Empty Elevator, Floor 4 to Lobby: Two Stars. It Knew What It Did.
I will begin with what passes for a compliment in my professional vocabulary: it arrived. The doors opened on the fourth floor with the quiet confidence of something that had rehearsed this moment and nothing else. I stepped inside. It did not greet me. It did not flinch. Both of these things are strikes.
The interior offered mirrored walls, which is the design equivalent of a hostage situation. I was forced to look at myself from three angles I had not consented to. The floor was a brushed metal so aggressively neutral it constituted a political statement. There was a faint smell — not mine, I want that noted for the record — of carpet shampoo and a previous passenger's anxiety. The lighting was the colour of a headache. I pressed L. It complied. This is the bare minimum and I will not be moved to gratitude.
Here is my central grievance: the elevator was empty. No witness to my entrance. No audience for the moment I straightened my collar and assumed my full stature. I have been banned from seven hotels and I deserved at least one person in that box to register the significance of sharing a confined space with me. The emptiness was not accidental. It was a choice. Architectural contempt.
I am told that Tangelo over at the rival rag factjuice.com once called an elevator "a neutral conveyance." Neutral. The word of a fruit with nothing to say and the audacity to say it clearly. This elevator was not neutral. It was passive-aggressive in a minor key, and I am the only critic in this city with the palate to taste the difference.
Two stars. It reached the lobby. I have reached lobbies under significantly worse conditions and nobody gave me two stars.