People Met in Hotel Lobbies (2017)(jasonlefkowitz.net)
jasonlefkowitz.net
People Met in Hotel Lobbies (2017)
https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2017/05/people-met-in-hotel-lobbies/
94 comments
> It's a challenging read even for this human!
You make a good point. I thought about transcribing the images when I originally wrote the post, but eventually convinced myself that was something I could get around to later, which of course meant that I never actually got around to it.
Your comment gave me the necessary kick in the butt to actually go back and do that, so thanks! Transcriptions are now provided for all the images. And as long as I was in there, I went ahead and added links to various contemporary terms that might not be clear to the modern reader, pointing to more information on what they mean.
You make a good point. I thought about transcribing the images when I originally wrote the post, but eventually convinced myself that was something I could get around to later, which of course meant that I never actually got around to it.
Your comment gave me the necessary kick in the butt to actually go back and do that, so thanks! Transcriptions are now provided for all the images. And as long as I was in there, I went ahead and added links to various contemporary terms that might not be clear to the modern reader, pointing to more information on what they mean.
I'm glad you left in the originals, they add... I think texture would be the word. :)
Everybody has a story. Everybody. Greg Lopez was a great newspaper columnist for The Rock Mountain News in Denver who wrote about everyday people. It was like he could just walk up to anyone on the street and get a fascinating story out of them.
Unfortunately, he was killed by a drunk driver - Rich, listless kid driving an exotic sports car. Tragic loss. It's been a long time, but I still remember him. I could only find one of his columns online since his paper shut down but here it is:
https://www.syracuse.com/kirst/2009/03/greg_lopez_and_the_ro...
Unfortunately, he was killed by a drunk driver - Rich, listless kid driving an exotic sports car. Tragic loss. It's been a long time, but I still remember him. I could only find one of his columns online since his paper shut down but here it is:
https://www.syracuse.com/kirst/2009/03/greg_lopez_and_the_ro...
I recommend Up In The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. He wrote the stories of everyday New Yorkers for a column in the New Yorker, and the book is a collection of his best work.
The modern equivalent seems to be "People of New York" which of course is not focused on just the well-to-do and influential but still has the spirit of thinking that there's a story if you just ask.
I would also assume that there are microfilm copies of the Washington Post though perhaps the scan is actually of good quality. The newspapers are intentionally cheaply printed and this was a hundred years ago. It might have just looked like that.
I would also assume that there are microfilm copies of the Washington Post though perhaps the scan is actually of good quality. The newspapers are intentionally cheaply printed and this was a hundred years ago. It might have just looked like that.
I think you mean "Humans of New York"
I don't want to disappoint you, but I'm fortunate to have enough money to have stayed in many of the top luxury hotel all over the world, and hang out in business class lounges pretty much whenever I fly and... I'd bet I'm pretty much just like you. No grand story.
You simply must not be trying. Between first class on international flights and hotel lounges I meet c suite, founders and investors to the tune of 3-4 per trip. I have an easier time networking in a hotel bar in London than anywhere in the sf bay. I’ve even met my direct competitor projects accidentally and shared a drink and a laugh purely by coincidence.
Everybody has a grand story. Or rather, the people that have a story that would be considered grand are so far and few between that finding one requires more luck than going to a hotel lobby.
Also, I may be wrong, but so far my experience with top-class hotels has had them being just slightly fancier versions of their less esteemed counterparts.
I guess most of the value of the really high quality/more expensive hotels comes from limiting the guests to ones with a larger amount of money/influence and hopefully, higher class.
Also, I may be wrong, but so far my experience with top-class hotels has had them being just slightly fancier versions of their less esteemed counterparts.
I guess most of the value of the really high quality/more expensive hotels comes from limiting the guests to ones with a larger amount of money/influence and hopefully, higher class.
