A warning concerning "Green Tortoise": this organization is ageist, reverse-racist and mysandrist

Two years ago, while writing a book, I wanted to save money in San
Francisco and went to the Green Tortoise hostel. I was told by the
night clerk that a room would be made available.

However, I was told by the day clerk, who observed that I was a neatly
dressed middle aged Caucasian male (with a dress shirt, conventional
hair, and clean blue jeans), that "transients" were "not allowed" at
Green Tortoise. She handed me a list of hotels (which upon
investigation turned out without exception Tenderloin fleabags filled
with alkies and bums) and said I should stay at one of these joints.

A room was available and I was prepared to prepay in cash. I politely
said that I was not a "transient" but instead returning from a trip to
Fiji. But not wishing to make a scene, I left and found a more
expensive hotel room.

I conclude that the day clerk's decision was based on my white skin,
short hair and neat attire. In her limited mind, I suppose I either
belonged behind the wheel of a late model car, or had some sort of
defects of character which caused me to instead "walk the earth".

I conclude, based on this experience, that the Green Tortoise, formerly
an organization tolerant and open to differing lifestyles, has become
some sort of way for an international trust fund hippiedom, aged
20..30, to engage in a year or so of the *wandervogel* before buckling
down to working for Daddy at Brown Brothers Harriman or UBSWarburg.

Of course, in my day, genuine Seekers, genuine wandering birds, such as
we were and spiritually remain in some cases, were genuinely tolerant
of the Other. We in fact invented the very idea of "ageism" with the
result that corporations today make some provision for older men and
women whereas prior to the 1960s they were sent to the scrap heap, or
to walk the earth.

I can see that despite external life style tics, a certain segment of
the international well-to-do is reviving attitudes which kept the Lower
Orders in their place and tied to their parish-of-origin. Modern day
wandering birds, take note.

wrote:

I conclude that the day clerk's decision was based on my white skin,
short hair and neat attire.

Are you trolling?? Most of their guests are white with short hair. the
place may be owned by a middle-aged hippie, but he'd go broke if they
waited for hippie customers.
Did you have any luggage? Arriving at a city hostel without luggage
is the best way to be told its full.

Your "conclusions" are just wild speculation.

wrote:
Two years ago, while writing a book, I wanted to save money in San
Francisco and went to the Green Tortoise hostel. I was told by the
night clerk that a room would be made available.

However, I was told by the day clerk, who observed that I was a neatly
dressed middle aged Caucasian male (with a dress shirt, conventional
hair, and clean blue jeans), that "transients" were "not allowed" at
Green Tortoise. She handed me a list of hotels (which upon
investigation turned out without exception Tenderloin fleabags filled
with alkies and bums) and said I should stay at one of these joints.

A room was available and I was prepared to prepay in cash. I politely
said that I was not a "transient" but instead returning from a trip to
Fiji. But not wishing to make a scene, I left and found a more
expensive hotel room.

I conclude that the day clerk's decision was based on my white skin,
short hair and neat attire.

Well, fair enough. If I were trying to run an interesting hostel, and I had
customers to spare, the first people I'd turn away would be those with
conservative haircuts and anyone who seemed likely to describe themselves as
sporting "neat attire". White skin wouldn't be a problem though.

But in reality, many hostels do not accept potential customers who appear to
be local residents, whether it's because they have no backpack, or they have
a domestic passport, or their ID otherwise places them pretty close to home.
Nothing sexist about that.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 35 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Austria, Thailand

Mike wrote:
wrote:

I conclude that the day clerk's decision was based on my white
skin,
short hair and neat attire.

Are you trolling?? Most of their guests are white with short hair.
the
place may be owned by a middle-aged hippie, but he'd go broke if they
waited for hippie customers.
Did you have any luggage? Arriving at a city hostel without
luggage
is the best way to be told its full.

Your "conclusions" are just wild speculation.

