Douglas Young, Not Just Political

excerpt

Not Just Political Author: Douglas Young Publisher: Newman Springs Date: March 26, 2025 Length: 276 pp. ISBN: 979-8893086348 ASIN: B0F4T54ZXB

My Middle-Aged Adventure
at the San Diego Hard Rock Hotel

* * *

Since my girlfriend could not get a reservation for us at the San Diego Hilton, she assumed the next closest hotel to the conference she was attending would be equally swell, something called the Hard Rock Hotel. Alas, when we arrived there on the last Sunday in May, the hotel’s annual Memorial Day “Intervention” Pool Party was in full heat with a thousand young folks dressed in almost nothing, dancing to throbbing music, and drinking apparently everything. Indeed, we were met in the darkened lobby by a bevy of bikini-clad ladies and a loud rock soundtrack.

The “front desk” was a few computer stands manned by clerks in shorts with large rock-video images projected behind them. When asked what music we wanted in our room, I requested classical. No go. Jazz? Still no go. We could have any genre we wanted so long as it was rock, rap, or country.

On the twelfth floor we were greeted with the distant, strident sounds of more music and shouts from below. Indeed, from the window by the elevators, we could see the throng of revelers cavorting around the fourth-floor outdoor pool. Heading for our hall, we were hit with the pronounced scent of what Sir Paul McCartney cryptically calls “herbal jazz cigarettes,” another first in our hotel experience. Fortunately, our room was at the end of the most isolated hall on the top floor. In fact, we got the handicapped quarters. I realized just how kind that young clerk was to put the oldest couple in the remotest corner of the whole hotel. May God bless him.

Since we are forty-nine plus interest, it was as if an older Ward and June Cleaver from the 1950s’ TV show Leave It to Beaver got mistakenly booked into Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. The girlfriend, who is Chinese, wanted to know exactly what kind of place this was. I tried to explain this strand of American pop culture before assuring her the holiday weekend party would end the next day, possibly even costing us our title as the Hard Rock’s eldest couple. So we resolved to stay in the hotel, albeit only when sleeping.

Yet that Sunday, just riding the elevator was a challenge. Swarms of almost-naked twentysomethings crowded into it from almost every floor. With each new surge, I clung to the wall ever tighter, trying to avoid contact. The effort must have been comical since one gal looked at me and cackled while guys shook my hand as if I was some kind of cool grandpa. Thanks.

I did dare to venture out to the hotel pool Monday night once the big party ended. That, too, turned out to be a unique experience (surprise). First, just yards from the water was a display of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, including his Fender guitar, large hat, and peach-colored shirt.

To my shock, when I reached the pool at nine thirty, the gate was already locked. But “chill out, man,” for another patron simply climbed over it and let his date and me in anyway. How apropos since the hotel billed this as “the Woodstock Pool,” named for the 1969 hippie music festival in upstate New York where most attendees just jumped the fence instead of paying admission.

It turned out the pool closed at eight when its bar shut down, by far the biggest hotel bar I had ever seen. Yet well after ten, two couples remained in the large Jacuzzi sharing their own champagne bottle, leaving me the whole pool to swim laps.

The walls around the pool were painted with large lyrics by Jimi Hendrix (from his 1968 Axis: Bold as Love album) and Led Zeppelin (from their “Going to California” song). For a place with no children, I was surprised at the pool’s maximum depth of... four whole feet. That was likely liability insurance, considering all the heavy drinking. It was the first pool I had encountered with many large beds and pillows alongside it too (no further comment on that; this column is rated G). It was also the first poolside I had seen littered with cigarette butts and one roach (okay, PG-13).

Just hours earlier, scores of drunken partiers had been there bobbing to the booming bass notes of the annual Memorial Day “Intervention” Pool Party-don’t you know our veterans would be proud-so how strange it felt to quietly float alone in the Hard Rock’s rooftop pool, gazing at the hotel’s psychedelic purple and yellow lights illuminating a tranquil night sky. I called it just another surreal day in Southern Califor-Ni-A.

The hotel was blessedly serene the rest of the week, with the most unusual event being scantily-clad young ladies riding bikes in the lobby. And Xiaoyan and I had to give up our status as adopted grandparents since several couples now staying at the hotel were even older than we were. Also satisfying was all the memorabilia on the hotel’s walls from rock stars now in their seventies. These were real composers who crafted genuine tunes... and were also older than us! The place is a pop music museum of sorts, except you can stay over.

To be fair, everyone in the Hard Rock was über-friendly, helpful, and peaceful, and the hotel was clean, modern, and splendidly located. I would actually go back too, just not on a weekend.

Copyright © 2025 by Douglas Young