Jupiter Hotel, Portland, Oregon

Don’t let the glowing press about The Jupiter Hotel fool you for an instant. It is NOT a place I would ever recommend that anyone stay. We ended up here because it’s where the wedding couple booked their block of rooms. I have also seen it featured in several travel and food magazines recently, where it has gotten glowing reviews. It has a website that makes it look very swank and appealing. It even had decent buzz from people familiar Portland. What I would like to know is, what were all those people who gave the place good reviews smoking, and where can I get some?

The “hotel” is actually a motel of the old motorlodge variety. In other words, room access is outdoors up rickety stairways covered in molding, ripped and (as of Saturday morning) vomit stained, indoor/outdoor carpet. The rooms are small, and the “hippest” thing about them is that they are furnished with the cheapest things on offer at IKEA. The carpet in our room was brown, and also of the indoor/outdoor variety. The tile in the bathroom was surface clean, but the grout has not been scrubbed in at least a year. There was no art on the walls at all; the room was a uniform dorm room-style white textured paint. There were four hangers in our room and the drawers of the small bureau had dead bugs in them. There were cobwebs in every corner of the room.

All that might have been liveable if only the service was decent. Alas, not so. The place is apparently run by people who have absolutely no desire to indulge in customer service.

I booked our room a month in advance by phone. At the time, I specifically asked for a non-smoking room and the charming lad on the phone asked if I wanted to be on the “party” or the “quiet” side of the hotel. I explained that we were flying in from Chicago and would need a late check-in (after 11:00 p.m.) and would vastly prefer the quiet side as it would feel like 2:00 a.m. our time and I’d be coming off a Xanax high from the plane. He said that was no problem and he’d reserve a quiet side room for me. He then asked if we’d be renting a car and I said yes. He said, “Great. Park in our lot. We’re right off Burnside. Look for the sign for the Doug Fir as it’s larger than the hotel sign.” I got a GREAT vibe off the guy on the phone. He was helpful, asked the right questions, and seemed genuinely interested in being helpful.

When we got here last night we found that:

1) The hotel has a total of 20 parking spaces for 80 rooms AND a music venue. No preference is giving to hotel guests for parking. (Well, there are signs, but since no one gets towed, no one obeys them.) We had to choose between parking six blocks away, or parking in a tow zone. We picked the non-towing option and so had to lug our suitcases and computer bags six blocks. When I, very graciously, questioned the young man behind the counter about parking, he immediately got snippy with me and said I’d “have to deal.” (At that point, I wasn’t even criticizing, just asking if he had a suggestion about a good street/lot to park in where we wouldn’t get towed.)

2) Not only were we NOT given a quiet zone room, we were given the room DIRECTLY over the courtyard bar. When I asked why I wasn’t on the quiet side when I’d made my reservation a month ago and been told it was no problem and was in the computer, the guy on desk duty got positively snotty and told me that whoever I’d talked to on the phone must have made a mistake and I’d have to take what was left, as there nothing he could do. Not even an apology was offered. It was all, “It’s someone else’s fault and I can’t be bothered to deal with you, just get out of my sight.” I wanted to jerk him out of his socks and say, “The person who took my reservations was helpful and competent. I’m not an idiot. I can tell that someone that with-it on the phone is not the one who screwed up. Stop giving me attitude you hipper-than-thou little c***s***cker.”

3) There was a strange cylindrical pillow on the bed. It was made with olive shag carpeting. The shag had strange bleach stains on it and looked like it had seen several generations of cats.

My experience is not unique. It seems that everyone who booked rooms for this wedding was stuck over the bar. (Our friend M’s room also REEKED of urine.) We were all baffled. We had all requested quiet side rooms; not one of us got one. This is especially baffling since the hotel offers half-price rooms to people who attend shows at the Doug Fir and check in after midnight. Would you not think they’d give the rooms above the bar to late check-ins rather than full-price paying reservations?

Needless to say, I was NOT happy with this hotel. I’m paid $109.00 per night and had no chance of sleep until about 4:00 a.m. every night. If this is a hipster hotel I am now most avowedly a square.