

They didnt mention anything about "real life bums" staying there... supposedly it was just like a hostel (but worse, as no ceilings )

 

[editor]

I'm talking about the dodgy shit in the article in the OP, not whatever you've desperately googled to support your case after it was challenged.

"Desperately Googled"? What!!!?
You claimed that story was made up. It wasn't. You were wrong.

 

[killer b]

apart from the made up bits.

 

[editor]

 

[ska invita]

tbf its neither "homeless themed" nor an "upmarket hotel" as the thread titles says