THE NAKED CITY: Whatever Happened To The Fleabags?
You can blame the backpackers. Sydney once boasted an impressive list of ultra budget, cheapskate, fleabag, doss-house style hotels. Set mainly around the less salubrious quarters of the CBD and Kings Cross they offered flophouse accommodation for as little as $10 a night.
That was back in the 70s and 80s, but when the onslaught of backpackers attracted by the low Aussie dollar arrived in the 90s, many of these no star hotels converted to bunkhouse accommodation and the travellers moved in. These days with the added crisis of low rental vacancy rates you would be flat out finding an old style hotel room for less than $50 a night and if you did you would need a blow torch to fight off the bed bugs!
One of the joys of travelling in America is that many of the old style fleabags remain, catering mainly to the country’s massive itinerant population but happy to accommodate the unsuspecting tourist for the night. Check out the reviews of some of these hotels that travellers log on the net and you’ll encounter some truly hilarious moments – like this assessment of the Claremont Hotel in LA under the heading of “Bed cracked twice in the middle of the night.” The reviewer wrote: “While my husband and I slept, the old bed broke underneath us not once but twice. After the second time it collapsed, I told my husband leave it alone and let’s just sleep on it sideways. Throughout the night, I heard other beds collapsing through the paper thin walls and the international crowd screaming and cursing in surprise.”
Back in the mid 90s Coffin Ed stayed in the once fashionable Rembrandt Hotel on Market Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Popular with travellers and itinerants alike the hotel had certainly fallen on hard times and offered rooms for as little as $80 a week with the added attraction of an all you could eat donut and coffee breakfast. The donuts were by no means fresh but when you are travelling on a budget there’s nothing like a free sugar hit to get you started for the day. It wasn’t until Coffin spotted boxes of discarded donuts left overnight at the rear of a nearby café that he put two and two together.
The City Of Sydney Council is always on about internationalising Sydney with the advent of small bars, a laneway culture and late night trading. Go to any great international city and you’ll still find an abundance of ultra budget accommodation where rooms rent by the month, week, day and even the hour (wink wink!). We would love to see the Council turn a blind eye to the usual building and health requirements and encourage a rebirth of the atmospheric fleabags. Backpackers would be banned and room rates subsidised at no more than $30 a night. The accommodation would provide a welcome halfway house for the down at heel trying to get back on their feet and find permanent accommodation. Budding novelists, poets and artists would also be encouraged to take up residence, to experience first hand the seedy side of life – not to mention all the donuts they could eat!
