NAKED CITY: WELCOME TO THE HOTEL TRASHARAMA!
Keith Moon, Keith Richards and even our own troubled son Matthew Newton have all been guilty of it – as have hundreds of other rock stars and so-called celebrities. These days the practice is seriously frowned upon and no longer carries any rebellious cache. Trashing hotel room is seemingly a phenomenon of the past – or is it?
Hey, it’s not the sort of thing you would expect from the clean cut lads from One Direction and no doubt they departed their five star hotel rooms in Sydney pretty much as they found them. Maybe their numerous minders even saw fit to tidy up prior to checking out, all in keeping with maintaining their squeaky clean image.
On the other hand there is the still the occasional heritage rocker who descends upon this city and longs for those halcyon days when turning your hotel room upside down was all a part of letting off your youthful rage. That scenario is of course strictly off limits at the InterContinental or the Park Hyatt unless you’re up for a massive damages tab and the possibility of endless litigation – a sizeable chunk out of the pension fund no matter what way you look at it.
But what if a hotel were to be established here in the Harbour City where both ageing rockers and their equally decrepit fans could unleash their last crop of pent up angst by tearing their room apart – free or any legal retaliation or a bill that looked like a roll of toilet paper. Welcome to the Hotel Trasharama!
In the penthouse suite a touring heavy metal legend has just asked for an iron to be delivered to his room – a five iron that is and the perfect instrument to prise a 55″ plasma from the wall. When the flat screen is demolished the hotel could also demonstrate its green credentials by collecting every old analogue TV dumped on the streets of suburban Sydney. A safety ‘drop zone’ could be established and hotel guests could be supplied with an endless supply of the old cathode rays to hurl to the street below.
Given the age of some touring rock stars, clearly with one foot in the grave and lacking in any old style vitality, rooms could even be ordered on a ‘pre-trashed’ basis. A deluxe bottle strewn pigsty, with half a dozen holes already punched in the wall, would keep stress levels to a minimum and evoke an immediate nostalgia – without even raising a sweat.
Johnny Cash of course was notorious for painting his motel rooms black and guests would be encouraged to embark on similar DIY projects with a $100 gift voucher redeemable at Bunnings or Mitre 10. And for a small additional fee the hotel would send a butler with a spray can to paint demonic slogans across the bathroom walls.
And what’s a trashed hotel room if pictures aren’t leaked to the tabloid press, creating an immediate controversy and a marked spike in ticket sales. The Hotel Trasharama would provide a complete set of ‘after’ pics for any of its celebrity guests, photoshop enhanced to include anything from a dismembered corpse to a jacuzzi full of vomit.