No, I am not "trolling", and I am disgusted by wild accusations of same
in part because the original usage of "troll" was by wealthy Santa Cruz
homeowners to refer to homeless people. It has, in my opinion, no place
here and it isn't in the spirit of usenet.

Am I invisible? I said I was middle-aged and you overlooked the fact
that most of the guests are in their twenties. Ageism is constituted in
invisibility.

And, of course I had luggage. I'd just returned as I said from Fiji.
Please read more carefully in the future.

OK, most of the guests are white punks with short hair. Proves my
point. Place discriminates against older people. Hmm. I wonder how they
treat people of color.

If they in fact sort applicants for membership in some sort of private
club, then several causes of action exist.

Under the law, hotels cannot do this. They have a bonafide right to
protect themselves against disruptive and nonpaying people but beyond
this, they are opening themselves to legal action, especially in
California. Furthermore, the practice is as I have said given Green
Tortoise's ideology.

wrote:
Mike wrote:
Are you trolling??

No, I am not "trolling", and I am disgusted by wild accusations of same
in part because the original usage of "troll" was by wealthy Santa Cruz
homeowners to refer to homeless people.

Don't be ridiculous. It's a centuries old word from Scandinavian mythology.

And, of course I had luggage. I'd just returned as I said from Fiji.
Please read more carefully in the future.

You didn't say you had a backpack.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 35 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Austria, Thailand

wrote:
Under the law, hotels cannot do this. They have a bonafide right to
protect themselves against disruptive and nonpaying people but beyond
this, they are opening themselves to legal action, especially in
California.

Untrue. They cannot discriminate on the basis of a small number of
well-defined criteria (sex, race, Vietnam-era veteran status, etc.) but
anyone, yes, even in California, can most certainly refuse to do business
with you based on your haircut, your luggage, or your attitude.

Put on your best Izod sweater-vest and hush puppies, head down to an
exclusive SOMA dance club, and see what sort of luck you have getting past
the bouncer. When he stops laughing, tell him that he is opening himself to
"legal action" and see if that opens any doors for you.

For you to make a case that they are discriminating on the basis of age,
you'll have to show a pattern of denying entry to people your age (or prove
that they told you your age was the reason you were turned away). That's
going to be an uphill battle, since I have frequently seen people of all
ages there.

Furthermore, the practice is as I have said given Green Tortoise's
ideology.

The unfounded conjecture continues...

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 35 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Austria, Thailand

Miguel Cruz wrote:
wrote:
Under the law, hotels cannot do this. They have a bonafide right to
protect themselves against disruptive and nonpaying people but
beyond
this, they are opening themselves to legal action, especially in
California.

Untrue. They cannot discriminate on the basis of a small number of
well-defined criteria (sex, race, Vietnam-era veteran status, etc.)
but
anyone, yes, even in California, can most certainly refuse to do
business
with you based on your haircut, your luggage, or your attitude.

I am aware of this. In fact, more than this, on the job and as regards
public accomodations, and in practice, employment at will and "we
reserve the right" from common law increasingly trump protected
categories.

In the American south, and rural west, black people find themselves
turned away or served reluctantly at motels and at Denny's. It is easy
enough to find some reason to do so even when the motivation is
old-fashioned Amerikkkan racism.

I was a victim of this subtler form of discrimination because I was
obviously not a vacationer, but a well-dressed, educated white WORKING
person in transit ... a transient which Green Tortoise did not want to
serve, or, more precisely, the day clerk did not want to serve.

What I'm saying is that underlying racial discrimination is class
discrimination as exercised against people who, like many people of
color, travel between jobs.

Put on your best Izod sweater-vest and hush puppies, head down to an
exclusive SOMA dance club, and see what sort of luck you have getting
past
the bouncer. When he stops laughing, tell him that he is opening
himself to
"legal action" and see if that opens any doors for you.

Depends. If it looks like I can afford a top lawyer, bouncer will let
me in.

