The rumors are true. I no longer reside at the Jo-tel. So, if you’re doing the math and scratching your head: yes, Hip E. and Johnny D are the only ones on this blog who actually live at the Jo-tel in San Francisco, which: ValleJO St. + Hotel = Jo-tel (pronounced “hotel” not “joe-tel”). Duh. So now here’s the rundown:
Thrill: No-Tel (Petaluma = “north”, Phoenix = local Petaluma bar where Gallager recently performed)
PETE: Jo-tel South (El Lay = Teh Ghey)
Turd: Oregon
Shark: Gough-tel (Gough St, which: imagine it pronounced like the artist, not like it’s actually pronounced in SF (i.e. rhyming with quaff. not that way))
Why did I move out of the Jo-tel? Well, the cool reason that I would cite for appearances is: I’d been living there for over five years and needed a change of scenery. It’s a great apartment, totally fun, I’m going to miss it, etc. But five years is a long time. And Polkers uses this weird pancake-batter-esque dressing for their salads. Perhaps the more accurate reason is: my new wife made me. The way I describe it is that she was just cleaning with more celerity than the rest of the apartment, and me too. I think us dudes usually clean when the shit just piles up too high to tolerate and then we spend an afternoon and clean to high hell. Chicks in general, and Patsy in particular, like to maintain residences at the consistent state of cleanliness. So while the Jo-tel roommates were probably more than happy to clean their pace, they couldn’t keep up with Patsy, who ended up basically keeping the entire apartment clean single-handedly. And she deserves to not have to do that.
So now we are living with The Deepa at the Gough-tel and things are going well so far. We don’t have internet yet, so I’m falling behind on whatever it is I do on the internet for three hours each night. We have a nice, big living room, downstairs parking, and a TV and a MOTHERFUCKING DISHWASHER!!!!! Basically the only two bad things are (1) no free washer and dryer, and (2) Deepa put a Harry Potter book on the living room book shelf in between Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Swann’s Way, which: immediately moved.
-Shark
7 responses so far ↓
Thrill // Jul 3, 2008 at 11:27 am
Shark, since Gough is pronounced “gawf”, you should just call it The Go-Tel. I mean… it fits the spelling and pronunciation memes perfectly if you do.
Thrill // Jul 3, 2008 at 11:29 am
Which is to say, there’s no chance someone will pronounce Gough correctly and say “gawf-tell” if it just has the word Go at the beginning.
Thus Spoke Zarathrillstra.
Trey // Jul 3, 2008 at 2:05 pm
This post could have benefited from the mention of both the freshly dubbed Bro-Tel and the Bro-Dega.
Hip E. // Jul 7, 2008 at 10:49 am
Maybe we should also call the Jo-tel the “Ho-tel” since people get confused over how to pronounce it. Just kidding. Having a difficult or non-intuitive spelling/pronunciation is a great way to be able to tell how cool people are. For instance, if they see “Gough-tel” and say “Goff-tel,” you can tell they aren’t that cool. But they are still cooler than people who see “Gough-tel” and pronounce it “Go-tel” because they are new to the city and don’t know how to pronounce “Gough” yet. Those people have a LONG way to go before they will be pronouncing “Gough-tel” correctly. In other news, I am really looking forward to the delivery of the new Gough-tel couch with pull-out bed, and maybe the addition of a pillow. After sleeping on the floor 3 nights this weekend, my neck still hurts. I agree w/ Trey though that this post should have included shout-outs to the Bro-tel (formerly the Fell House - “how wude!”) and the Bro-dega (Trey’s house) and possibly the Haigh-tel (Alison, Ellen & Joe’s house, which nobody has ever called the Haigh-tel).
Thrill // Jul 8, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I think I’m gonna put the kibosh on using Haightel for the Shrader house, because when I coined that it was specifically for the Jo-Tel doppelganger that we were considering moving into a few years ago. For that house it was a natural (on Haight; we were going to live there, etc.); for the Shrader house, not even close.
Hip E. // Jul 8, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Not speaking for the residents of the Haightel, who don’t like the name as far as I know, but since other random people we don’t know and will never know live in that one place we thought about moving to that one time, I don’t think we should reserve that name for that house. Plus considering that I’m the only unmarried Jo-telier, it’s doubtful that we are ever going to all live in a house together again, on or off of Haight St.
The Puma // Jul 9, 2008 at 11:01 am
All this talk about these different ‘-tels’ in San Francisco makes me think about the apartment at 2346 Fulton St. that Pete, Johnny D, and I occupied for a year. It never got a nickname, but we sure partied there. If you remember, it was the base for our first Bay to Breakers journey when Pete, HipE, Shark and I all walked at the very end of the race, without costumes and drinking beers out of Shark’s backpack and a couple of times even fell behind the guys at the back of the race picking up trash. And who can forget playing quarters on a sundial in the park on the day we bought a keg for the party we were planning and only Shark and Laurence Paik showed up? We also had a killer view of the bridge from our kitchen window and were a quick walk to both Haight and Clement streets. What a great year.
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