Living with Legends

     The faux-diner has been popular for years, since, once greedy landlords ran all of the real diners off adventurous yuppies craved a return to that “real New York” dining experience.  And now that most all of the residential hotels have been cleared out, their tenants scattered to the wind, up pops the faux-sro.  To give all of those faux bohemians and faux winos a place where they can pretend to be keeping it real.  On the cutting edge of this trend is the Ace hotel which was formerly the Breslin Hotel an SRO catering to artists and other genuine New Yorkers.  Instead of the crappy clapboard furniture, old record players and broken down refrigerators that were no doubt thrown out on the street when the Breslin’s tenants were evicted the Ace now features crappy ikea furniture and kitschy appliances such as turn tables and refrigerators making it look like a dorm room from the seventies.  We don’t know what the hell to make of the Joe Lewis boxing robes, though they are obviously some sort of evocation of a past era.  Maybe they’re sending a message to the tourists that they need to be prepared to go a round or two with the few remaining permanent tenants.  In today’s financial climate, if there’s not enough money to build a real boutique hotel, just make it cheap and tell people they like it.   – Ed Hamilton  (Photos: www.hotelchatter.com)