Students here are often given a hard time about not spending enough time off campus. We do not make our presence known outside UR. There is a simple reason for this ? we cause trouble.
My friends and I demonstrated that concept last weekend. We are no longer welcome in the international community. More specifically, we aren’t welcome at the Blackstone Inn in Niagara Falls. It is not so much that we aren’t welcome as much as it is we are forbidden to return.
Apparently, we were causing quite a ruckus. We are old enough to know better. How could we have been so rude as to make noise at 9:30 on a Saturday evening? The motel at which we were staying was one of those classy establishments ? 39 Canadian dollars a night and right off of Clifton Hill. It should have been obvious to us that the other residents of the hotel were there for some peace and quiet. The kind of peace and quiet you can only achieve at a motel with no phone or clock.
For crying out loud, I want to know which three rooms had trouble with us being noisy? Who else ? besides the underage Catholic schoolgirls next door ? was staying at that spider infested haven, that den of sin, that cubbyhole of depravity?
It was Niagara Falls, for pete’s sake. Anyone who has been there knows that the Canadian side of the falls is akin to a seedy Las Vegas. And if you want some peace and quiet, a $39 hotel is not the place.
They threatened us with police intervention. Not wanting to get into any trouble with the law, especially Canadian Mounties, we headed out. It only seemed reasonable that as long as we were not on motel grounds, we could not get into trouble.
Just like Communism, the plan was excellent in theory, bad in practice. Perhaps copious amounts of alcohol should not have been in the equation.
The equation: loud (apparently) twenty-somethings + alcohol = vindictive assholes.
Throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning, we joked about our motel incident. We planned elaborate revenge schemes, but most of them were forgotten in our drunken stupors. As luck would have it, when we finally rolled back into the rooms at dawn, we had forgotten about our noise violation and fell into a peaceful slumber.
As checkout time neared, we were reminded of the previous night’s threats by a knock on the door. A threatening 80-year-old woman was on the other side. She gave us one look, scratched her flabby chin, and shrieked “How many you got here? Seven? Seven too many! We had complaints about you all night. Don’t come back here … ever.”
We were banned from the skeeziest motel in Niagara! Our walk of shame to the car through the urine smelling walkways was filled with devious thoughts, but it was early. We couldn’t think properly. The most devious thing we could think of was to dump a cup of Coke on their parking lot. We left the motel in a hurry as the fat desk clerk ran after us shaking his fist.
Haber can be reached at bhaber@campustimes.org.
