There’s been a fair amount of culture occurring within the walls of the Meatpacking District’s 337-room Standard Hotel since it opened in early 2009, what with the Boom Boom Room and this summer’s newly opened roofdeck hotspot Le Bain. Now, to keep tabs on everything happening outside the hotel, the team behind that monolithic High Line structure has launched Standard Culture, a blog that alerts guests and non-guests alike to the can’t-miss events going on in New York, Hollywood, and Miami.
Standard Culture currently has, among other things, various features on nightlife happenings and a slide from Kanye West’s “Power” music video designed by Standard pal Marco Brambilla, who was also responsible for the trippy visuals in the elevators that shoot you upstairs. Also, the whole thing is a Tumblr. Reblog away, kids.
The most compelling feature, however, may be the video booth that’s exclusively for guests. Here, visitors to the hotel enter a password and answer a series of questions while being filmed by their computer, and it’s posted on the site, inviting guests to check out the other visiters.
The Observer attained one of the coveted passwords and decided to give the video booth a try. We were a tad apprehensive, but we were assured that the interview would consist of “lighthearted Proustian style questions,” which didn’t seem so bad. So we agreed to the terms and the cameras started rolling. Many of the questions, which flashed next to the screen displaying a black-and-white-tinted stream of our uneasy visage, ended up being vaguely sexual. “What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done in the city?” “Which person would you most like to see naked?” “What’s the best album to have sex to?” Or this slightly unclear request: “Show me your tan lines!”
Yes, it’s perhaps a bit on the voyeuristic side to have a video-logged vessel to a network of guests at the Standard, but bear in mind that this is the hotel where guests have very public sex in front of the windows… and then the hotel staff also asks them for the pictures.
