Someone has to be the worst, but America’s worst hotels is a dubious top 10 list to make. Yet every cloud has a silver lining, the saying goes – growing up Florida there weren’t a lot of silver linings in hurricanes but let’s suppose they are correct – if they are correct, the silver lining in being one of America’s top 10 dirtiest hotels list is that you can brag I actually stayed in one of them.
The Jack London Inn is in Oakland and, though it’s a short drive over the bridge from San Francisco, hotels are a lot cheaper so if I am in town for a talk or conference or whatever I stay either out near the airport or in Oakland. The Jack London Inn is named for the famed author and social activist, whose Yukon stories earned him fame and “The Call of the Wild” is still known to everyone a hundred years later, even if they don’t know who wrote it or what it’s about. That name alone is enough to get me to stay in your hotel.
Others are not so sentimental and so it made Forbes’ top 10 worst hotels list, alongside luminaries such as the Econo Lodge at Newark International Airport and the Rodeway Inn in Williamsville, NY.
Read this great review; the parking lot “resembled a post-apocalyptic junk yard,” and hallways “reeked of cigarette smoke, body odor and failure.” The scathing reviews are prose worthy of London himself.
But, much like being the little brother to Frisco in the Bay, the Jack London Inn can’t even be number one on this list – that honor goes to the Grand Resort Hotel & Convention Center, Pigeon Forge, TN.
Read more about Jack London the author, courtesy of Dr. Clarice Stasz , and maybe you will forget about the hotel.