What would British love hotels be like?
Apr. 2nd, 2007 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWhat does 21st century London have in common with 1980s Tokyo? Think bubbles.
The Artful Lodgers, an article in yesterday's Observer, describes the current real estate boom in London in terms which evoke 20th century Tokyo. In some parts of London, house prices are currently increasing at the rate of £1 a minute. Shelter estimates that by 2026 only 35% of 30- to 34-year-old couples will be able to afford their own homes. In the face of this situation, people are turning to stop-gap solutions. They're living out of suitcases, couchsurfing, keeping their stuff out of town in storage units, getting their rent subsidized for guarding empty warehouses, living in higher densities (four to a room, for instance) and in smaller spaces, or just staying home -- sometimes indefinitely -- with their parents.
London and Tokyo are both the capital cities of small islands with dense populations, limited housing stock, and highly capitalist economies which aren't really run for ordinary people, even if ordinary people are still essential for running them. And even if they don't share a culture, common economic features give their citizens common problems.
"If I wanted to bring anyone back I've decided that it's either their place or not at all!" says London couchsurfer Nic Adams, who tiptoes around trying not to annoy the girls he's staying with. If he were in Tokyo, of course, there'd be a third option -- a love hotel.
Now, if London today really were just like Tokyo -- if economics alone determined outcomes -- British entrepreneurs surely wouldn't be missing such a gaping hole in the hotel market, would they? Surely, given the current situation in London, and given that things are only going to get worse for young people between now and 2026, one surefire use of London real estate would be to turn it into love hotels for couchsurfers and office workers?
What would these British love hotels be like? Instead of love seats, karaoke, porn vids, Playstations and jacuzzis, perhaps it'd all be red plush, dart games, turkey buffets under silver salvers. Perhaps you'd be able to dress up as a beefeater, play indoor golf or shoot clay pigeons before fucking. There'd almost certainly be fitted carpet around the toilets and a letterbox passersby could piss into, soaking a glossy heap of upmarket estate agent magazines.
Something vaguely similar is opening this spring. Yotel is a British chain of capsule hotels designed by Simon Woodroffe, who invented sushi chain Yo! Sushi back in the 90s (and has kept the maddeningly 90s font for all his projects). Simon got the idea on a British Airways flight. "I went to sleep with the conundrum of how to make a Japanese capsule hotel acceptable in the west and woke up realising the solution was around me: all I needed to do was find the designer of the BA first class cabin and ask them to help me design a hotel." You can see the results (and hear lots of London-as-Tokyo rhetoric from UK news channels) in this video.
But that still doesn't solve Nic Adams' problem -- where to take girls when you don't have your own bedroom? Yotel is a capsule hotel, not a love hotel. You can't rent it by the hour, and there are no sex toys.
If the British love hotel isn't really an imminent likelihood, it may be -- and this is where London and Tokyo have to part ways, agreeing to their economic similarities but unable to stomach each other's cultures -- for the reasons that Kelly Osbourne spells out in her recent series for ITV2, Turning Japanese. Forced by her sadistic producers to work in a love hotel, Kelly is absolutely disgusted by what she sees -- and smells:
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"Imagine if someone came in an old sock and put it in the microwave. That's what it smells like," says the girl whose dad used to bite the heads off rats. "It's truly fucking sick... I feel like I'm getting gonorrhea just sitting here... I'll never go in a love hotel again, no fucking way."
Kelly may just be hamming it up, of course. But it seems like the love hotel, even in Japan, is a bit of an endangered species. Kyoichi Tsuzuki subtitled his photographic survey of their baroque interiors (the images on this page are his) Fading Beauty, and lamented that "for all the creative ingenuity, these love hotels are rapidly disappearing. Maybe even becoming extinct. One reason being that young people no longer go for these old-fashioned interiors, but the real killer is the New Public Morals Act, which governs the operations and standard practices of sex-related businesses".
JapanProbe confirms that the government is passing legislation to prevent new love hotels from being built on the famous hill behind Shibuya. Young Japanese don't seem too upset.
“I never even use love hotels," says one 17-year old boy. "If I’m gonna give a girl one, I do it at a manga cafe [where customers rent a private booth by the hour]. Keeping girls quiet while we’re making out in a store is an awesome thrill.”
A somewhat callous callow 18 year-old agrees. “I haven’t got the money to go to a love hotel, so it doesn’t matter to me. If I’ve gotta do it outside of the home, then I just go to Yoyogi Park. Because it’s dark there, it doesn’t even matter what they look like.“
Sex in manga cafes doesn't seem like it's going to hit Britain any time soon. But sex in public parks -- well, it's a great British tradition. There's your answer, Nic: get down in the park at midnight. It's illegal, uncomfortable, freezing, and free.
