Shuffleboard blues
Jul. 30th, 2002 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupSo when we get back from vacation, I pick up my messages from the voice mail. "Hi... I was just asking about our conference call?" Thus instantly undoing any temporary relaxation I might have achieved over the weekend.
Turned out to be a false alarm. But still. It so easily could have happened, because my supervisor and the uberboss don't necessarily communicate. It is by no means impossible that one of these days I will neglect to write down a phone meeting date and time and so will get in serious trouble.
I have had five meetings within the past week and have another scheduled tomorrow. That is the downside to having the new job. I knew it would be.
*********************************
Anyway, so we had a great time at the Nevele. Again, I don't entirely know how to explain the place. I am not really much of a hipster, one of those people who listens to lounge music or buys 1950s kitchen appliances... I just get a kick out of the place. The Golden Gate Towers. The Colonnades. The Safari Lounge. The Vacationer. The Winter Lodge (now sadly converted to staff housing and in a bad state of disrepair). The smell of the place. Those tiled 1950s bathrooms.
The Mrs. described it as like being on a ship (somewhere between the Titanic and the Mary Celeste), and there's an aspect of that, since the buildings have their own character. Even if you can feel the age, there's some weird charm that has an impact. In general, I like buildings better than people, and the placeness of the Nevele gets to me.
It is pretty much the last survivor of the big Catskill resorts like the Concord and Grossinger's. My aunt and uncle were the first to go there, in 1950, on their honeymoon, and my parents and grandparents went there for many years before I was born. Even though they have tried to renovate a fair amount of it, like the lobby and the dining room, every time I'm there the place has decayed a little bit. It kind of broke my heart to see. The indoor pool (the "Waikiki Pool") had a waterfall built into the wall that went into the pool, but that's been shut off, and the lovely lights inside the pool don't work and have been replaced by ugly overhead flourescent lighting. There were lots of places of cracked tiles, garbage in fireplaces, decrepit floors. Of course we specifically sought out the creepiest parts, like the "Caucus Room" in the basement of the Golden Gate, that's now being used to store mattresses.
Although there were a fair number of people there, the place was built to be enormous, and there were lots of empty building lobbies and the like. The Mrs. and I amused ourselves by recounting references from The Shining... "I think a lot of bad things happened right here, in this here Nevele hotel."
It was nice to see my parents, who can vouch for the fact that complaining about the place going downhill is a venerable tradition. They paid the balance on our room (very nice, especially as the place is still expensive), but also got us a room next to theirs (thus, uh, frustrating one of the purposes of a vacation). We mostly saw them at meals. Food was pretty good, though Mrs. got vegetarian selections that she didn't care for.
I cannot say that we entirely became my parents for the weekend, but we did play shuffleboard all Saturday afternoon. Swam a lot. Went in a rowboat on the lake at the Fallsview. Ignored the new signs saying "STAY OUT OF THE FALLS" and went swimming in the basin at the foot of the Nevele Falls, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Water cold enough to shock the senses, and the only thing you can hear is the roar of it coming down. (It always makes me sad to think of swimming in the falls in Catoctin National Park, when we lived in Baltimore. Wonderful place, crawling with people. Then we came back and big signs and fences saying Keep Out were all over the place. I'm sure it was some stupid liability lawsuit.) Went to the nightclub act, which was awful, though it did enable me to finally understand a scene from Wet Hot American Summer.*
So, refreshing enough to make me momentarily forget that I have a truly terrifying amount of stuff to get done in the next four weeks. Also to give me a stiff shoulder from all that shuffleboard. Who knows when we will ever be able to come back. Once upon a time the place teemed with people paying the equivalent of a thousand dollars per person per week to come there and do nothing. But as we kept saying all weekend, times are not what they used to be.
* In the movie, the talent show host is a comedian from the Catskills who tells these really awful jokes that everyone laughs at. The joke is that that's exactly what a Catskills show is like. Never mind.
Turned out to be a false alarm. But still. It so easily could have happened, because my supervisor and the uberboss don't necessarily communicate. It is by no means impossible that one of these days I will neglect to write down a phone meeting date and time and so will get in serious trouble.
I have had five meetings within the past week and have another scheduled tomorrow. That is the downside to having the new job. I knew it would be.
*********************************
Anyway, so we had a great time at the Nevele. Again, I don't entirely know how to explain the place. I am not really much of a hipster, one of those people who listens to lounge music or buys 1950s kitchen appliances... I just get a kick out of the place. The Golden Gate Towers. The Colonnades. The Safari Lounge. The Vacationer. The Winter Lodge (now sadly converted to staff housing and in a bad state of disrepair). The smell of the place. Those tiled 1950s bathrooms.
The Mrs. described it as like being on a ship (somewhere between the Titanic and the Mary Celeste), and there's an aspect of that, since the buildings have their own character. Even if you can feel the age, there's some weird charm that has an impact. In general, I like buildings better than people, and the placeness of the Nevele gets to me.
It is pretty much the last survivor of the big Catskill resorts like the Concord and Grossinger's. My aunt and uncle were the first to go there, in 1950, on their honeymoon, and my parents and grandparents went there for many years before I was born. Even though they have tried to renovate a fair amount of it, like the lobby and the dining room, every time I'm there the place has decayed a little bit. It kind of broke my heart to see. The indoor pool (the "Waikiki Pool") had a waterfall built into the wall that went into the pool, but that's been shut off, and the lovely lights inside the pool don't work and have been replaced by ugly overhead flourescent lighting. There were lots of places of cracked tiles, garbage in fireplaces, decrepit floors. Of course we specifically sought out the creepiest parts, like the "Caucus Room" in the basement of the Golden Gate, that's now being used to store mattresses.
Although there were a fair number of people there, the place was built to be enormous, and there were lots of empty building lobbies and the like. The Mrs. and I amused ourselves by recounting references from The Shining... "I think a lot of bad things happened right here, in this here Nevele hotel."
It was nice to see my parents, who can vouch for the fact that complaining about the place going downhill is a venerable tradition. They paid the balance on our room (very nice, especially as the place is still expensive), but also got us a room next to theirs (thus, uh, frustrating one of the purposes of a vacation). We mostly saw them at meals. Food was pretty good, though Mrs. got vegetarian selections that she didn't care for.
I cannot say that we entirely became my parents for the weekend, but we did play shuffleboard all Saturday afternoon. Swam a lot. Went in a rowboat on the lake at the Fallsview. Ignored the new signs saying "STAY OUT OF THE FALLS" and went swimming in the basin at the foot of the Nevele Falls, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Water cold enough to shock the senses, and the only thing you can hear is the roar of it coming down. (It always makes me sad to think of swimming in the falls in Catoctin National Park, when we lived in Baltimore. Wonderful place, crawling with people. Then we came back and big signs and fences saying Keep Out were all over the place. I'm sure it was some stupid liability lawsuit.) Went to the nightclub act, which was awful, though it did enable me to finally understand a scene from Wet Hot American Summer.*
So, refreshing enough to make me momentarily forget that I have a truly terrifying amount of stuff to get done in the next four weeks. Also to give me a stiff shoulder from all that shuffleboard. Who knows when we will ever be able to come back. Once upon a time the place teemed with people paying the equivalent of a thousand dollars per person per week to come there and do nothing. But as we kept saying all weekend, times are not what they used to be.
* In the movie, the talent show host is a comedian from the Catskills who tells these really awful jokes that everyone laughs at. The joke is that that's exactly what a Catskills show is like. Never mind.
