Here’s a shot I took of the Cecil at night. I love old hotel neon signs:

And here’s the entrance, which looks the way grand hotels do in old black-and-white films. It’s flanked by a couple of establishments attached to the hotel: Stay, Marty and Tuck, which feature more modern signage and which I’ll talk about later.

The Lobby

As with the front entrance, the lobby is done up very nicely in brass, gold-tone and marble (yes, it’s probably “particle marble”, but in a city that boasts fake everything, it’s real enough).

You could set a film noir scene in this lobby, perhaps with a 1940s starlet or “Daddy Warbucks”-style tycoon.

Here’s a picture of the stairway leading to the mezzanine overlooking the lobby and the concierge.

Looking up from the lobby, you can see this backlit stained-glass ceiling.

A Sign of Trouble

My first warning was this sign, which was mounted over the elevators:

“NO VISITORS ALLOWED UPSTAIRS,” the sign read in large letters. In smaller letters beneath it, it read “For your protection all guests please show key upon request — Management.”

This is to be expected in a hotel in a “recovering neighbourhood”. Usually these hotels have elevators that require you to use the keycard for your room to activate them. This sort of measure keeps the riff-raff out and discourages hooker booty calls. It’s not a sure indicator that the hotel is a hole; it just says that the hotel has a history of being a flophouse, just like Toronto’s flophouses-turned-see-and-be-seen destinations, the Gladstoneand Drake hotels.

Undecked Halls

Here’s what I saw as soon as I got out of the elevator:

There were still traces of the lobby in the faux-marble floor tiles, but the rest of the architecture had gone seriously downmarket. It may be true that a fresh coat of paint will cover a multitude of sins, but not when the paint is cheap and sloppily applied. And not when the walls have been repeatedly patched.

By the way, those signs on the doors in the photo above? They’re not room numbers; they’re signs indicating that they’re either common showers or bathrooms:

It dawned on me: the guy at the front desk didn’t just say “one room”, but “one roomwith bath.” I wasn’t going to have to use these shared toilets and showers, but it wasn’t time to breathe a sigh of relief just yet.

At least the hallway bathrooms and showers were clean. I’ve seen worse at hostels, but at least they had the decency to set some expectations and admit that they were hostels. I’ve seen worse at one hotel, but it was in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, and I was in my twenties and trying to stretch my meager, then very-wimpy-next-to-the-U.S.-dollar money.

I continued down the hallway, which had changed colours from badly-applied cheap blue paint to sloppily-rolled discount tan paint…

Near the end of the hall right by my room was combination bathroom/toilet. This was as far as I could open the door — the toilet blocks its way and prevents it from swinging open any further.

The Room

Finally, I reached my room, number 1107. Queen-size bed my ass:

Maybe they meant “Queen-sized bed with a twenty percent margin of error”. I gave the mattress a poke; not much “give”, but I’ve slept on worse. I wonder what I would’ve seen if I’d hit it with one of those special “CSI” flashlights.

Here’s the room’s air conditioning system.

Luckily it was late October; at that time of year, a fan and open window are just fine in L.A.. Had it been August, the room would’ve been a sauna.

Here’s the heating unit for winter months: some kind of wall-mounted plate with a switch. I decided not to give it a test.

The closet had an ironing board but lacked an iron; instead it had a weird chemical smell. Certain that the smell would lovingly attach itself to my clothes, I opted to live out of my suitcase instead.

And Now, the Bathroom

It was time to check out the bathroom. Although the wife would never have approved, it was serviceable:

Make note of the shower curtain rod. The rod and curtain are what demarcate the shower area from the rest of the bathroom:

And yup, that’s the shower drain in the floor opposite the toilet:

That’s right, at the Cecil Hotel, you no longer have to choose between showering and pooping!

Actually, that’s not true. The shower nozzle is angled away from the toilet and towards the back wall. Even if it weren’t, the water pressure isn’t sufficient to reach the toilet. You still have to choose.

Needless to say, I didn’t bother to even ask if there was wifi in the room.