For you to make a case that they are discriminating on the basis of
age,
you'll have to show a pattern of denying entry to people your age (or
prove
that they told you your age was the reason you were turned away).
That's
going to be an uphill battle, since I have frequently seen people of
all
ages there.

Yes, it's always an "uphill battle", isn't it? I rest my case. Green
Tortoise is no more "authentic" than some plastic dance club.

Furthermore, the practice is as I have said given Green Tortoise's
ideology.

The unfounded conjecture continues...

Since when is a feeling an "unfounded conjecture?" As it was I turned
to my traveling companion and said "when you get to be my age, you
learn an associative law. If they don't want to associate with you, you
probably don't want to associate with them."

In fact, Green Tortoise has I think the RIGHT to define itself as a
community of backpackers. But it should so define itself, and working
people who travel should indeed find other places to stay.

But the whole problem really summed up "the sixties" for me. It was
only in major cities like Chicago a movement for genuine change, and
genuine equality. At places like the Green Tortoise, it was just
hippie-dippy community formation as much about exclusion as about
inclusion.

I had the money to deal with the situation. But I think I can reason
(and feel) from my treatment to the probable treatment of a person of
color who wanted to ride the bus or stay at the hostel.

UNLESS he's a member of an interracial, international group including
white travelers, my guess is that Green Tortoise might direct him to
the tenderloin, for it would be assumed that such a person is more a
"transient" and a working person rather than a backpacker.

During the period in question, I elected through lack of funds to
travel in the manner of the underclass. To get to the Microsoft
Author's conference in 2001 I took the bus from Chicago to Seattle. I
took a budget carrier, Spirit Airlines to LA to meet a client.

On the bus, I found my fellow passengers, although well-behaved, nearly
terrorized by the Greyhound drivers who treated them as a bunch of
losers, warning them repeatedly not to drink or drug...when all of them
were clearly just exhausted working people and single mothers who
didn't have the money to do either. Indeed, Greyhound is so nasty to
its underclass clientele, and so unable through incompetence to make
money, that a Chinese entrepreneur is doing a roaring business
substituting his operation, based on the simple respect for the weary
traveler I see here in China (where I live), not Greyhound's contempt.

Spirit airlines called the LAPD on its black and brown passengers when
they complained about a six hour delay.

I am well aware that American discrimination law cannot without great
effort overcome "we reserve the right", but isn't that the problem?

I am also aware that Green Tortoise isn't in the business at all of
redressing the maltreatment of the underclass. But doesn't that render
its pretense to being any sort of holdover from the Sixties, rather
hollow?

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 35 countries on 5 continents:
http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Austria, Thailand

wrote:
I was a victim of this subtler form of discrimination because I was
obviously not a vacationer, but a well-dressed, educated white WORKING
person in transit ... a transient which Green Tortoise did not want to
serve, or, more precisely, the day clerk did not want to serve.

What I'm saying is that underlying racial discrimination is class
discrimination as exercised against people who, like many people of
color, travel between jobs.

I am having a fairly difficult time following your reasoning, but the best I
can figure, you are arguing that you were the victim of racism against
people of color, because, despite being white, you were discriminated against
while displaying a characteristic that you theorize is more common among
people of color.

If I, a man, am turned away from a restaurant while wearing a dress, does
that make them sexist?

Put on your best Izod sweater-vest and hush puppies, head down to an
exclusive SOMA dance club, and see what sort of luck you have getting
past the bouncer. When he stops laughing, tell him that he is opening
himself to "legal action" and see if that opens any doors for you.

Depends. If it looks like I can afford a top lawyer, bouncer will let
me in.

I disagree, except insofar as they may like to let rich people in. But I
guess the only way to confirm this is empirically.

For you to make a case that they are discriminating on the basis of age,
you'll have to show a pattern of denying entry to people your age (or
prove that they told you your age was the reason you were turned away).
That's going to be an uphill battle, since I have frequently seen people
of all ages there.

