“NEW YORK (AP)—The Algonquin Hotel, which in its heyday drew some of the country’s brightest literary lights to its famed Round Table, was sold to a Denver partnership for an undisclosed sum. The 165-room hotel was bought by Miller Global Properties Fund IV, which will renovate the 100-year-old building. Jim Miller said there was no way it would even consider changing the name of the Algonquin Hotel. The Algonquin sits on a busy Midtown Manhattan block that has kept an older New York feel. In the 1920s and '30s, Dorothy Parker and pals like Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott and George S. Kaufman gathered nightly [sic] at the hotel to trade gibes and jokes, many of which ended up in print. A replica of the dark-wood Round Table used by the clever-than-thou [sic as a dog!] group has become the hotel lobby’s centerpiece. Olympus Real Estate Corp. of Dallas bought the hotel for $32.6 million in 1997.”
—I wonder what they mean by “renovate.” I meet friends for tea, drinks or lunch there every week or so—if they lay a hand on the Lobby or the Blue Bar, they’ll have me to deal with!!
No, they won’t physically renovate the decor. They’ll simply exhange bon mots such as, “I saw the play under adverse conditions…the curtain was up,” with more contemporary witticisms. You know, “wazzup?” and “bite me!” and “whatever.” The ghost of Parker will politely ask the spectre of Wolcott if he knows how to lose ten pounds of ugly fat. When the spectre replies that he doesn’t know, she’ll riposte that he should cut off his head.
Larry King Live tonight from The Starbucks Round Table at The Rock and Roll Algonquin Suites Casino… .Joey Heatherton, Lance Bass, Chris Matthews,and Roddy McDowell explore the question:“Fran Lebowitz?..isn’t she that chick on Buffy,or something?”
The current Algonquin cat is much friendlier than the last one, by the way. Matilda is a Himalayan, and puts up with petting placidly. Hamlet—the previous cat—was a short-haired Siamese who tried to take your hand off if you approached him. No doubt Woollcott would have preferred Hamlet.
. . . And if I so much as see Liz Smith or Cindy “Eraserhead” Adams saunter into the lobby, I will reach into my purse for my handy tranquilizer dartgun . . .
To pet, or not to pet: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the lobby to suffer
The strokes and clutches of outrageous tourists,
Or to take claws against a sea of cuddles,
And by opposing end them. To scratch: to sleep;
Oh, more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That fur is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To scratch, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ow, there’s the rub.