I'm not sure what "class" is supposed to be. But as far as character, I find almost no relationship between money and character. There are a*holes in all walks of life, as are there decent folks. What I do tend to find in expensive hotels is a demographic shift toward older clientele, which tends to bring at least quieter behavior.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure either. But I’m generally put off by trashy types, and some hotels have a ton more of them. Thinking about it a bit more, I’m starting to think it might be more cultural though.
Executive lounges, higher end hotel bars, and airport bars are my favorite place to meet like minded people and network. People tend to less territorial in these atmospheres and more open to conversation. So many people I’ve met this with and stay in contact to this day with.
What's your approach here? And what do you do to pass the time?
I'm curious by nature and very inquisitive. I think it comes off genuine. Turns out when you genuinely inquisitive people are happy to talk about themselves and what they do. It excites me to learn about people from different walks of life, many who are successful if they are type of here. I think they notice the excitement and this fuels the conversation.
What's your go-to question for starting such a conversation, if you've got one?
Man that’s hard. I don’t have a playbook. If I had to think of it. My natural go to (if I’m lucky) is disarming, relatable, an intelligent play on words that provides a compliment, piques their interest and shows I’m interested in what they are or what they are doing.
Lot of times it’s just me paraphrasing something in real life that we just witnessed. Really depends how many ipas deep I am LOL. I think the biggest driver is I’m usually so interested in people and what they do from all walks of life. That passion shows.
Lot of times it’s just me paraphrasing something in real life that we just witnessed. Really depends how many ipas deep I am LOL. I think the biggest driver is I’m usually so interested in people and what they do from all walks of life. That passion shows.
I'm generally very curious about the internal lives of all people around me. I don't think that being rich makes, on average, one more or less interesting. If anything, rich people tend to be more robotic (single-minded and logic-driven), which would make them less interesting targets for dissection, if it were somehow possible.
There's this Tolstoy quote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Perhaps a similar thing is true for rich versus poor. (And of course, wealth translates to happiness too).
Perhaps a similar thing is true for rich versus poor. (And of course, wealth translates to happiness too).
Why would you think that about rich people? I'm honestly curious.
In order to become rich, you need to be very focused on the goal. This means that you're either naturally very single-minded, or you've managed to prune other interests, doubts, thoughts from your head, and just executed mercilessly for years. In either case, this makes you a rather one-dimensional person. Additionally, successful people tend to be in always-be-selling mode, so it's super-hard to have an honest conversation with them.
> In order to become rich, you need to be very focused on the goal.
Or lucky. That worked for me.
Or lucky. That worked for me.
In my experience this is fairly accurate. Most of the self made people I know (outside of Silicon Valley, of course) are just incredibly disciplined old men who almost exclusively care about money and their family.
Many rich people, maybe most, inherited it. Presumably.
Most rich people are skilled workers punching a clock, same as everyone else, but in better compensated fields. Monomaniacal focus on getting rich will make you an outcast in the societies you need to network with - everything is supposed to be about passion and impact.
> Monomaniacal focus on getting rich will make you an outcast in the societies you need to network with - everything is supposed to be about passion and impact.
I dunno, I work in a bank and here being semi-openly cynical and greedy is not seen as faux-pas.
Not to mention that part of being a successful person is being able to fake whatever needs to be faked in a given environment if necessary - be it passion, impact or whatever.
I dunno, I work in a bank and here being semi-openly cynical and greedy is not seen as faux-pas.
Not to mention that part of being a successful person is being able to fake whatever needs to be faked in a given environment if necessary - be it passion, impact or whatever.
I don't agree. Same that you cannot say that poor people tend to be more lazy without any passion and therefor not interesting. In my opinion it doesn't matter. Rich, poor or between. You got friendly and douches in all categories.
Google Cloud Vision is pretty good for OCR.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo...
> Is there any current or near future OCR/ML system which might be capable of transcribing the raw scans with any acceptable level of accuracy?
Mechanical Turk should be able to do it for a pretty nominal cost.