Yes, it's always an "uphill battle", isn't it? I rest my case. Green
Tortoise is no more "authentic" than some plastic dance club.

Again I find myself unable to follow your logic. However, perhaps we are all
better off leaving your case at rest.

Furthermore, the practice is as I have said given Green Tortoise's
ideology.

The unfounded conjecture continues...

Since when is a feeling an "unfounded conjecture?"

"The practice is as I have said" is not a description of a feeling, it is an
assertion of fact.

In fact, Green Tortoise has I think the RIGHT to define itself as a
community of backpackers. But it should so define itself, and working
people who travel should indeed find other places to stay.

I have always assumed that's what they were, so perhaps they're already
doing a decent job of defining themselves that way. But it doesn't matter.
Maybe they just didn't like you personally. Maybe you took the same cryptic,
meandering, illogical approach in your conversation with the desk clerk that
you're taking here, and she simply got sick of you.

But the whole problem really summed up "the sixties" for me. It was
only in major cities like Chicago a movement for genuine change, and
genuine equality. At places like the Green Tortoise, it was just
hippie-dippy community formation as much about exclusion as about
inclusion.

Sounds to me like your grudge is with a decade long-gone.

I had the money to deal with the situation. But I think I can reason
(and feel) from my treatment to the probable treatment of a person of
color who wanted to ride the bus or stay at the hostel.

UNLESS he's a member of an interracial, international group including
white travelers, my guess is that Green Tortoise might direct him to
the tenderloin, for it would be assumed that such a person is more a
"transient" and a working person rather than a backpacker.

At least you have had the good grace to cancel the race factor out in the
second paragraph of the two quoted above. So we're left with, "unless the
person was a traveler, the Green Tortoise might send them elsewhere." Which
I don't think anyone can object to. They cater to travelers.

During the period in question, I elected through lack of funds to
travel in the manner of the underclass. To get to the Microsoft
Author's conference in 2001 I took the bus from Chicago to Seattle. I
took a budget carrier, Spirit Airlines to LA to meet a client.

On the bus, I found my fellow passengers, although well-behaved, nearly
terrorized by the Greyhound drivers who treated them as a bunch of
losers, warning them repeatedly not to drink or drug...when all of them
were clearly just exhausted working people and single mothers who
didn't have the money to do either. Indeed, Greyhound is so nasty to
its underclass clientele, and so unable through incompetence to make
money, that a Chinese entrepreneur is doing a roaring business
substituting his operation

Really? I thought the only Chinese bus operations in the US were on the
coasts (mainly the east coast, but some in California). Can you give me more
info about the Chinese bus from Chicago to Seattle?

based on the simple respect for the weary traveler I see here in China
(where I live), not Greyhound's contempt.

China is the world capital of inexplicably turning people away from places.
As a non-Chinese speaker I've been turned away from hotels, restaurants,
shops, and even police stations. Almost every person I know who's traveled
in China has similar stories.

I am well aware that American discrimination law cannot without great
effort overcome "we reserve the right", but isn't that the problem?

I think it would be quite hard to do business in a society where everyone
was required to accept transactions with everyone else no matter what.
Imagine how easy that would be to abuse.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 35 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Austria, Thailand

Miguel Cruz wrote:
wrote:
I was a victim of this subtler form of discrimination because I was
obviously not a vacationer, but a well-dressed, educated white
WORKING
person in transit ... a transient which Green Tortoise did not want
to
serve, or, more precisely, the day clerk did not want to serve.

What I'm saying is that underlying racial discrimination is class
discrimination as exercised against people who, like many people of
color, travel between jobs.

I am having a fairly difficult time following your reasoning, but the
best I
can figure, you are arguing that you were the victim of racism
against
people of color, because, despite being white, you were discriminated
against
while displaying a characteristic that you theorize is more common
among
people of color.

