{"id":4143,"date":"2013-05-05T22:53:53","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T03:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isplotchy.com\/blog\/?p=4143"},"modified":"2013-05-05T23:32:14","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T04:32:14","slug":"hooker-motels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isplotchy.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/hooker-motels\/","title":{"rendered":"Hooker Motels!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Classic<\/p>\n

The part of my old SPLOTCHY DOT COM site I put the most work into was probably the Hooker Motels<\/a>\u00a0section.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Back in Chicago in the late 90s, old, beaten-up motels dotted the lovely diagonal street North Lincoln Avenue, all the way from Foster to Devon. \u00a0I already loved Lincoln Avenue, because, HELLO! \u00a0DIAGONAL STREET ON A GRID-LIKE CITY LAYOUT! \u00a0Okay, I don’t know why a diagonal street held such appeal for me. \u00a0I will say that I love Elston Avenue, and Milwaukee Avenue, even Clark Street, which is only occasionally diagonal. \u00a0I like diagonal streets. \u00a0Let’s leave it that.<\/p>\n

The motels all had a dilapidated, low-rent Vegas charm to me. \u00a0What is a dilapidated, low-rent Vegas charm, you ask? \u00a0Well, lots of neon signage, for one. \u00a0Also, overly ambitious motel names. \u00a0The Stars<\/a>. \u00a0The Apache<\/a>. \u00a0The Acres<\/a>. \u00a0And yes, sometimes, the mischievous motel name. \u00a0The O-Mi<\/a>!<\/p>\n

So, I went about cataloguing the motels. \u00a0There were a lot! \u00a0Over 10! \u00a0That’s actually a lot. \u00a0Trust me. \u00a0I took pictures in the daytime. \u00a0I took pictures at night.<\/p>\n

At the time, I was visiting the Lincoln Square record store Laurie’s Planet Of Sound<\/a>\u00a0a lot. \u00a0I got to know the owner, John. \u00a0He was a nice guy. \u00a0I mentioned I was devoting part of my website to the motels on Lincoln Avenue, and he thought it was a cool idea. \u00a0He offered to call all the motels and get rates. \u00a0He even asked me if I wanted him to inquire about hourly rates, too. \u00a0Hell yes I did!<\/p>\n

I pulled out all the stops for the website. \u00a0I created an animated “Hooker Motels” GIF for the page heading. \u00a0I created pseudo-neon links that lit up when you hovered your mouse over them. \u00a0It was the bleeding edge of the Internet, baby!<\/p>\n

\"Guest
A favorite Hooker Motel pic. I think this was taken by my friend Lance, who accompanied me on at least one nighttime photo session.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the time I was documenting the motels, a few got knocked down. \u00a0The Acres. \u00a0The Spa. \u00a0NO!!! THE SPA<\/a>!!!!!! \u00a0Oh, that was the crown jewel of the Hooker Motels. \u00a0I was lucky to talk to the daughter of the owner of The Spa after it was closed but before it was torn down. \u00a0She sold me a light fixture, and told me stories about rock bands that used to stay there.<\/p>\n

Not long after The Spa was knocked down, I stopped maintaining my site. \u00a0SPLOTCHY DOT COM just sat there, all dead and static and unloved.<\/p>\n

But, people still visited the motel pages. \u00a0It’s not like I did anything special or wonderful, but I probably had the largest collection of pictures of the motels on the web at the time. \u00a0I will admit that Google was certainly a conduit for people to find my site via slightly-unseemly searches like “HOOKER + CHICAGO”.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, people would contact me about the motels.\u00a0A grad student emailed me and asked if she could use some of my pictures in a thesis she was doing on the motels of Lincoln Avenue. \u00a0I happily let her use whatever pictures she wanted. \u00a0A man who bought The Stars was going to knock it down and replace it with condos. \u00a0He contacted me to see if I wanted to buy the motel’s sign for US $500. \u00a0If I had a place for it, I definitely would have. \u00a0Instead, I asked to take pictures of the motel before he knocked it down. \u00a0On a rainy day, I went there with my friend Tim and took pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A room at The Stars, with me in multiple reflections.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

In some ways, it’s weird having a static webpage documenting some part of the world. \u00a0It’s not a blog page. \u00a0It’s not something that will be up at the top of your site for a couple days, and then vanish into the obscurity of your archives. \u00a0It’s always present. \u00a0I think there might be an expectation from this, that your site is some sort of dependable, up-to-date resource. \u00a0But my old Hooker Motels page isn’t. \u00a0I didn’t want that responsibility.<\/p>\n

Hey, maybe if I still lived on the north side of Chicago, and saw those motels every day, I would be the recordkeeper of these places. \u00a0I do miss them. \u00a0And I know that at least some of them are still standing, but I couldn’t tell you which ones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Disclaimer: \u00a0This post was composed while listening to the John Fahey album “America”. \u00a0You should check it out. \u00a0It’s really nice.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The part of my old SPLOTCHY DOT COM site I put the most work into was probably the Hooker Motels\u00a0section. Back in Chicago in the late 90s, old, beaten-up motels dotted the lovely diagonal street North Lincoln Avenue, all the way from Foster to Devon. \u00a0I already loved Lincoln Avenue, because, HELLO! \u00a0DIAGONAL STREET ON … Continue reading Hooker Motels!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classic-splotchy"],"yoast_head":"\nHooker Motels! 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