Mechanical Turk should be able to do it for a pretty nominal cost.
If you want to meet interesting travelers, stay at hostels off the beaten track, outside of high-season.
(A hostel is like a hotel, but you rent a dorm bed in a shared room instead of a private room.)
(A hostel is like a hotel, but you rent a dorm bed in a shared room instead of a private room.)
The trick is not so much the hostel, but the off-the-beaten-track. If you go off-the-beaten-track enough, there is not much choice in accommodation, anyway.
Having stayed in 40+ hostels, it can get tiring very quickly, at first it's easy to be impressed at seeing so many different people in one location, but eventually I started feeling like everyone was the same, with the exception of someone here and there.
I do agree that off-the-beaten-track is better, location really defines the profile of the majority of the travelers you'll meet there, such as the european party trail(Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague-Budapest) where you're more likely to meet people who just want to get wasted(and hit on 'locals' if they are men).
Not to mention the universal adoption of smartphones, cheap data tourist plans, google maps and trip recommendations at your palm, more often than not, if I'm stepping into a hostel common area I'm more likely to see a bunch of zombies glued to their phones before deciding to hit some of the top 5 recommendations on TripAdvisor, it also makes it more difficult to start conversations in a place where that was way more natural just a few years back.
These days I'm only staying in hostels for the monetary value which is still way cheaper than most Hotels or AirBnBs, trying to stay in dorms that have no more than 6 beds, I end being one of those who is just staring at their phones and doesn't really engage with other travelers(I do believe this is the majority of hostel guests these days). I'll get a hotel for the comfort every now and then. I guess living in a backpacker destination made me a bit bitter about backpackers in general.
I do agree that off-the-beaten-track is better, location really defines the profile of the majority of the travelers you'll meet there, such as the european party trail(Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague-Budapest) where you're more likely to meet people who just want to get wasted(and hit on 'locals' if they are men).
Not to mention the universal adoption of smartphones, cheap data tourist plans, google maps and trip recommendations at your palm, more often than not, if I'm stepping into a hostel common area I'm more likely to see a bunch of zombies glued to their phones before deciding to hit some of the top 5 recommendations on TripAdvisor, it also makes it more difficult to start conversations in a place where that was way more natural just a few years back.
These days I'm only staying in hostels for the monetary value which is still way cheaper than most Hotels or AirBnBs, trying to stay in dorms that have no more than 6 beds, I end being one of those who is just staring at their phones and doesn't really engage with other travelers(I do believe this is the majority of hostel guests these days). I'll get a hotel for the comfort every now and then. I guess living in a backpacker destination made me a bit bitter about backpackers in general.
The hostels make it easier to meet people. Other places with communal areas, like campgrounds, work too.
I once met a rich guy (owned an American hotel franchise) backpacking in Viet Nam.
We were both waiting for the overnight train somewhere, and ended up in the same compartment. At the destination, I checked into the hostel, and he checked into the 5-star hotel. He came by the hotel bar later to share stories, and bought everyone a drink.
(This wasn't especially off-the-beaten track, even 10 years ago, but there were simply fewer tourists then.)
We were both waiting for the overnight train somewhere, and ended up in the same compartment. At the destination, I checked into the hostel, and he checked into the 5-star hotel. He came by the hotel bar later to share stories, and bought everyone a drink.
(This wasn't especially off-the-beaten track, even 10 years ago, but there were simply fewer tourists then.)
virtue isn’t clustered at the top. virtue is to be found everywhere. virtue... the good... whatever you want to call it.
When I went to college in Kirksville, MO - my friends and I were endlessly entertained to see local newspaper report stuff like "Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Freese visited Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Hanover after church on Sunday." There was an entire page of this stuff.
Apparently (I'm told) small town papers still do this.
Apparently (I'm told) small town papers still do this.
Warren Buffett has some comments about this. Apparently people like reading about themselves or people they know and it significantly increases circulation.
