A hotel just outside Chicago got sold today which normally wouldn't be newsworthy to us but it was called The Purple Hotel, our favorite color!
While it was once classy in the 1960s it became a den of debauchery, the site of a mob hit, and home to both sex and rodent parties. (Although not at the same time...we don't think so at least.) In other words, it was like totally hip.
The hotel was initially the Lincolnwood Hyatt House, then turned into a Radisson then a Ramada before it became so awful that no franchise wanted to be a part of it. The Sun-Times writes of the final hotel name, The Purple Hotel:
By that name, it was relying on such events as the Midwest Fetish Fair & Marketplace for business, and the police regularly were called to the hotel to quiet disturbances.
The hotel used to segregate the sex parties from other guests, but a former general manager once told the Sun-Times that complaints arose from people who "got on the wrong elevator."
Now, the hotel will be demolished and replaced with some retail/residential mixed-use building. Boring! We sorta think Ian Schrager needs to drop this Edition Hotel business and launch a chain of Purple Hotels. Bring back hedonistic hotels Ian!
· Attorneys now threatening TripAdvisor reviewers who write bad things. Oy. [LA Times] · NBA baller Richard Jefferson formally charged with choking man at boutique hotel Graves 601. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune] · RIP: Gridskipper is moving to Curbed. [Gridskipper] · The Sheraton Gateway LAX hotel is starting JetSet Sundays poolside with airline-inspired drinks. [Jaunted]
The dramz with celebrities in Los Angeles area hotels continues! This time bad boy retired b-baller Dennis Rodman was arrested at a Century City hotel for a minor altercation with his girlfriend.
TMZ goes back to doing what it does best, obtaining police reports involving celebrities:
Rodman's manager Darren Prince tells TMZ, "Last night Dennis and his girlfriend had too much to drink. When they returned to their hotel they started arguing and a minor altercation broke out where Dennis grabbed her by the arm and left a bruise." Hotel security got involved and called LAPD, who responded and made the arrest.
Rodman blames it all on the drinking and will probably go to rehab. As for the hotel, there's really only one major hotel in CentCity that we can think of, the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza located across from the giant CAA building, the Century City Mall and numerous law firm buildings. It's also got a pretty happening bar/lounge called X Bar. And it's address: Avenue of the Stars.
Things have not been going well for hotels in Orange County, Cali., recently. Last year, a man and wife were killed in a bizarre murder-suicide at the Montage Resort. The other month a woman's body was found on dry ice inside the Fairmont Newport Beach and now an Olympic ice dancer was slipped the date-rape drug at the St. Regis Monarch Beach.
Grishuk, who won Olympic gold medals for Russia in ice dancing in 1994 and 1998, was attending a business meeting at the St. Regis Monarch Beach on April 12 when she began to feel ill and numb, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.
While eating dinner, she spotted a partially dissolved pill in the bottom of her drink. Investigators later found another dissolved pill in the bottom of a drink she ordered in the hotel's lounge.
Amormino says toxicology tests that came back Tuesday were positive for GHB, but it wasn't immediately clear how the pills got in Grishuk's drinks or who put them there.
Grishuk, 36, is native of the Ukraine but now lives in Los Angeles. The St. Regis has not issued a statement to the press as of yet.
In the meantime, you may want to avoid these $400 a night rooms. You never know what will happen during your stay.
Normally, we don't like kicking off a Monday with grisly hotel crime but when it happens at a luxury hotel in Orange County, it's hard to ignore.
A woman's body was found packed in dry ice at the Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel Saturday and the details surrounding her death are mysterious to say the least.
The body of Monique Felicia Trepp was discovered in Room 966 at the Fairmont Hotel just before midnight Thursday, shortly after narcotics investigators say they arrested [Stephen David] Royds with a small amount of cocaine.
There's no cause of death yet but both Trepp and Royds had several prior drug-related arrest. Royds also told the O.C. Register that "Everything that happened was for religious reasons."
This is certainly not the kind of publicity the Fairmont wants after having just completed an extensive $32 million renovation. Maybe the Mondrian West Hollywood has some tips on how to cope.
A hotel worker at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco was arrested yesterday morning on suspicion of sexually assaulting a female hotel guest. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Police arrested Christian Rojas at the lobby of the hotel on Geary Street at 5 a.m. Officials said Rojas had used a key card assigned to him to enter the room, assaulted the victim, 39, and then left.
Suddenly, those women-only floors found in India with security guards seem like a really good idea.
In other news, disgraced ex-CEO Ed Scheetz tried to offer hush money to the family of the young girl who died in his Las Vegas apartment last summer.
Hotels are often thought of as places to escape from your everyday life. Places to have memorable experiences whether in the room or outside. Whether you're on a beach or in a busy city, hotels are supposed to be your safe haven.
But of course, this is real life and not an American Express commercial. Shit happens.
And it seems to happen more and more in these parts for Britney Spears. Word is that the Beverly Hills Hotel has blacklisted her. This is obviously good news for us but not the bit where Page Six mentions Britney typically ignores these type of bans. Is any place in LA safe anymore?
In other news: · Models get jacked: Two men made off with $20,000 after robbing a modeling audition at the Hilton Chicago. [Chicago Sun-Times] · Suicide in Brooklyn: An accountant for the AP is found dead in the bathtub at the Best Western. [NewsDay] · Crappy Economy Woes: The Four Seasons in Tamarack, Idaho hits a construction snag. [Hotel-Online] · Too Expensive: Moscow hotels now really expensive. [Moscow Times] · No Workout For You: We are hearing the Gansevoort South's David Barton Gym won't be open until May 15th. Uh-oh, this does not bode well.
TMZ is reporting that rapper Pimp C, one-half of the rap duo UGK and most famous for his spot on Jay-Z's hit song "Big Pimpin'," was found dead in his hotel room this morning at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood. He was 33.
L.A. County Fire responded to a 911 call at the Mondrian Hotel, located on trendy Sunset Strip in Hollywood. They arrived to his sixth floor hotel room to find him dead in bed.
Pimp C. aka Chad Butler apparently did a show on Saturday night with rapper Too Short at the House of Blues next door. There's no word on cause of death just yet.
All this comes at a very bad time for the Mondrian which has been going downhill for a while and for the parent hotel company, Morgans Hotel Group whose former CEO Ed Scheetz found his female acquaintance dead in his Las Vegas condo a few months back, forcing him to resign. Let's hope 2008 is a little less scandalous for these folks.
We must be operating on Bahamian-time still so our last post of the day will be an old-school, bland, photoless, colorless link dump. Consider it our New Yorker-style post for the day. Enjoy.
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by juliana
Things have not been going well for hotels in Orange County, Cali., recently. Last year, a man and wife were killed in a 
