Hotel Oakland
Dec. 26th, 2005 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI was regaling ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
notmostppl with this story the other day. She thought it was funny, so that's all the encouragement I need to post it here.
Back whenbcholmes, ldot and I were first living together, we took a trip to San Francisco to attend a convention. There are some people on my f-list who will recognize this story.
So anyway, we noodled around SF for a while and I met some people that I knew from Usenet, and did a bunch of sight-seeing and the whole thing was pretty cool. The convention itself was being held in Oakland, so when the weekend rolled around we relocated, dragging all our possessions along with us on the BART. The neighbourhood around the hotel was (I thought) a little bare, but that seemed like a sensible choice given the prices in SF proper. The rooms were nice, the staff was accomodating, the restaurant was perfectly acceptable, there was a lovely waterfront area not too far way and a very pleasant terrace on the second floor where we could walk outside from the conference rooms.
So far so good. The first thing I noticed about the place that was a bit off-putting was the trains. Freight trains ran on a regular schedule right down the centre of the street right outside the hotel. And I do mean down the centre of the street. I don't remember if the streets were narrow or just very busy, but I distinctly recall cars pulling up on the sidewalk to let the trains pass. And because they were running right down the centre of the street, that meant they had to sound their bells and whistles to warn everybody they were coming through. Inside the conference rooms, they were loud enough that it was difficult to hear over them.
Mostly I just thought that was amusing. It was mildly irritating on occasion when it was drowning out people who were speaking, but in general no big deal. What did freak me out, however, was the elevators.
There were two, only one of which was actually operational when we arrived. No problem, it was a big square box with lots of room for all the people who were arriving for the con. And because I compulsively read the posted licence information whenever I'm in an elevator, I immedidately noticed that it was rated for...
...less than half the number of bodies that could actually fit in it.
I'm not kidding, the licence had some rediculously low number on it for it's size, like 1000lbs or something like that. Meanwhile you could have easily fit a dozen people in it. That made me a little nervous and I pointed it out tobcholmes and ldot in my best WTF? voice. Still, I figured the thing had probably been running for years without incident, right?
So the con was lots of fun, and I got to meet lots of people and catch up with a number of others. Saturday night I spent most of the night until the wee hours in the consuite flirting with an attractive man I had just met. It got late enough that we eventually called it a night and I headed over to the stairs to get back to my hotel room, which was only one floor away.
And while I was walking through the hallway I kept hearing this ringing noise. It was bugging me because I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. I figured it couldn't be the fire alarm because those are always so loud they practically lift you off your feet and tend to be spread out throughout the entire building; this was definitely localized. I vaguely wondered if somebody had brought a really loud alarm clock with them and it was going off in their room at four in the morning.
And as I walked past the elevators, the noise got louder. And as I passed the elevators, it started to fade again.
And I thought, No, it couldn't be. So I retraced my steps and went right up to the closed door of the shaft and I could clearly hear the alarm bell coming from the elevator on one of the floors below. Somebody was stuck and they had pushed the alarm.
So I went back towards the stairs and I ran down to the emergency exit which spit me out onto a side street, and then I ran around to the front of the building and back inside to where the front desk was. A bored-looking woman was sitting at the front desk reading a Sidney Sheldon novel and chewing on the end of her pony-tail. I could still hear the distant ringing.
"There's somebody trapped in the elevator," I told her.
She looked up at me, shrugged, and went back to reading her book.
"Um, excuse me?" I said louder this time. "Do you hear that ringing? It's the elevator alarm. I think somebody is stuck in there."
She let out a deep annoyed sigh, gave me a dirty look and tossed her book onto her desk. She then picked up the phone, asked the person on the other end of the line to check on the elevator, shot me another dirty look and picked up her book. I waited around just long enough to see a maintenance man come into the lobby, hear the alarm, say "Shit!" and disappear again before I headed upstairs to bed.
The next day both of the elevators sported matching "Out Of Order" signs taped across their doors. With stairs being the only other way of accessing to the conference rooms, that meant that one of the actual organizers couldn't even attend his own conference. Nice. There was some grousing about that, and I got to tell anybody who would listen my story of the trapped person from the night before. We were never able to track down the victim, so we all assumed it must have been somebody not from our group.
