Noooooo! Plastic Showers at the Georgian Hotel: Santa Monica
January 24, 2017
Maybe you get a pass on the plastic shower thing if you are an historical property and you have peepholes like this??
Peep hole in 504
Of course, we’ve been here before, so we know which end is up and exactly why this property rocks. This time we made double sure to get the right room with an incredible (yuge?) view of the Pacific—especially after our Kimpton debacle last week). 504 is sweet!
The view on arrival
And it is on the proper side of the building as well.
504 side windows see this
So what to expect? A very spacious suite with reasonable furnishings only slightly dated. Plenty of room to work (and to entertain, as it turns out). A large bathroom with the exact wrong kind of shower. Creaky net. Busted speakers. Buy your own flowers. But the view. And the location. And the view.
Flowers. Buy self.
Of course it does actually rain sometimes. All day. For three days!
Entrance hallway 504
504 sitting room
504 sitting room
View into the bedroom
504 bedroom
This is actually from my brother’s inlaws house, so ignore it
Bathroom
Nooooo! A plastic shower. Eat crow and stay here anyway.
Enough room even for certain travelling companions
Anyway, did we have fun in Santa Monica? Sure. We started off in LA at the wine thing.
Breakfast crepe was delicious.
Penalty box for being both naughty and dumb enough to be caught@thedapperdiner @LoveTequila
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) January 22, 2017
Then we visited McCabe’s Guitar Shop (owned by our very own peeps). if you are a music person, just visit, play, hang out, learn. There are ghosts.
Fun afternoon playing fine instruments @McCabesGuitar in santa monica today pic.twitter.com/nr11bpvQqr
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) January 22, 2017
McCabe’s Guitar Shop
Which made us want stuff like this beauty of a guitar. Hurry up and buy it, or I will.
Want
And we had a delicious dinner up the canyon at the very old school and very very good Saddle Peak Lodge. The highlight of the night was talking to Bob while eating elk. Bob is just bob. Maybe one day we’ll tell you. Or maybe not. Talk to Bob you lucky bastard.
Anyway, fütbol in the room on the rainiest Sunday in maybe 8 years in Santa Monica. Mud slides, rocks that closed roads, leaky roofs that (who knew) are supposed to keep water out?! And all of the fütbol teams that we liked were beat. Kind of like the election. At least there was beer and a smidge of bourbon.
Ready for fütbol @GeorgianHotelSM pic.twitter.com/ifYmU1NMhI
— noplasticshower (@noplasticshower) January 22, 2017
Followed by Bourne on OK glass with super bad speakers. Dear hotels, why is it that home cinema situations even among those who mostly don’t give a shit are 10 years ahead of you? No, really. Why? One decade ahead.
Which catches us on up to Monday. Work and LACMA.
LACMA
LACMA
About which more here.
Then dinner at the very not bad Manchego, where they have yet to discover both Priorat and twitter.
Four showerheads and a wish for glass showers and speakers that are not blown.
United versus Virgin: Grizzly Veteran Flies New Airline
December 3, 2014
As a 100k flyer for over a decade with 1,589,963 United miles under my belt, I know a bit about United airlines. Since the merger with Continental, things have frankly gone to the dogs. We have documented the downfall of United here. Jeff Smisek may be good at mergers and marketing, but he sucks at operations.
Every time we think things may be getting better, they don’t.
So it has come to this. No more United. I will now show as much loyalty to United as they show to me. Towards that end, we flew Delta earlier this year, we flew American, and we just flew Virgin to SFO.
Just to make this all clear, two weeks ago I did a trip through SFO on United. Yesterday I did the same trip on Virgin. The experience was not the same.
One United flight had a wifi logo on the side, but the wifi did not work. The return flight did not have wifi at all. Having no wifi is like having no oxygen. On a hub to hub trip (IADSFO) there is no excuse any more for no wifi.
The United flight was crammed full and the crew was surly. But there was room to work in Economy Plus. Well, I could have worked if there had been some wifi. Instead I watched a movie on my nexus.
United: pringles that cost $, busted seats, and no wifi
This is the advanced technology display on an actual United aircraft
Nice upholstery on United
So the United experience was pretty bad all told, especially for a business flyer.
How about Virgin? It all started out fine, but then:
Uh oh, there is bad weather in San Francisco.
Everyone was delayed, but United chose the drip delay method as opposed to the doom and despair drop.
Virgin was staffed by very friendly and nice people. And their wifi worked as advertised (much to the chagrin of my staff). But the seats in economy do not allow laptop use in a comfortable fashion. That extra four inches in United economy plus makes all of the difference. I still have a headache from using Virgin wifi for 5 hours.
Virgin is too crammed for a mac air
Ultimately, this may all boil down to money. Pay more for a better seat? I guess so as long as there is a real productivity impact.
We’ll try that on Virgin in 2015.
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