Hip Hotels

CHAMBERS
While our tour wasn’t a contest (not exactly, anyway), Chambers pretty well crushed the competition.

I had been through a half dozen times before for drinks up in the Red, White and F***ing Blue Bar and down in the lobby, but I had never laid eyes on one of Chambers’ rooms. Ours was big enough to fit both W’s and Aloft’s rooms, with space left over for the Ivy’s über-bathroom. With its heated floors, stunning subway tile, and demineralized glass, Chambers’ bath was nearly sublime, large enough to park a small car but sadly without a tub, deep-soaking or otherwise. But since the room came with another half-bath, a 12-foot workspace, its own original art, obligatory flat screens (one in the bath—can’t miss a minute of The Biggest Loser, you know), a full-sized couch, coffee table, armchair, and the best collection of adjustable lamps I’ve ever seen in a hotel room, we agreed to let the bath thing go.

Enough has been written about Ralph Burnet’s impressive art collection that it seems pointless to go into it again except to say that the net effect is more one of impish whimsy than eat-your-cauliflower “big A” art. For example, the projected silhouette in the lobby bar of two rats copulating kind of sneaks up on you as an artistic statement. Likewise the four black plastic garbage bags piled against a hall doorway. It was only on the third pass that it finally struck me: “Hey, wait a minute, they wouldn’t stack garbage in a place like this.” Ditto the Art-o-mat vending machine next to the très subtle front desk. (It looks like a ’60s cigarette machine, but $5 and a pull gets you bona fide original art.)

The Chambers’ already famous Gorilla Bar, in the nicely outfitted courtyard between the two refurbished original buildings, is a destination for anyone you’re showing around town. It’s most unique in winter, when you can order drinks from the Ice Bar and pretend you’re Nordic deities impervious to two-degree weather as you sip Cuba Libres.

The in-room television service not only offers a selection of excellent recent art films (I finally saw Man on Wire), but a channel of nothing but art videos. I’m embarrassed to say how long I sat in a Zenlike stupor transfixed by a nearly static neo-Warholian video of a fat guy in hip waders contemplating some kind of industrial pool.

We couldn’t decide what impressed us more: the food (chicken-coconut soup doesn’t sound like anything special, until it rests upon your tongue), the absolute quiet of the room (no Bluetoother in the hallway chatting with Deiter in Frankfurt), or the bed (“like buttah,” said my better half, a world-class sleepy who pronounced it “the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in,” and I concurred).

Or was it the service that seduced us? As I say, some people love fawning. They may need it on an existential level. Not us so much. I don’t care how helpful you want to be, tread lightly on my personal space. What I’m looking for is nothing more complicated than a friendly disposition and a prompt response if and when I actually want something. Chambers gets that right. It’s almost like the staff is saying, “Hey, we’re all cool here. Shout if you need anything.” We felt like adults, not poseur royalty.