FRIDAY FUNNY: Don't Look Now

From Salon.com
From Salon.com

On its Web site, the Standard Hotel in New York City’s Meatpacking District boasts of “337 guest rooms with insane views” and “wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows that open.” And with prices that start at $320 per night (and go up to $705), guests expect to be treated like royalty. Except for one thing: they’d rather NOT be treated like the emperor (or empress) without clothes.

But when the High Line park opened earlier this summer (June 9, 2009), Standard Hotel guests were inadvertently providing “views” of their own by parading in various stages of undress in front of those open, glorious windows. Little did they know that those folks in the High Line park could see everything.

And despite being tagged “a brawny exhibitionist” by Justin Davidson in the February 2, 2009 issue of New York, the Standard Hotel is asking guests to take that tag a bit less literally.

From the August 25, 2009 Associated Press:

Guests at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan keep failing to close the curtains as they frolic naked in front of their rooms’ floor-to-ceiling windows, easily viewed from the High Line park below. The park recently opened atop an abandoned elevated rail line.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has called the hotel’s window action “unacceptable.”

Aaron Lipman works in the neighborhood and says the shows are “healthy and fun.” He says they’re like TV’s “Wild Kingdom.”

The hotel issued a statement Monday saying its managers will try to “remind guests of the transparency” of the windows.

The hotel won an award from the Municipal Arts Society of New York for best new building erected last year.

I think that says it all, but just in case you need something a bit more visual…