That was the last day of the con anyway, and people were starting to gradually filter away home. We had booked an extra night so that we wouldn't have to rush away and we could socialize until the end of the day. The consuite was still available so we spent most of our time there hanging out with the remaining attendees.
We were in the consuite when we heard an enormous BANG and everything went dark.
Craning our faces against the windows, we could just see the sparks flying from down below. Curious to see what was going on, we slowly groped our way down the dark stairs to the terrace and went outside. There we could clearly see sparks showering from the metal box on top of the utility pole (is that the transformer?) just below us. The entire block was dark, and wires that had detached from the pole writhed on the ground below us.
The fire and police departments were there within a matter of seconds and cordoned off the street. We watched from above as the firemen rushed around and yelled messages into walkie-talkies, while the policement patiently explained to the people who were standing arguing with them that No, they could not just go over there and retrieve their parked car, yes I know it's just right there and no, it doesn't matter that you'll only be a minute. Eventually the mechanism on one of the adjacent poles started sparking and making loud popping noises and we retreated back to the safety of the inside of the hotel. We spent the rest of the night in the consuite eating left-over food by candle-light until we went to bed.
The power came back on shortly before we checked out. When we got back we heard stories from people who had been forced to pack in the pitch black in order to catch their planes home.
Fun con. I'd like to visit SF again some time.
notmostppl with this story the other day. She thought it was funny, so that's all the encouragement I need to post it here.Back when
bcholmes, ldot and I were first living together, we took a trip to San Francisco to attend a convention. There are some people on my f-list who will recognize this story.So anyway, we noodled around SF for a while and I met some people that I knew from Usenet, and did a bunch of sight-seeing and the whole thing was pretty cool. The convention itself was being held in Oakland, so when the weekend rolled around we relocated, dragging all our possessions along with us on the BART. The neighbourhood around the hotel was (I thought) a little bare, but that seemed like a sensible choice given the prices in SF proper. The rooms were nice, the staff was accomodating, the restaurant was perfectly acceptable, there was a lovely waterfront area not too far way and a very pleasant terrace on the second floor where we could walk outside from the conference rooms.
So far so good. The first thing I noticed about the place that was a bit off-putting was the trains. Freight trains ran on a regular schedule right down the centre of the street right outside the hotel. And I do mean down the centre of the street. I don't remember if the streets were narrow or just very busy, but I distinctly recall cars pulling up on the sidewalk to let the trains pass. And because they were running right down the centre of the street, that meant they had to sound their bells and whistles to warn everybody they were coming through. Inside the conference rooms, they were loud enough that it was difficult to hear over them.
Mostly I just thought that was amusing. It was mildly irritating on occasion when it was drowning out people who were speaking, but in general no big deal. What did freak me out, however, was the elevators.
There were two, only one of which was actually operational when we arrived. No problem, it was a big square box with lots of room for all the people who were arriving for the con. And because I compulsively read the posted licence information whenever I'm in an elevator, I immedidately noticed that it was rated for...
...less than half the number of bodies that could actually fit in it.
I'm not kidding, the licence had some rediculously low number on it for it's size, like 1000lbs or something like that. Meanwhile you could have easily fit a dozen people in it. That made me a little nervous and I pointed it out to
bcholmes and ldot in my best WTF? voice. Still, I figured the thing had probably been running for years without incident, right?So the con was lots of fun, and I got to meet lots of people and catch up with a number of others. Saturday night I spent most of the night until the wee hours in the consuite flirting with an attractive man I had just met. It got late enough that we eventually called it a night and I headed over to the stairs to get back to my hotel room, which was only one floor away.
And while I was walking through the hallway I kept hearing this ringing noise. It was bugging me because I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. I figured it couldn't be the fire alarm because those are always so loud they practically lift you off your feet and tend to be spread out throughout the entire building; this was definitely localized. I vaguely wondered if somebody had brought a really loud alarm clock with them and it was going off in their room at four in the morning.
And as I walked past the elevators, the noise got louder. And as I passed the elevators, it started to fade again.