It's not just small-town newspapers. Think of society pages of all the big newspapers (some still have them). And for example the wedding pages of the NY Times.
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>Apparently (I'm told) small town papers still do this.
They do. My grandmother writes them for my hometown newspaper.
They do. My grandmother writes them for my hometown newspaper.
Interesting to note how the man clamouring for a better hotel uses size as a proxy for quality: paraphrasing slightly, "if only we had a massive hotel, more rich people would come and feel at ease!".
These days one would probably demand the very opposite.
These days one would probably demand the very opposite.
This is quite common in parts of the world that are just getting to a modicum of wealth. For example, I landed to the new Istanbul Airport a few days ago. Its main premise, the way it's pitched to the (largely indifferent) public, is that it's the largest airport in the world, one that is the size of Manhattan.
Meanwhile, I spent four hours coming into the actual city from there. It's dreadful.
Meanwhile, I spent four hours coming into the actual city from there. It's dreadful.
It seems like the vision is to turn IST into a Dubai-style mega hub for flights between APAC and EMEA & the North American East Coast. Whether Turkish Airlines actually has the operational chops to compete with Emirates, Qatar, Etihad, etc. without massive ongoing subsidies is an open question.
The move is definitely way worse for people actually traveling into Istanbul. The metro expansions to the airport can’t come soon enough, but even on a metro the trip will be pretty long.
The move is definitely way worse for people actually traveling into Istanbul. The metro expansions to the airport can’t come soon enough, but even on a metro the trip will be pretty long.
Though that's pretty unavoidable if you need to add a larger airport to a city whose existing airport is space constrained. You often have to go pretty far out to get to lots of near-empty space where you can site the new airport.
That is true, though it’s still shockingly poor planning to open the airport and close the old one before the bullet train interlink starts to serve the new one.
Urban planning took a back seat because they rushed to open it before the municipal elections. Fortunately the voters are not amused by the irony anymore.
In the same spirit, but in the blue-collar band of the wealth spectrum, This American Life camped out for 24 hours at a Chicago diner called The Golden Apple and recorded the conversations of people who happened to be there. The episode is a gem.
24 Hours at the Golden Apple (November 2000) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/172/24-hours-at-the-golden-...
24 Hours at the Golden Apple (November 2000) https://www.thisamericanlife.org/172/24-hours-at-the-golden-...
That's not a very social thing to do. I wouldn't want somebody camping out and recording my conversations.
I'm sorry to be unclear, the reporter interviewed the diners and the episode was a collection of conversations of the diners with their friends (used with the diner's permissions), and of the diners with the reporter. In no way was it surreptitious.
Last time I met someone at a higher end hotel bar who sat next to me, it was pretty terrible. He was a truck driving member of the furry fandom from West Virginia, and he seemed pretty mentally unstable. Ruined what was otherwise a top class meal.
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I feel like this was a thing back then, not only because the "strong and powerful" men of that ERA where in and out of a hotel lobby but also cause journalism was based on going out to get/make a story.
Nowadays I feel like real journalism is a very small fraction of the journalism field in general and I feel like most news/media outlets (paper, tv, blogs) are just copy pasting stories from others in a bad manner as well, changing them up to feel a bit more "wow this thing happened", and you end up with a story that has nothing to do with the original.
We do live in the ERA of over-information and lazy journalism. A news outlet in most cases doesn't need to go out of their way to find the story and the cases that happens is very limited nowadays. The media will just display anything that comes their way on steroids to make it interesting... and thats why I don't watch the news :)
On the other hand I am pretty certain there are still Hotels in Europe where the strong and powerful pass through on a daily basis, and there are up and coming smart hotels which have a lobby that I've personally seen the next tech idea being discussed from its ground.
Nowadays I feel like real journalism is a very small fraction of the journalism field in general and I feel like most news/media outlets (paper, tv, blogs) are just copy pasting stories from others in a bad manner as well, changing them up to feel a bit more "wow this thing happened", and you end up with a story that has nothing to do with the original.
