The third in the series here about the seven summer
Olympics Keith has broadcast from from 1972-2004. In August 2008
Keith will be reporting for TVNZ at his eighth
games.
1984 in Los Angles was Keith Quinn's third Olympic Games
and in part one of a three part series Keith arrive in glamorous
LA, but the horror hotel he stays in is anything but...
The Los Angeles Olympic Games were my third games, but my
first since 1976. Our company TVNZ, as a state-owned corporation,
had followed the Muldoon Government of the time's decision to not
attend the 1980 Games in Moscow. It was all about limply following
US President Jimmy Carter's call for an Olympic Boycott because of
the war in Afghanistan.
I had actually been all set to go to Moscow, to the point where I
had the air tickets sent to me and a photo ID card. It is not a bad
souvenir actually. The Official ID card from the games that didn't
happen for us.
Actually the only New Zealand TV and/or radio reporter who went to
cover the Moscow Olympics was Grant Nisbett who phoned back reports
about the Moscow games from various news sources from London.
Horror Hotel
But at Los Angeles in 1984 TVNZ was back bigger than ever with its
Olympic coverage. A staff of 38 flew to the states. We settled in
the famous city of Hollywood. We lived in the Park Sunset Hotel on
Sunset Boulevard. It was just along the street from the famed
Chateau Marmont Hotel from which actor John Belushi had passed away
from a drug overdose two years earlier. I had been a great fan of
his.
I've gotta tell you though that when I hark back in my memories of
the Los Angeles Olympic Games my mind firstly turns back to the
infamous Park Sunset Hotel. It was a horror show to be there for
about four weeks.
Let me tell you about it.
For a start I had headaches right through my stay there. I had
complained to the staff of a strange smell in my room but never
linked it to the headaches. Then on the second to last day of my
stay there the man on the desk told me that the room had had a gas
leak in it, which had not previously been detected. To me that was
the last straw of my stay in a hotel which was, in my opinion,
basically a dump.
Guests entered the lobby at street level and then the rooms, over a
100 of them, dropped away down a slope. I was placed in one on the
second floor below the street level. My room was alongside a
roadway which ran down the side of the building to car parks at the
back. I noted a comforting thing when I checked into the room for
the first time. It had a grill across my window, presumably to
prevent intruders coming in from the roadway. But in case of fire
there was also a foot pedal which a sign told me would release the
grill in case of fire and I could climb out to safety.
So far so good I thought on arrival, even though I noted there was
no chain on the door to back up what looked like a flimsy lock on
the access into the hallway. When two of my colleagues, Brendan
Telfer and Richard Long experienced a break-in during their first
night of residence, we all started to have concerns about security.
Slowly the horror experiences of staying in that so-called "Olympic
Hotel" built up.
Porn, Prostitutes and Pistols
There were regular break-ins, or doorknobs turned and pushed to
jolt us out of sleep in the night. Prostitutes, ('Hookers' the
locals called them) openly worked the hallways.
One of them was in her 50s and was a deaf-mute, which did make for
some black humour from the lads in our team ( "No tell-tale stories
home from her, boys!").
One day we were told that a porno film was being shot in one of the
rooms, on another day a patron set fire behind his closed door,
every night a rock band returned from its gig and played loud music
and shouted till the sun came up.
And so it went on. We were trapped there because our company had
pre-paid all of the rooms. We could not move. I took to pushing a
heavy tallboy wardrobe against my door every night. When I told
people this I found out others in our crew were doing the same. Our
gymnastics commentator, Marion Duncan, even left money in a purse
on top of the set of shelves she pushed against her door.
"Better they reach in and take the money than take me, "she
explained, wisely.
It all came to a head one morning when I decided to try and clear
my headache by going up to the lobby to secure a paper and have
breakfast. But I quickly shut my door and stayed in my room as, in
the hallway I kid you not, I came upon a man crouching low, holding
a pistol. I rang the desk in a fluster and was told, "No problem
sir, don't worry, he is a cop. There is an intruder in the
building!"
Later we saw a man, handcuffed, being bundled into a police car and
driven away.
Ah what memories I have of that hotel in LA in 1984! For me the
final straw came on the day I checked out of that miserable place.
I thought, "you bastards I'll show you." So I stomped my foot on
the fire security pedal on the floor thinking it would be my tiny
protest that the hopeless staff would have to come and put the fire
grill up again.
But to my horror the grill did not budge. It was broken. I left the
hotel, the worst I have ever experienced in 40 years of
international travel, with the knowledge that if there had have
been a major fire I would have fried in the dump as well.
I am pleased to tell you that in 2000 someone told me the pigsty of
a place was renovated top to bottom and is now trading again. It
now looks a nice place to stay. (And what, I wonder, happened to
the deaf-mute hooker?)
Part Two on Thursday where Keith Quinn rememebers
the certian from the LA pools and a certain Kiwi is pipped on the
post.
