They're here.........

I book most of my vacations through my travel agent. It's a gay agency, and I can usually rely on their recommendations on places to stay in cities that I'm not familiar with - usually. This time they were a little off the mark. Anyone who is familiar with San Francisco can tell you that the one area you definitely want to avoid is Market St between 5th and 8th. We were at Market and 7th, otherwise known as Shit St & Crack Ave. It was awful. The area is plagued by hundreds (no exaggeration) of homeless people with their shopping carts. Our first day we were witness to a fight across the street and at night we could watch numerous drug deals taking place. Just down the street were the Adult stores and strip clubs.

The hotel itself wasn't too bad. It was OK. Very old, but without that old building charm. The calibre of people staying there was pretty good as well. Other people we spoke with were just as surprised by the area as we were. At least Q and I are two big guys, but we still wouldn't have went out alone. I can't think of how some women there must have felt. Picture a hotel at the corner of Dundas and Sherbourne and you get my drift. However, the one thing that majorly bugged me about the place was the closet door.

When I was a kid we lived in a very old farm house. All the closet doors and bedroom doors were the same - just a big, heavy wooden door. I was a big fan of horror movies (and still am) but that came with a price. The closet at the top of the stairs, the one in my bedroom and under my bed were severly off limits at night. I think it all stemmed from an episode of Tales from the Darkside where a student rented a room in a house, and was terrorized by a monster in the closet. A closet not unlike the one in my bedroom. At the end she finally left screaming (or was killed or something) and the monster turned out to be this white half bat/half human thing that was the owner's child or something. I eerily remember him at the end cradling it, carrying it, and soothing it as he took it back upstairs. Forever etched in my brain that scene was. Oh, and we can't forget the infamous closet in Poltergeist either. That being said, the closet door was always shut when I went to bed.

Seeing as the hotel closet reminded me of that, I wasn't comfortable unless the door was closed. No matter what we were doing, even if we were in the room for 10 minutes, I could feel the open door with my back turned. It seriously bothered me a lot. It didn't help that it had a tendency to swing open a few inches if not closed properly either. Of course I had to endure endless torment from you-know-who for the rest of our stay. The bastard even had the nerve to take pictures of it when I wasn't looking.

It doesn't look like much, but it's evil I tell you.

EVIL.