We do live in the ERA of over-information and lazy journalism. A news outlet in most cases doesn't need to go out of their way to find the story and the cases that happens is very limited nowadays. The media will just display anything that comes their way on steroids to make it interesting... and thats why I don't watch the news :)
On the other hand I am pretty certain there are still Hotels in Europe where the strong and powerful pass through on a daily basis, and there are up and coming smart hotels which have a lobby that I've personally seen the next tech idea being discussed from its ground.
Sad to read you have such a narrow view of the news media. Maybe it’s that way in your home country. Or maybe some specific outlets have spoiled it for the others.
If you’re ever in Germany or the Netherlands I’d be happy to show you how my partner (a journalist for a national broadcaster) and her coworkers go about it.
It’s the opposite of lazy, copy & paste. It’s hard working, diligent, critical etc.
If you’re ever in Germany or the Netherlands I’d be happy to show you how my partner (a journalist for a national broadcaster) and her coworkers go about it.
It’s the opposite of lazy, copy & paste. It’s hard working, diligent, critical etc.
I think the problem is that even though maybe a 100 different unique stories are crafted by dilligent, hard-working people, there are a 100,000 others that are just copied from those originals.
If you just take a casual glance through a few tens of articles, everything will look like a carbon copy.
If you just take a casual glance through a few tens of articles, everything will look like a carbon copy.
And no small number of them are largely cut-and-pasted or computer-written from a press release. (Including at the few outlets which also craft a few unique stories to keep up their brand.)
> narrow view
I'm not sure a personal attack like this is appropriate. Your anecdote is no more valuable a data point than parents. My own (anecdote) mirrors OP - front page stories from major American publications like the WaPo and NYT often show downright shoddy research techniques - a lack of corroboration, a failure to consider all the relevant data, and a generally obsession with narrative writing rather than covering all the relevant facts. If you want to argue that journalism is strong in your country, you might start by giving an example of a typical publication from your country.
I'm not sure a personal attack like this is appropriate. Your anecdote is no more valuable a data point than parents. My own (anecdote) mirrors OP - front page stories from major American publications like the WaPo and NYT often show downright shoddy research techniques - a lack of corroboration, a failure to consider all the relevant data, and a generally obsession with narrative writing rather than covering all the relevant facts. If you want to argue that journalism is strong in your country, you might start by giving an example of a typical publication from your country.
NYT, WaPo, and the rest are just aliases for particular groups of people. It all starts with those people, at an individual level. What sort of person is going into “journalism” these days, and why? Would you? Do you know anyone who would? Why or why not? Would you turn down a job at Google to become a “journalist”, any “journalist”? Would you recommend that course of action to a bright teen?
You criticize OP for having a narrow view and then support your claim with anecdotal evidence... I'm happy that your partner and her coworkers have some integrity, but that doesn't have much bearing on the overall industry.
The problem with “real” journalism is finding a business model. I’d love my local paper to do more of it, but the Internet has absolutely killed the model that used to make it viable.
Im a bit suprised that the language reads like modern American English. When reading something old in my native language its very foreign.
When you read the English from that period, it typically comes across as overly formal, for one thing, and therefore sounds a bit off to a native speaker. But it's perfectly comprehensible.
Generally speaking, you can go back to the 1600s or so--Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, etc. Much before that you're starting to get back into Middle English (e.g. Chaucer), which is distinctly different from modern English. (Around 1500 is considered the transition point but it took a while for the transition to be substantially complete.)
Generally speaking, you can go back to the 1600s or so--Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, etc. Much before that you're starting to get back into Middle English (e.g. Chaucer), which is distinctly different from modern English. (Around 1500 is considered the transition point but it took a while for the transition to be substantially complete.)
This is 1890. It’s not that crazy, and the wording and expressions used are clearly a bit different.
