#metoo
Public Sex and the Standard Hotel
Has the handsome Standard hotel — neighbor to the newly opened High Line, and declared this week to be the Municipal Art Society’s Best New Building of 2009 — revived the meatpacking district’s seedy, sexual side? In the neighborhood that was once home to sex dungeons and street walkers, there stand 337 rooms framed by huge, non-reflective glass windows. Some months ago, hotelier André Balazs, who has cited the “exhibitionist” nature of his building, ran ads inviting guests to move into the hotel while it was still under construction. “We’ll put up with your banging if you put up with ours,” read the ad, which pictured a nicely oiled woman naked but for a tool belt, her left hand gripping the head of a long hammer. But now, it seems, passersby are actually witnessing some of this “banging.”