This is our room at the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue across the street from the Waldorf. It’s a trendy place with dark hallways (trendy), leaning mirrors at the elevators (trendy), a lobby all silver and white and wood, including a huge bowl of silver Christmas Tree balls and another of silver Hershey’s Kisses. Our room is literally no bigger than this. And the bathroom… well, look.
This is it. All of it. We lived in Manhattan for 20 years so I know from New York prices and this post isn’t really about the $600 (!!!!) room. It’s just that this is ALL you get for $600. This event is across the street and our hosts put us here. I’m not ungrateful; in fact, it was lovely of them to place us right there. I’m just stunned, even after all my years both of New York living and heavy-duty traveling that this is what things cost. Plain, old, mediocre to not-so-great things like this room.
THIS is what I bought in ONE DAY of getting ready for the dinner I went to tonight. Enough makeup and hair products and hair styling/cutting/coloring to (almost) pay for this room. It will last a very long time but I’m crazed with guilt. Oh well. I’m trying not to surrender to all the "I don’t need that" stuff when it’s things I want and actually might need (at least a little bit) and doesn’t cost as much as a laptop or a car.
This is where we were – a benefit dinner. This is Cheap Trick performing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Everyone dancing in the aisles and me vacillating between loving it and feeling weird at people channeling Beatles wonders, but not the Beatles. Should they? Was it irreverant to the point of sin? I don’t know, but it sure was fun.
There’s lots more and I should tell you about it but I’m tired and we have to get up early to get the train home. I will say that seeing 50 or so cancer survivors up on the stage singing "Good Day Sunshine" was pretty moving. Goodnight for now.