For the third year in a row, Times Square's Hotel Carter has been named the filthiest, most disgusting hotel in America. Reasons given include the expected: bed bugs, cockroaches, hair and fingernail clippings, the occasional dead hooker... Offering rooms that can be had for as cheap as 122.00 USD a night(!), Hotel Carter calls themselves the best value in New York city - just don't make eye-contact with the trannies in the elevator!

Normal folk across the country are outraged. One man recalls a youthful trip to New York city:

I checked into this hotel alone about 6:00 pm, put my suitcase in the room and left to have dinner. When I returned at 10:00 pm, I noticed that in my absence someone had been in my bathroom and defecated in the toilet and left without flushing!! When I told the desk clerk, his response was, "Why was someone in your room?" (Exactly my question to you, Hotel Carter). When I told the "security guard", his response was "What do you want me to do? It's late."

How can a place like this be allowed to remain open?!?! Only in New York! they say.

Only in New York, indeed. Only in New York is there a collective sigh of relief when a hotel in Manhattan is named the grittiest, most disturbing establishment of its kind. Only in New York, where gentrification is considered a sign of the end times, can the Hotel Carter emerge as a source of civic pride.




In the spirit of Kellogg and all those Borscht Belt vacationers in their Nash Ramblers invading the Catskills, I propose a vacation - a staycation - to Midtown, to the Hotel Carter, for some of the grimy hospitality and seedy charms that characterized the Times Square of old. After all, what goods a vacation if it doesn't get a little dirty?