Composed Elements

America’s Best Value Inn.

Yep, that’s where my friends and I stayed at while we were in San Diego. We wanted some place cheap and near the downtown Gas Lamp district. The name of the motel itself already gave us an idea of what it was offering: “best value” means cheap and cheap is what we paid for.

The neighborhood it was in didn’t look as bad as I thought it would be (but my expectations were already pretty low). It was in the middle of nowhere and across the street, there was a party with loud house music playing. When we checked in, my friend half jokingly asked if we could get a safe room. The woman said “sure,” but, of course our room was on the side that was not facing the street, but rather the ghetto. When we saw our room, my friend instantly said, “WTF? I asked for a safe room!”

We decided not to leave our bags in our room after noticing that somebody had already crow-barred the screen window. Upon seeing that, we tried locking our window, but then realized the lock was broken because that too had been crow-barred. We decided we could take shifts watching the window or sleep with one eye open.

When our taxi driver dropped us off, I asked him how bad our neighborhood was. This was our conversation:

TAXI DRIVER: I would never drive out here if I had a choice.
ME: Are you serious? Is it really that bad?
TAXI DRIVER: You see that bridge next to your place? That’s where all the homeless people sleep. Lots of crime, lots of drugs in this area. One of the worst areas.
ME: Oh.
TAXI DRIVER: It’s really not safe here. You should come sleep over at my place tonight.
ME: No, thank you. =/