I finally got around to writing this. I had to find a place to stay last minute that was within walking distance of where I had to be. The website looked great. I was really excited. Boy was I in for a horrible surprise. The building is well the size of an old apartment building . It's on the corner of the street. The outside patio is the place where the Blowout (the tv show)staff go for drinks. The lobby is the size of your standard living room. The front desk thats a major shock. The counter is made of textured white vinyl. It was filthy brown. The counter is in the shape of a small half circle. A very tiny space . One person barely fits behind it. The keys they give you are actual keys with the room number made by a label maker. I was on the first floor. I walked up two steps down a dark hallway. Not even ten steps from the lobby I found my room. I opened the door....... and my nightmare began. The website is a fraud. The door had no dead bolt. I had to push a button in to lock the door. There was no luggage stand so I had to be creative and use this modern looking plastic thing that I think was supposed to be a stool to sit on at the desk. Of course there was no room for doing anything at the small tiny desk. All of the hitech stuff and magazines takes up all the available space on this joke of a desk. There was a ipod encased in triple strength plastic with speakers. There is a dvd player with a flat screen tv on top of it. The closet is a joke. I couldn't put more than three items in it. The bed is low to the ground. The lights on the night stand did not work. There was this tacky light fixture behind the headboard in the shape of a tube. The bathroom well I have to say it. It looked like what I think an east german prison bathroom would look. The floor is concrete painted with dark grey paint. The toilet was fine. The counter was the same as the floor. The sink was one of those that sits on top of the counter. The fixture was very modern. It did have the usual stuff. The shower was all concrete with the same grey paint, the shower curtain was clear plastic. So I decide to use the bathroom and all of a sudden there is a nock at the door. Its housekeeping. I get myself together and run to the door. I open it and see she has a key in her hand. There was absolutely nothing stopping her from opening my door if I had taken a shower. I lie down on the bed and go through all the channels on the tv. No movie channels. Not even a dvd for the dvd player.
I start to notice that I can hear everything and everybody. People walking and talking inside the hotel and people walking and talking outside. I can hear everything. As the time passes it gets louder and louder. I finally took sleeping pills to goto sleep. I wake up the next day go to take a shower another surprise no hot water. I call the front desk and they say they will call me back, they never do. thirthy mins later I call them again, they tell me they had a full house last night and are out of hot water. Someone is going to the roof to put hot water in the hot water heater. Explain that one to me. So I wait and wait for hot water turning the shower on every five mins. No hot water. The sink doesn't even have hot water. So I end up after waiting an hour and fifteen mins not taking a shower. I can't believe they charge $210 a night for a room. I find out leaving the place after complaining that it used to be a long term residential facility for elderly people. A motel 6 is better than this.

On the plus side: The rooms are outfitted with iPods loaded with great music. Our room was not noisy even though there was a DJ playing in the lounge. The cooler was stocked with the most awesome assortment of snacks imaginable. The beds were comfortable with nice linens. The hotel is just steps away from Beverly Hills shopping. The staff was very helpful.

On the negative side: The rooms are teeny, tiny and pared down modern (we liked the design but felt a little cramped). There was no place to hang or place a travel kit or anything else. We were told that there would be room for an air mattress but that would have been a stretch. The shower is tiny with a plastic shower curtain.

The Beverly Crescent seems to be less a hotel than a restaurant with dormitory-style rooms upstairs. There was no luggage cart, no elevator. You walk through all of the diners in the restaurant to "check in" at what appears to be the restaurant's hostess stand. Then the valet parking attendant hauls the bags upstairs on a stairway bounded on either side with votive candles. When I trudged up those stairs with bags, in full view of all of the diners, I was afraid I would set either myself or the diners on fire by hitting those candles with my bags. The room was TINY. I do not know how this hotel could possibly comply with the Americans With Disabilties Act. In addition to having no elevator (or so I was told, and that was my experience), it did not appear to me to be even remotely possible to manipulate a wheel chair inside the rooms. The room was so small that the bathroom door could not open all the way without hitting the bed. The room was cold, and I could not manage to manipulate the temperature. The in-room refridgerator did not appear to be turned on. My bottle of water only grew cold after sitting in the frigid room for an hour! The phone chirped all night long. The room was noisy because the insulation was completely inadequate; I could hear the (very lengthy) phone conversations of the woman next door as if she were sitting in my lap, though she was speaking at normal volume. There was no deadbolt on the door, only a single key lock in the door handle. The only plus to this hotel was that the people at the desk were nice, and did not attempt to charge me for the remaining nights on my reservation when I checked out after one night and fled to the Sofitel.

This hotel was not a good experience. The staff double billed us and were incredibly difficult about retracting the second bill - to the point of being deceptive, refusing to tell us where or when we might be able to speak to a manager, and insisting on an enormous amount of paperwork faxed from our bank, before they finally helped us (and gave us a half-hearted apology). Also, the room was extreemly small - I might expect this in NY, but in LA! From everything I read, I was expecting much better, and was very dissapointed.