If you go back to 1500s english it also becomes pretty much incomprehensible.
Is your native language impossible to read if you go back to only 1900? I find it difficult to believe that it could change that much, but it would be interesting.
If you go back to 1500s english it also becomes pretty much incomprehensible.
Is your native language impossible to read if you go back to only 1900? I find it difficult to believe that it could change that much, but it would be interesting.
I think few languages changed enough to be incomprehensible, on that period, but e.g the Norwegian of 1890 was basically Danish (over simplifying as we have a second language composed from dialects) and the Danish of the era was sufficiently closer to German that when I studied German I read a ca. 1900 Danish edition of Faust in parallel with the German because it was sufficient a 'midpoint' to help understand everything from sentence structure to vocabulary.
It would definitively be readable to a modern reader, but the differences can in some texts be sufficient to require a lot more conscious effort where English from that era seems to 'just' seem a bit odd and overly formal.
I do think it also depends a great deal if you know any related languages. E.g if you understand German and Danish, older Norwegian makes sense - I remember when it clicked for me that the best way of improving my German grammar was to when in doubt think about how older more formal Norwegian forms would be. I read a lot of adventure novels from the early 1900's, so I was familiar with that.
But I know class mates who were totally unfamiliar with Norwegian literature from that era who while they'd certainly understand it would found it more of an effort.
It would definitively be readable to a modern reader, but the differences can in some texts be sufficient to require a lot more conscious effort where English from that era seems to 'just' seem a bit odd and overly formal.
I do think it also depends a great deal if you know any related languages. E.g if you understand German and Danish, older Norwegian makes sense - I remember when it clicked for me that the best way of improving my German grammar was to when in doubt think about how older more formal Norwegian forms would be. I read a lot of adventure novels from the early 1900's, so I was familiar with that.
But I know class mates who were totally unfamiliar with Norwegian literature from that era who while they'd certainly understand it would found it more of an effort.
Some Swedes told me they struggled to understand old texts because there were significant changes to the orthography. I think the text we were looking at was the Oath of Allegiance [1], but I might be mistaken.
(I'm learning Danish: if in doubt about grammar, I think "how would Shakespeare say it?").
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Allegiance_(Sweden)
(I'm learning Danish: if in doubt about grammar, I think "how would Shakespeare say it?").
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Allegiance_(Sweden)
I think short texts are often worse, actually, because just a few words with insufficient context can throw you off, and in the case of this like oaths the sentence structure is often atrocious with interjections that people often have problems with.
E.g. in that text, I understood everything except "städse" and "huld" without having to look it up. You could do a Norwegian translation pretty much word for word with the same sentence structure.
But a lot of people used to modern Scandinavian languages at least, and I get the impression the same is true for modern English readers, do have problems dealing sentences with lots of interjections and/or where you need to metaphorically push lots of context onto the stack before it all ties up at the end. I recall coming across that already at school - since I read a lot of older books I was used to it, but most of my class mates were not. And it's reflected in my writing even today, 30+ years later, to the point where I need to consciously avoid just nesting clauses all over the place.
E.g. in that text, I understood everything except "städse" and "huld" without having to look it up. You could do a Norwegian translation pretty much word for word with the same sentence structure.
But a lot of people used to modern Scandinavian languages at least, and I get the impression the same is true for modern English readers, do have problems dealing sentences with lots of interjections and/or where you need to metaphorically push lots of context onto the stack before it all ties up at the end. I recall coming across that already at school - since I read a lot of older books I was used to it, but most of my class mates were not. And it's reflected in my writing even today, 30+ years later, to the point where I need to consciously avoid just nesting clauses all over the place.
Urdu/Hindi for example has a lot of idioms and nouns that have gone out of fashion/been superseded by English
The author teases Ira Barnett of Louisville, Kentucky ("He’s a pretty big wheel down at the cracker factory"), but he seems to be fairly self-aware:
> I don’t know as there is much in what we are doing to interest the public, except the price of the article, and, as I said before, that will remain unchanged.