And I thought, No, it couldn't be. So I retraced my steps and went right up to the closed door of the shaft and I could clearly hear the alarm bell coming from the elevator on one of the floors below. Somebody was stuck and they had pushed the alarm.
So I went back towards the stairs and I ran down to the emergency exit which spit me out onto a side street, and then I ran around to the front of the building and back inside to where the front desk was. A bored-looking woman was sitting at the front desk reading a Sidney Sheldon novel and chewing on the end of her pony-tail. I could still hear the distant ringing.
"There's somebody trapped in the elevator," I told her.
She looked up at me, shrugged, and went back to reading her book.
"Um, excuse me?" I said louder this time. "Do you hear that ringing? It's the elevator alarm. I think somebody is stuck in there."
She let out a deep annoyed sigh, gave me a dirty look and tossed her book onto her desk. She then picked up the phone, asked the person on the other end of the line to check on the elevator, shot me another dirty look and picked up her book. I waited around just long enough to see a maintenance man come into the lobby, hear the alarm, say "Shit!" and disappear again before I headed upstairs to bed.
The next day both of the elevators sported matching "Out Of Order" signs taped across their doors. With stairs being the only other way of accessing to the conference rooms, that meant that one of the actual organizers couldn't even attend his own conference. Nice. There was some grousing about that, and I got to tell anybody who would listen my story of the trapped person from the night before. We were never able to track down the victim, so we all assumed it must have been somebody not from our group.
That was the last day of the con anyway, and people were starting to gradually filter away home. We had booked an extra night so that we wouldn't have to rush away and we could socialize until the end of the day. The consuite was still available so we spent most of our time there hanging out with the remaining attendees.
We were in the consuite when we heard an enormous BANG and everything went dark.
Craning our faces against the windows, we could just see the sparks flying from down below. Curious to see what was going on, we slowly groped our way down the dark stairs to the terrace and went outside. There we could clearly see sparks showering from the metal box on top of the utility pole (is that the transformer?) just below us. The entire block was dark, and wires that had detached from the pole writhed on the ground below us.
The fire and police departments were there within a matter of seconds and cordoned off the street. We watched from above as the firemen rushed around and yelled messages into walkie-talkies, while the policement patiently explained to the people who were standing arguing with them that No, they could not just go over there and retrieve their parked car, yes I know it's just right there and no, it doesn't matter that you'll only be a minute. Eventually the mechanism on one of the adjacent poles started sparking and making loud popping noises and we retreated back to the safety of the inside of the hotel. We spent the rest of the night in the consuite eating left-over food by candle-light until we went to bed.
The power came back on shortly before we checked out. When we got back we heard stories from people who had been forced to pack in the pitch black in order to catch their planes home.
Fun con. I'd like to visit SF again some time.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 07:36 pm (UTC)Do you remember what hotel that was?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 08:03 pm (UTC)Which reminded me that the waterfront near the hotel had a replica of Jack London's cabin.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-27 05:04 pm (UTC)In Jack London Square!
I like JLS because you get a great view of the Port of Oakland cargo cranes (http://www.davidsanger.com/stockimages/3-300-6.cranes), which I fancy must have been the inspiration for Star Wars landwalkers.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-19 05:11 pm (UTC)I'm not sure if the cabin replica is still there. JLS had a sudden outflux of stores, and half of it was condemned (the wooden two-story area). But I do not make it down that far very often.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-20 05:22 am (UTC)There was an absolutely hopeless restaurant, however, that I will shed no tears for. Worst service of my life.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-20 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 07:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 08:09 pm (UTC)(Warning: the FAX machine has been known to have problems.
*snerk*
Date: 2005-12-26 07:41 pm (UTC)I'm going to SF/Oakland today. So much fun stuff there...
Re: *snerk*
Date: 2005-12-26 08:02 pm (UTC)My skin especially. The west coast seems to be really good for it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 07:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-27 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 08:27 pm (UTC)That was me!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 09:03 pm (UTC)You were definitely missed.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-28 12:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-26 11:59 pm (UTC)No stairs? Mmm, fiery deathtrap goodness.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-27 03:52 am (UTC)