The Roach Motel

I was required to be in sunny San Diego for two days of training this past week.

As with all of these trips, I like to maximize my good times as well as getting work done. In order to achieve both goals, I decided to fly out on Monday evening and work out of my hotel on the day before the training begins on Wednesday.

In order to support my President's call for "personal sacrifice" in his inaugural speech, I decided to book the cheapest hotel I can find for Monday and Tuesday night. With a quick search on hotels.com, and careful deliberation , by careful deliberation I mean "sort by price - low to high". I settled on Hotel 500 West.


As you can see from their site, it doesn't look too bad. Clean, hip lobby, got the catch phrase "hybrid" in their slogan, and a picture of a fetching young lady using her Mac on the bed (conveys the message that she has no time for searching for device drivers and dealing with Windows viruses - she's too busy banging random guys. At least that's the message I got - your millage may vary).

Fiddy-five dollars a night. SOLD! sign me up. I booked the mofo for Monday and Tuesday night.

After a six and a half hour flight on JetBlue, in which I was only able to watch the Food Network clearly on their in-flight DirectTV system, I arrived both dehydrated and HUNGRY. After checking in and dropping off my crap, I query the front desk clerk for the nearest restaurant. The answer I received was "take a left out the door, and keep walking". So I did.

For those of you who are familiar with downtown San Diego, I am walking eastbound on West Broadway, towards the bus station; for those of you who are familiar with American urban development and Poison songs knows what it means to see a bus station. Undeterred, I kept walking. Son, I play BOTH flag football and slow pitch softball - I am a finely tuned athlete, they should FEAR ME. Two blocks away, I see several check cashing places; that my friends, means I should turn around (Come on, even Superman has Kryptonite).

Just as I was turning, I saw a restaurant across the street. It's name was the Yard House. Walking in the door, I see a sign informing me that they have over two hundred beers on tap. Two hundred - for those you who know me, this conjures up the scene in Gladiator where Maximus says "If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!".

I think I had a few yards of cheap American swill, and met some nice people from Seattle and Sweden, and headed back to the 500 West. Not surprisingly, I had no problems sleeping in the what I later learned - the meager accommodations.

The next day, three of my coworkers arrive, one man and two women. Immediately, they were horrified by the hotel. Apparently, they had trouble with the fact that the showers/bathrooms were communal and they saw a can of "bed bugs" spray on the cart of the cleaning staff. To be fair, I had sold them pretty hard on this joint, because I didn't want to stay at crapland by myself, and I wanted to have an adventure. Going in, I had pictured this place to be something that you would see in a movie where the burnt-out cop would live, you know - the glowing neon sign outside of your window, elevated train rumbling by every few minutes, and perhaps a chalk outline body on the floor - like Highlander or where Briar Gates stayed in Next of Kin.

I got the train rumbling, but the neon light outside of our windows was of the $165 a night glow of the Westin Hotel. In fact, that Westin Hotel sign mocked my two female coworkers all night as they had to call each other to make their trek to the bathroom at 4 A.M.

Instead of giving you the nancy-boy and obvious biased opinion from my coworkers about the 500 West, let's go to tripadvisor.com for some reviews by some experienced travelers:

From Rizzodublin - Dublin, Ireland:

What we didn't anticipate were BED BUGS, a filthy room, that looks nothing like the room advertised, TWO hours SLEEP due to constant noise from the trolley, train and cruise liners that pass less than a block away all night. ... Upon speaking to the manager he advised us the hotel was "not for everyone", and he would offer us a discount of 20% off our 150$ per night rate. We stated we were extremely unhappy with same, would not be paying for the room and checked out.

You paid $150 PER NIGHT? You should be car bombing the bastard who book you that rate.


From breakslikeglass - Portland, Oregon:

i get that it's a hostel, but for nearly the same price as a hotel, i expect a level of decency to match the praise of some of the previous reviews. ... i am a very small, reasonably decent looking girl and was continually yelled at/asked out by men who were so drugged up they could hardly form sentences. it was scary.

Just on a hunch, I used her user name and looked for a profile on MySpace. I don't know, Miss BreaksLikeGlass, but I think you are the type that gives off the "I would totally bang a homeless person" vibe.

Here are several room shots from one of my coworkers:


As you can see, the rooms are not bad. Overall, I think I scored on several fronts. One, I stayed at a crappy hotel, and showed my willingness to sacrifice to improve the company bottom line. Two, had a nice adventure, communal bathrooms? I don't think the other guests had a problem with me running around in a towel. Three, I am able to observe the pickup techniques of the homeless/transient community - I thought their grammar was adequate and quite acceptable.

Update 2/26/2009 -

I knew there was a good reason why I chose the 500 West.

You're welcome.