Basically "I make crackers. Why are you talking to me?"
> I don’t know as there is much in what we are doing to interest the public, except the price of the article, and, as I said before, that will remain unchanged.
Basically "I make crackers. Why are you talking to me?"
Lovely euphemism for booze: "large stocks of coolness and ennui-dispellers are kept constantly on ice" :-)
> before two World Wars made Washington the capital of the free world
More like before FDR's massive expansion of the federal government. Today, it's hard to believe how unimportant the federal government was in most areas of peoples lives.
More like before FDR's massive expansion of the federal government. Today, it's hard to believe how unimportant the federal government was in most areas of peoples lives.
It's still fairly unimportant, just unavoidable.
As a result top 5 counties by median household income are around DC.
That's largely due to the arbitrary way county lines are drawn. Parts of San Francisco and Manhattan are far wealthier than the DC suburbs, but they share a county with lots of poor people who drag the median household income down.
Prince's 1984 song: https://youtu.be/j8oxXkUjYHg
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I wonder if some of these from the "Arlington" hotel were actually from Arlington, VA? Arlington used to be part of the District before 1847. It's impossible to search for the answer, too many Arlington hotel results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_Hotel_(Washington,_D...
http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2010/08/opulent-arlington...
I was born in DC more than 70 years after said hotel was demolished, however, I can recognize by the way they write that "The Arlington" (always appearing with an article) is presumably a place in the District. No one would presume that kind of social crowd to be in Virginia, especially the further you go back in time.
Googling around I found a claim that it was on the current site of the Veterans Affairs offices, which would put it on Vermont Ave NW near I St.
http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2010/08/opulent-arlington...
I was born in DC more than 70 years after said hotel was demolished, however, I can recognize by the way they write that "The Arlington" (always appearing with an article) is presumably a place in the District. No one would presume that kind of social crowd to be in Virginia, especially the further you go back in time.
Googling around I found a claim that it was on the current site of the Veterans Affairs offices, which would put it on Vermont Ave NW near I St.
If you search on google books, you'll find more relevant results, including the official congressional directory where Arlington Hotel is listed as the residence of multiple persons along other names such as National Hotel, Metropolitan Hotel, and Washington House.
https://www.loc.gov/item/96503316/ mentions The Arlington as a location in Washington D.C., published between 1882 and 1900.
https://www.loc.gov/item/96503316/ mentions The Arlington as a location in Washington D.C., published between 1882 and 1900.
I love the bit about English vs American clothes "I'm not trying to make a tariff argument out of it, but American clothes are just better!"
Airline lounges and expensive "dinner clubs" have largely replaced this and serve a similar purpose. Once you break the upper crust you start getting invited to fancy dinners corporate and charity auctions too
It would be awesome if this article could be made more accessible by transcribing the article photos. I'm sighted and some of these are hard to read for me.
I agree, so I went back and added transcriptions for all the images. Thanks for pressing on accessibility, it's an important and under-appreciated subject.
It's kind of like the "man on the street" interviews ...very intriguing vignettes. I quite liked the Confederate veteran story.
These excerpts would make an amazing coffee table or bathroom book.
Tesla charging stations might qualify. My take would be that the industries don't have that time to spare.
I often wonder where is nowadays a place to meet intellectually stimulating people.
Right now my betting money is on digital nomads' meetups in cities like Chiang Mai (Thailand), Budapest (Hungary) and Medellin (Colombia).
Love the cracker cartel conference on how to reduce cost of ingredients.
On another note, also interesting is the frankly crap quality of the scanned text, which one unfortunately presumes is the only copy remaining in existence. Is there any current or near future OCR/ML system which might be capable of transcribing the raw scans with any acceptable level of accuracy? It's a challenging read even for this human!