The McGrory/Glob article
Apr. 16th, 2004 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jbsegalI thought I had it someplace...
I realize this is in violation of the Glob copyright. If they ask me to take it down, I will.
They had reservations
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist, 1/20/2004
Not often enough in the life of any newsman does a note arrive over the
transom with a sentence that reads, "As the elevator door opened, in
walked a woman in a leather bustier leading, by a dog leash and collar,
a man wearing nothing but a string thong."
Let's first of all thank astute reader Mark Warter, formerly of Boston,
now of Rhode Island, who had the good sense to know that the issue might
be of interest to the community at large.
When I called him, Warter laid bare his story. On Friday, Jan. 9,
he checked into the Park Plaza Hotel with his wife, two daughters,
their husbands, and his two grandchildren, all to attend his grandson's
christening at the Trinity Church. Any more wholesome it doesn't get.
Back in the Paleozoic Era, about the time of its last full-scale
renovation, the Park Plaza wasn't a bad hotel; these days, it's more
exhausted than just tired, catering mostly to downscale conventions,
airline crews, and people who don't know any better.
Put Warter in that last group, but he'd quickly learn. After he settled
into his room, he rode the elevator back to the lobby with his wife and
their 3-year-old granddaughter.
Ding-ding. Elevator stops. Doors open. And that's where the woman in
the bustier with the man on the dog leash come in.
"She's not a small woman," Warter said. "She's overflowing out of this
thing, and she has fishnets on. He is looking down, and he has a collar
around his neck.
"I immediately start talking to my granddaughter to distract her,"
Warter added. "The other women in my elevator and my wife, their jaws
drop. You could hear them hit the floor."
Next stop: the front desk, where a clerk informed Warter that the
Fetish Fair Fleamarket was being held in the upstairs ballroom all
weekend. Okey dokey.
Soon, a bored-looking manager explained to Warter that the Park Plaza
was a convention hotel and, as such, refused to discriminate against
any group. Hotel executives never thought it necessary to prewarn other
guests. He offered a free breakfast.
"I told him, `So you value money more than decency?' and he replied,
`Apparently,' " Warter said.
By this point, the lobby was literally filled with hulking cross-dressers
gallivanting about in skirts, men in leather chaps and little else, obese
people with whips, and dwarfs in masks -- all of them ready to celebrate.
"It's everything you can think of," Warter said. "I'm not a prude,
but I couldn't believe it."
Admittedly, I'm the suspicious type, and was starting to think hoax.
I envisioned the night I'd be sitting at a bar with a bunch of college
friends when one of them would say, "Remember the time we got you fired
from the Globe . . . ."
So I plugged a few words into Google and, sure enough, there it was,
the Fetish Fair Fleamarket at the Park Plaza, Jan. 9-11.
According to the event website, for a $10 admission charge, attendees
could visit vendors such as Dungeonware and Happy Tails or take classes
such as The Joy of Canes and Flogging 101. There was a masquerade ball
on Saturday night.
The management of the Park Plaza didn't return calls. Maybe they were,
ahem, tied up. But event organizer Cecilia Tan bragged that more than
4,000 S & M-minded people and 100 vendors came through the hotel, making
it the most successful fair she's hosted. She said the most scantily
dressed and sexually open people were discouraged from lounging in
the lobby.
She sympathized with other guests, but said of her group: "If people
are in their rooms having a lot of sex, they're not getting drunk and
running down the hallways." Good point, and one that the Warter family
can laugh about now. But you have to believe that in the back of their
minds they wish someone would whip the hotel back into shape.
I realize this is in violation of the Glob copyright. If they ask me to take it down, I will.
They had reservations
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist, 1/20/2004
Not often enough in the life of any newsman does a note arrive over the
transom with a sentence that reads, "As the elevator door opened, in
walked a woman in a leather bustier leading, by a dog leash and collar,
a man wearing nothing but a string thong."
Let's first of all thank astute reader Mark Warter, formerly of Boston,
now of Rhode Island, who had the good sense to know that the issue might
be of interest to the community at large.
When I called him, Warter laid bare his story. On Friday, Jan. 9,
he checked into the Park Plaza Hotel with his wife, two daughters,
their husbands, and his two grandchildren, all to attend his grandson's
christening at the Trinity Church. Any more wholesome it doesn't get.
Back in the Paleozoic Era, about the time of its last full-scale
renovation, the Park Plaza wasn't a bad hotel; these days, it's more
exhausted than just tired, catering mostly to downscale conventions,
airline crews, and people who don't know any better.
Put Warter in that last group, but he'd quickly learn. After he settled
into his room, he rode the elevator back to the lobby with his wife and
their 3-year-old granddaughter.
Ding-ding. Elevator stops. Doors open. And that's where the woman in
the bustier with the man on the dog leash come in.
"She's not a small woman," Warter said. "She's overflowing out of this
thing, and she has fishnets on. He is looking down, and he has a collar
around his neck.
"I immediately start talking to my granddaughter to distract her,"
Warter added. "The other women in my elevator and my wife, their jaws
drop. You could hear them hit the floor."
Next stop: the front desk, where a clerk informed Warter that the
Fetish Fair Fleamarket was being held in the upstairs ballroom all
weekend. Okey dokey.
Soon, a bored-looking manager explained to Warter that the Park Plaza
was a convention hotel and, as such, refused to discriminate against
any group. Hotel executives never thought it necessary to prewarn other
guests. He offered a free breakfast.
"I told him, `So you value money more than decency?' and he replied,
`Apparently,' " Warter said.
By this point, the lobby was literally filled with hulking cross-dressers
gallivanting about in skirts, men in leather chaps and little else, obese
people with whips, and dwarfs in masks -- all of them ready to celebrate.
"It's everything you can think of," Warter said. "I'm not a prude,
but I couldn't believe it."
Admittedly, I'm the suspicious type, and was starting to think hoax.
I envisioned the night I'd be sitting at a bar with a bunch of college
friends when one of them would say, "Remember the time we got you fired
from the Globe . . . ."
So I plugged a few words into Google and, sure enough, there it was,
the Fetish Fair Fleamarket at the Park Plaza, Jan. 9-11.
According to the event website, for a $10 admission charge, attendees
could visit vendors such as Dungeonware and Happy Tails or take classes
such as The Joy of Canes and Flogging 101. There was a masquerade ball
on Saturday night.
The management of the Park Plaza didn't return calls. Maybe they were,
ahem, tied up. But event organizer Cecilia Tan bragged that more than
4,000 S & M-minded people and 100 vendors came through the hotel, making
it the most successful fair she's hosted. She said the most scantily
dressed and sexually open people were discouraged from lounging in
the lobby.
She sympathized with other guests, but said of her group: "If people
are in their rooms having a lot of sex, they're not getting drunk and
running down the hallways." Good point, and one that the Warter family
can laugh about now. But you have to believe that in the back of their
minds they wish someone would whip the hotel back into shape.