The Artful Lodgers, an article in yesterday's Observer, describes the current real estate boom in London in terms which evoke 20th century Tokyo. In some parts of London, house prices are currently increasing at the rate of £1 a minute. Shelter estimates that by 2026 only 35% of 30- to 34-year-old couples will be able to afford their own homes. In the face of this situation, people are turning to stop-gap solutions. They're living out of suitcases, couchsurfing, keeping their stuff out of town in storage units, getting their rent subsidized for guarding empty warehouses, living in higher densities (four to a room, for instance) and in smaller spaces, or just staying home -- sometimes indefinitely -- with their parents.
London and Tokyo are both the capital cities of small islands with dense populations, limited housing stock, and highly capitalist economies which aren't really run for ordinary people, even if ordinary people are still essential for running them. And even if they don't share a culture, common economic features give their citizens common problems.
"If I wanted to bring anyone back I've decided that it's either their place or not at all!" says London couchsurfer Nic Adams, who tiptoes around trying not to annoy the girls he's staying with. If he were in Tokyo, of course, there'd be a third option -- a love hotel.
Now, if London today really were just like Tokyo -- if economics alone determined outcomes -- British entrepreneurs surely wouldn't be missing such a gaping hole in the hotel market, would they? Surely, given the current situation in London, and given that things are only going to get worse for young people between now and 2026, one surefire use of London real estate would be to turn it into love hotels for couchsurfers and office workers?
What would these British love hotels be like? Instead of love seats, karaoke, porn vids, Playstations and jacuzzis, perhaps it'd all be red plush, dart games, turkey buffets under silver salvers. Perhaps you'd be able to dress up as a beefeater, play indoor golf or shoot clay pigeons before fucking. There'd almost certainly be fitted carpet around the toilets and a letterbox passersby could piss into, soaking a glossy heap of upmarket estate agent magazines.
Something vaguely similar is opening this spring. Yotel is a British chain of capsule hotels designed by Simon Woodroffe, who invented sushi chain Yo! Sushi back in the 90s (and has kept the maddeningly 90s font for all his projects). Simon got the idea on a British Airways flight. "I went to sleep with the conundrum of how to make a Japanese capsule hotel acceptable in the west and woke up realising the solution was around me: all I needed to do was find the designer of the BA first class cabin and ask them to help me design a hotel." You can see the results (and hear lots of London-as-Tokyo rhetoric from UK news channels) in this video.
But that still doesn't solve Nic Adams' problem -- where to take girls when you don't have your own bedroom? Yotel is a capsule hotel, not a love hotel. You can't rent it by the hour, and there are no sex toys.
If the British love hotel isn't really an imminent likelihood, it may be -- and this is where London and Tokyo have to part ways, agreeing to their economic similarities but unable to stomach each other's cultures -- for the reasons that Kelly Osbourne spells out in her recent series for ITV2, Turning Japanese. Forced by her sadistic producers to work in a love hotel, Kelly is absolutely disgusted by what she sees -- and smells:
[Error: unknown template video]
"Imagine if someone came in an old sock and put it in the microwave. That's what it smells like," says the girl whose dad used to bite the heads off rats. "It's truly fucking sick... I feel like I'm getting gonorrhea just sitting here... I'll never go in a love hotel again, no fucking way."
Kelly may just be hamming it up, of course. But it seems like the love hotel, even in Japan, is a bit of an endangered species. Kyoichi Tsuzuki subtitled his photographic survey of their baroque interiors (the images on this page are his) Fading Beauty, and lamented that "for all the creative ingenuity, these love hotels are rapidly disappearing. Maybe even becoming extinct. One reason being that young people no longer go for these old-fashioned interiors, but the real killer is the New Public Morals Act, which governs the operations and standard practices of sex-related businesses".
JapanProbe confirms that the government is passing legislation to prevent new love hotels from being built on the famous hill behind Shibuya. Young Japanese don't seem too upset.
“I never even use love hotels," says one 17-year old boy. "If I’m gonna give a girl one, I do it at a manga cafe [where customers rent a private booth by the hour]. Keeping girls quiet while we’re making out in a store is an awesome thrill.”
A somewhat callous callow 18 year-old agrees. “I haven’t got the money to go to a love hotel, so it doesn’t matter to me. If I’ve gotta do it outside of the home, then I just go to Yoyogi Park. Because it’s dark there, it doesn’t even matter what they look like.“
Sex in manga cafes doesn't seem like it's going to hit Britain any time soon. But sex in public parks -- well, it's a great British tradition. There's your answer, Nic: get down in the park at midnight. It's illegal, uncomfortable, freezing, and free.