Room 315 Hotel Bristol

San Francisco's nastiest serial killer, Richard Ramirez, nicknamed "The Night Stalker" stayed in Room 315 of the Bristol Hotel (pictured) in the Tenderloin district. The story has resurfaced in Tenderloin, which recalls how he was captured when one of the staff recognised him from a police sketch. Ramirez murdered people in their beds and left satanic symbols daubed on their walls. A pentagram was painted on the bathroom door of Room 315 and police took it away. In the same hotel at this time was Valerie Solanas, would-be assassin of Andy Warhol, whose story is told in "LL Cool J and the Woman who Shot Andy Warhol", chapter 7 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol - now available as an eBook.
Solanas died in the hotel, aged 52, in 1988. Ramirez is on Death Row in San Quentin prison, awaiting execution.

Hotel Bristol Skopje in 3D

.

A new 3D view of the old Hotel Bristol is Skopje has just been published by guitardemon, based in Thessaloniki, and if you click on the link you can see the building rotate through 360 degrees. Built in the 1924, the Hotel Bristol was one of the few buildings to survive the 1963 earthquake which has left the nearby railway station clock stopped at 5.17. Rebecca West is said to have stayed here, and today it has a gambling casino. A story of the Hotel Bristol and the earthquake is told in High Times at the Hotel Bristol, and can be heard in a podcast.

Isiaih Berlin at the Hotel Bristol, Beaulieu-sur-Mer

In January 1938 Isiaih Berlin, then 19 and at Oxford, was staying at The Hotel Bristol in Beaulieu in the South of France. This is part of a letter he wrote to Stephen Spender:

"The Riviera is dreary and hateful beyond belief. I had no choice but to go to this place, since I wished to finish Marx & at the same time not be totally isolated since in absolute solitude I tend to go mad. As a result I am living in luxury against which I have violent petit bourgeois feelings: look at Sir J Simon [Chancellor of the Exchequor, 1st Viscount Stackpool] and your uncle sitting under the trees of the Jardin Exotique: but am in fact writing very fast and ferociously. The weather is very good, which for one I dislike, since it gives open pleasure to so many detestable people: really you ought to come here and get a taste of the kind of society which produced the anarchists & dynamiters of 1880-90."

The hotel no longer exists. I think it probably didn't survive the Second World War.

Trotsky and the Copenhagen Bristol

The case of Leon Trotsky and the Hotel Bristol in Copenhagen has come under scrutinuty recently. The details of the Dewey trial in Mexico, which set out to vindicate Trotsky of the accusations brought against him by Stalin during the Show Trials of 1936, are laid out in the 'Leon Trotsky and the Hotel Bristol That Never Was' (chapter 9 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol). It centres on the allegation that Trostsky had met with anti-Stalinists in the cafe of the Bristol hotel in Copenhagen in 1927: his defence was that the hotel, adjoining the Grand Hotel, had burned down in 1917 and no longer existed, so he couldn't have met anyone there. The hotel and cafe are pictured here.

In 1920 the Hotel Bristol was opened in Oslo by Waldemar Jensen, who, according to the hotel's history, chose the name after buying a job lot of cutlery and silverware from the bankrupt Bristol in Copenhagen. The Oslo Bristol is a handsome building, with a long tradition for live music, and it remains one of the city's best.

Panama brunch

Celebrity chef Cuquita Alvas de Calvo is serving up four-course brunches in the Panama Bristol: see the report in The Panama News. It's $35 a head and, with passionfruit mimosas, is money well spent, says the reviewer.

Hotel Bristol Vienna: a handsome new book

A new book has just been written and produced by Andreas Augustin and his esteemed organisation, Famous Hotels of the World. Between 1900 and 1910 Hotel Bristol in Vienna was "the centre of the intellectual world," according to historian Carl Schorske. Intellectuals, artists, musicians and prominent politicians all found their way here. This handsome publication is fully illustrated with period photographs, and packed with anecdotes and interest: for further details, visit the website.

Of course this luxury hotel's appeal didn't stop in 1910, and you can read all about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson's connection with the Vienna Bristol in High Noon for the King's Moll, taken from High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

Streisand's Bristol moment

.

A Barbra Streisand fan named Hart, from Fort Lauderdale, has posted pictures on his blog of the Hotel Bristol in San Francisco from the 1972 film What's Up, Doc?, starring Streisand and Ryan O'Neal. Alongside it is a picture he has taken of the same hotel today – the Hilton, where the action actually took place. The real Hotel Bristol in San Francisco is in the Tenderloin district and it's not as elegant. It's where SCUM manifesto's Valerie Solanas died. You can read about it in "LL Cool J and the Woman Who Shot Andy Warhol", chapter 7 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol.

The Hilton-Bristol connection doesn't end there. You can find out about the heiresses who link the name in "Paris Hilton and Lady Victoria Hervey", chapter 8 in High Times at the Hotel Bristol, which can also be read online.