As you may know, I am staying at the Radio City Apartments, which I swore I would not do this time but could not find anything else in my price range that I liked as well.
And if you have read my blog before, you know that i have nicknamed it Firetrap Hotel. Note the following:
1) Built before 1906; no one is quite sure how much before.
2) It is a “smoking hotel”.
3) Yes, it is called “Apartments” for a reason – every room has a kitchenette in it, each with a gas stove!
4) I like to stay on the street side of the building, which means that if there is a fire between me and Stairwell A, I am fucked. (There is a Stairwell B on the opposite end of the building, which does me no good. It does no one any good if the fire is on the ground floor because Stairwell B ends on the second floor, at which point you must traverse the hallway to, you guessed it, stairwell A.)
5) No, there is no fire escape.
I provide you this preface to what happened tonight. Just as I was crawling into bed, the girl who lives in the smoke detector in my room started telling me she wanted a new battery. I called the desk. The guy comes up, and in stead of putting in a new battery, he removes my smoke detector, telling me he can not put a new battery in it because they were all locked up.
Anyway, as I was writing this I realized of fucking ridiculous this was, so I called the desk again and supposedly there is a guy on his way up with a battery.
Okay, so it took him a few minutes, about the time that it takes to walk to Duane Reade and buy a package of batteries.
So I bid you good night, with a good chance I will not die of smoke inhalation in my sleep.
PS – The first time he came he took a towel out of my bathroom and put it on a chair to stand on. I just went in there and found m y last remaining dry washcloth in the toilet where it had fallen when he had gotten the towel. Good thing I found it before using and flushing, otherwise he would have been up here again for plumbing fun!
PPS – I do not want to stereotype, but this guy was the first Mexican I have met who apparently knows absolutely nothing about baseball. That I knew more about the World Series game than he did worries me on many, many levels.