SoHo Grand

July 10, 2005

It's been a while since I've written so much about so little, but here goes:

When I called my friend Reflux yesterday, I had no idea that he was in town from San Francisco for a few days for work. "You are? What the fuck? We have to get together."

Reflux couldn't have agreed more, and we quickly made a plan. "There's a movie I want to see," he suggested. "It's playing at the Angelica. It's a documentary called Rize by the photographer David LaChapelle. About some kind of hip hop dance movement or something. I don't know. All I know is a friend of mine worked on it, so I'd like to check it out."

After going online to watch the movie's trailer, I wasn't sure I'd be able to sit through it, but Reflux offered to pay, so why not? Maybe I'd learn something. By the end of the day, however, Reflux called to say he felt a cold coming on and wasn't up for the movie anyway. He was staying at the SoHo Grand and suggested I meet him there. "We can hang out in my room and drink from the minibar, but the room is tiny. Why don't you call me when you're close? I'll come down and meet you at the hotel bar."

I took the subway downtown, got off on Canal Street, and turned up West Broadway. As I approached the hotel, I could see a small crowd gathered behind a velvet rope at the entrance. I called Reflux to tell him I was there, and started to pull open the heavy door, but the doorman stopped me. "Are you going to the bar?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You have to wait here," he said, pointing to the growing line.

"You're kidding me," I said, then relayed to Reflux what was going on, "Dude, the guy doesn't want to let me in."

"That's bullshit—"

The doorman was perceptive enough to realize I was talking to someone who was already inside the hotel. He asked if I was a guest. "No, but my friend is. I'm here to see him."

"What's his name?"

I told him.

"What's the room number?"

"Dude, what's your room number?" I asked Reflux.

The doorman flipped through a stack of pages on a clipboard, corroborated the information, and let me in. As I pulled open the door, a guy snuck up behind me and tried to get in on my coattails. "Are you two together?" The doorman asked us. I hadn't even noticed the guy.

"Yes," the guy nodded.

I kept my mouth shut and let the guy fend for himself. He wasn't convincing enough, and the doorman corralled him with the other hopefuls behind the purple ropes. I tossed the guy a shrug and entered the lobby.

I was still on the phone with Reflux. "Okay, man, I'm in."

Reflux told me to come upstairs. The elevator carried me up a few floors. I walked the wrong way down the hall, then backtracked and found the door. After shaking hands and saying hello, Reflux offered me some popcorn from an open bag. "You hungry?"

I looked at the minibar's price card and saw the popcorn listed. "Six dollars?" I laughed.

"I know. It probably costs about 3 cents to make," he said, shaking the bag. "Whatever. Don't worry about that."

I scanned the room, studied the furniture, and marveled at the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall.

"The hotel is nice, right?" said Reflux.

"Yeah."

"But the room is tiny, isn't it?"

I don't know what kind of high-falutin' luxury suites Reflux was used to, but this room seemed pretty standard-sized to me."It’s New York,” I said.

The only thing that made it feel small and impeded my movement was the oppressive heft of the minibar's price list.

A twelve-dollar box of cookies, a five-dollar candy bar, assorted drinks at assorted over-prices. "What do you want?" asked Reflux as he poked through the miniature bottles lining the refrigerator door. "Whiskey?"

"Hmm. Maybe. What else do they have in there?"

He pulled out a bottle and squinted at the label. "Male elixir—what the fuck?"

"Uh, yeah, no thanks. I'll just have one of those eight-dollar beers."

The beers were the only thing on the menu that I'd ever paid more for than the hotel was charging. Of course, the ten-dollar beer in that case came complete with a dozen or more naked boobies, but that's another story.

The assortment of cold remedies Reflux had ingested started to kick in, and he suggested we go down to the bar. The young hostess standing at the bar's entrance looked to be about seventeen. She gave us an awkward smile and said, "Coming back to join us?"

Neither of us knew what to make of that, but Reflux took it to be some kind of test. "Yes," he said, with perhaps an unnecessary amount of annoyance and sarcasm. "We are coming back to join you," and continued walking.

The young girl looked embarrassed and gave us a smile that was even more awkward than the first.

We sidled up to the bar. "What do you think she meant by that?" I asked.

"Who knows. But for some reason, it really pissed me off."

The attitude swirling around the hotel seemed to put Reflux on the defensive. "Look at this place," he said, scanning the room. Beautiful, well-dressed girls were seated at every table, legs crossed, sipping fancy cocktails and laughing with their slightly less beautiful dates. "I can't believe people are waiting outside to get into this place. It's a fucking bar for crying out loud. If I weren't staying here, I'd never come to this fucking bar."

"I've been here once before," I admitted. "With Raymi, believe it or not," I told Reflux the story of Raymi's visit, and how we found ourselves in the chichi bar of the SoHo Grand. Remembering it made me laugh, and when Reflux got up to use the toilet, I sent Raymi a text message: “I'm at the SoHo Grand. Hahaha.”

Several minutes later, my phone buzzed with Raymi's reply: “Why is that funny?”

Apparently, our experience there had been different for her than it had been for me.

After a few drinks, Reflux was ready to call it a night, so we shook hands, I thanked him for his generosity, and we parted ways.

The crowd outside was slightly smaller — perhaps because of the light rain. SoHo was quiet, otherwise. The stores were all closed, the streets empty. The only sounds were the random ping of raindrops hitting air conditioners and the soft hiss of tires over wet cobblestones. I ambled, slightly tipsy, through the rain, taking pictures here and there. Something I haven't done in a while. The slightly tipsy part, that is.