The Aminzade hotel class check

We are staying at the swankiest place in town, the Holiday Inn. I performed my hotel class check immediately after unpacking. Business travel hotels are caste-stratified more rigidly than India before Ghandi. Rank can be instantly established by a glance at toiletries and a quick measurement of the towels. My simple toiletry scale is as follows:

1) Cheapskate Hotel: 1 bar white soap in hotel-logo wrapper

2) Lower Middle: 2 bars white soap, nanobottle of combination conditioner/shampoo with hotel logo on labels. Shower cap.

3) Middle-Lower Middle: 2 bars white soap, one larger than the other, with hotel logo-labels. Shampoo/conditioner also bears a brand name (e.g. Jhirmack). Presented in rattan basket

4) Dead-Middle: same as MLM, but at least one soap is pink rather than plain white and there are separate nanobottles of conditioner and shampoo. There is also one other nanobottle of another toiletry fluid (e.g. mouthwash, hand lotion), and a disposable shoe-wiping cloth. The hotel name is less prominent and the famous hairdresser’s name is more prominent on the labels.

5) Upper-Middle: Same as DM, but several nb’s of famous brand toiletries, perhaps labeled “aromatherapy,” a rattan basket with cloth lining, non-rectangular soaps with no hotel logo, bizarre toiletry fluids (e.g. bath salts, body splash, cuticle scrub), and an unexpected utility such as a sewing kit.

The toiletry situation at the Gallipolis Holiday Inn shouts MLM. Two white 2-size soaps, Jhirmack Conditioning Shampoo, shower cap. Towels are 12″ x 44,” a cut above Best Western, but way below the Hiltons and Marriots of the world. Pardon if I seem to be picky about this, but thanks to expense-account food and other factors, I happen to have a waist precisely one Gallipolis-Holiday-Inn-towel-width in circumference and prefer to shave with the towel worn as a skirt.

The grim truth is that Gallipolis, Ohio is smack in the middle of Appalachia, and is a good approximation of any business traveller’s idea of hell. Night life here is a windowless sports bar with a large satellite dish and a swarm of Harley-Davidsons parked outside. Outside of the Holiday Inn, the restaurants are either fast food or have the word “family” in their name. I had arrived with some vague hope of a great barbeque joint hidden in the West Virginny hollers within driving distance, but my hope has failed. Tonight we drove across the river to the finest restaurant in driving distance. It was a beautiful old building, nicely appointed with very pretentious but mediocre food (sorbet between courses, but the menu offered “Filet of Mignon”)

Happy-go-lucky and easy-to-please as I am, there are two insults I take personally: this is the only place in North America I have ever visited that does not have an NPR station, and nondiary coffee “creamer” (which I thought had disappeared with mood rings) appears, undead, on the Holiday Inn breakfast table.

Coming soon: The Bob Evans Dynasty, visit to a gristmill, Musing about Gadgets