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The Monterey Motel - Long Beach, Califorrnia - Review

January 5, 2013

I'm posting this review on my blog, mainly because Yelp only allows 500 characters. My review is 1046 characters, so here it is. This place either needs to be condemned or restored, immediately.

I regret having to write this review, but I do.

I stayed one week at the Monterey Motel in room 4 and it was horrible. This is what happened and why.

The water from the sink smelled funny, but I thought it was the actual sink that was dirty, not the water, at first. In other words, I thought the smell was coming from the drain and the water was ok, but it wasn’t, so I drank it for a few days. Unfortunately, it caused me to have diarrhea and a bloody stool for several days and as long as I was drinking it. I had to drink a bunch of tea and I also had to drink only bottled water before it would go away.

I ended up buying a coffee maker to make hot water because I couldn’t trust this water at all; not even the hot water. I had to use bottles and make tea and coffee with it.

The shower had black mold in it. It was on the shower curtain and in the shower. The maid, who was afraid of the female manager, gave me a new shower curtain. She was ashamed of how the place looked and said the maid would come in 1 week.

This woman who never identified herself brought me cleaning bottles with liquids, wrapped in the old shower curtain, so the female manager (who also never identified herself) wouldn’t get upset (and yell at her or fire her, I presume).

The walls had lots of holes in them. Most of them were small. There are some red stains on the wall, which were either nail polish or blood. It was very hard to tell, but gross, nonetheless.

A towel rod was pulled from the bathroom wall before I arrived. Therefore, I hung my wet white towel on the rusty, shower curtain rod.

The air conditioner and heater were disgusting. I disinfected it and all surfaces with alcohol wipes, but I didn’t clean it completely. I hoped the blowing heat (which wasn’t bad - one of the bright spots in this very dark room….literally, the lighting was really poor and I couldn’t even see all the stubble on my face to shave it all) wouldn’t blow the dirt and dust debris at me.

The room was exceptionally small. The bed occupied about 75% of the room and you had to sort of squeeze by it to get to the cold bathroom. The window in the bathroom had a vertical open spot about one half inch wide while it was closed.

The carpet was filthy dirty. It made my socks and feet dirty, even when they were initially totally clean.

There was no phone, no frig, no coffee maker, no clock and no pictures on the walls.

The bed comforter had cigarette burns and the pillows were horrible. Both were lumpy and misshapen.

The TV was ok, but sometimes the UP channel button would turn up the volume instead. It was clearly old and a CRT model. An acquaintance named Jason was in room 2 and while his room was bigger (and bright blue/pink colored), his TV was exceptionally dark.

A man named Larry with a thick Indian accent was working behind the one way, reflective taped glass window. I didn’t see his face for about 4-5 days until I needed a new roll of toilet paper and he opened the door to hand me one. He also made it clear I’d only receive one toilet paper roll per week.

The initial stay was supposed to be 2 weeks, due to a freebie from the Los Angeles government. However, I left after 1 week because it was horrible.

Larry told Jason when he checked in that he could hang out in my room. The rule was no guests and Larry made it clear it would cost us $20 from him if we brought a girl, for instance, into our room for 1 minute. He continued and said it would be $40 if she stayed the night. This was odd and in retrospect…..I can’t say it. Never mind. Those are the facts.

Anyways, Jason was hanging out in my room on New Year’s eve and it was approaching midnight. He visited his room to get something and discovered the door had been locked by the manager! However, it was locked by the female manager. When Jason politely asked her to let him in, she said the office was closed - while speaking from inside the office. She said he’d have to return at 8am. She also told him that he could stay the night in my room. Sacrificing my privacy with her generosity was inappropriate. In fact, her motive seemed awfully unclear. We were behaving ourselves and simply watching Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin broadcast their hilarious countdown show on CNN.

I didn’t appreciate how they were treating Jason or me, so I had a word with her. Unfortunately, she didn’t care what Larry said to us about hanging out. In fact, she screamed at me through reflectively taped glass, "I don’t give a fuck about Larry!" I kind of liked Larry and was confused at this point. Did they not get along? Is one manager’s word better than the others? Listening to one of them was proving costly to us.

Unfortunately, this led me to tell her Jason was homeless and had nowhere to stay. After a brief and unfortunate shouting match, I walked off with Jason and asked him to penitently sit on his doorstep for a few minutes as an experiment to see if she’d unlock his door and she did. I had asked her to have a heart a few minutes ago and she had said she didn’t have a heart, but somehow she changed her mind after our convo.

One of my friends said this motel has bed bugs, but as of press time, that claim is unconfirmed. Or maybe I’m just used to sleeping with bugs. Who knows. They’re microscopic.

The Cops never came by. However, they were across the street at the liquor store doing something. It’s right next to a bus stop, so there’s that.

Don’t go here. Don’t go here. Don’t ever, ever, ever go here. Ever.