No, my feelings I think were analogous to those of a person of color
who, despite all the legislation is as a practical matter (including
the mere expense of legal action) is subject to "we reserve the right".
I think in fact that as opposed to the 1960s, when I was already 20,
people in Amerikkka are in fact racist, including hipsters in cities
and backpackers because 20+ years of Republikkkan politics have
convinced them that it's OK.


If I, a man, am turned away from a restaurant while wearing a dress,
does
that make them sexist?

Depends on the effectiveness of the disguise.

Discrimination against white working-class men is (as I think the
rapper Eminem knows in some way) an isomorph to discrimination against
men of color.


Put on your best Izod sweater-vest and hush puppies, head down to
an
exclusive SOMA dance club, and see what sort of luck you have
getting
past the bouncer. When he stops laughing, tell him that he is
opening
himself to "legal action" and see if that opens any doors for you.

Depends. If it looks like I can afford a top lawyer, bouncer will
let
me in.

I disagree, except insofar as they may like to let rich people in.
But I
guess the only way to confirm this is empirically.

We're not doing physics and chemistry and it is a disservice both to
me, and to the methodology of the exact sciences, to pretend that my
experience (one of an exhausted person who was self-reflectively trying
to manage his own anger) was some sort of laboratory experiment.

For you to make a case that they are discriminating on the basis
of age,
you'll have to show a pattern of denying entry to people your age
(or
prove that they told you your age was the reason you were turned
away).
That's going to be an uphill battle, since I have frequently seen
people
of all ages there.

Yes, it's always an "uphill battle", isn't it? I rest my case.
Green
Tortoise is no more "authentic" than some plastic dance club.

Again I find myself unable to follow your logic. However, perhaps we
are all
better off leaving your case at rest.

No, you are manifesting the simple failure in empathy characteristic
both of usenet and today's Amerikkkan bien-pensants.

Furthermore, the practice is as I have said given Green
Tortoise's
ideology.

The unfounded conjecture continues...

Since when is a feeling an "unfounded conjecture?"

"The practice is as I have said" is not a description of a feeling,
it is an
assertion of fact.

Can the two be separated? Perhaps the day clerk had a feeling, that my
relatively conventional and "neat" appearance hid a sort of Ted Bundy
who at a minimum would bother the chicks. It did not: but what on earth
gives her the right in a public hotel to go with feelings, and me not
have here the corresponding right to order my own?

In fact, Green Tortoise has I think the RIGHT to define itself as a
community of backpackers. But it should so define itself, and
working
people who travel should indeed find other places to stay.

I have always assumed that's what they were, so perhaps they're
already
doing a decent job of defining themselves that way. But it doesn't
matter.
Maybe they just didn't like you personally. Maybe you took the same
cryptic,
meandering, illogical approach in your conversation with the desk
clerk that
you're taking here, and she simply got sick of you.

I did not, but you may be on to something. Most people speak in
incomplete sentences and in a half literate fashion. Perhaps my ability
to construct a complete thought is today threatening. I done be chill
wif dat, and as I told ya, I expressed, during the incident, one final
thought, my "associative law" and betook myself elsewhere.

But it remains a sad comment on Amerikkkan society that in my
international adventures, I do not encounter this sort of phenomenon.
In particular, in France, I never had a problem, speaking French using
a queer *bricolage* as much 17th century as modern, in getting a room,
because in France a demotic resentment and intolerance against
completeness as opposed to insufficiency is not normed.

But the whole problem really summed up "the sixties" for me. It was
only in major cities like Chicago a movement for genuine change,
and
genuine equality. At places like the Green Tortoise, it was just
hippie-dippy community formation as much about exclusion as about
inclusion.

Sounds to me like your grudge is with a decade long-gone.

Maybe so. But it is also with a pretentious survivor of those times.


I had the money to deal with the situation. But I think I can
reason
(and feel) from my treatment to the probable treatment of a person
of
color who wanted to ride the bus or stay at the hostel.

UNLESS he's a member of an interracial, international group
including
white travelers, my guess is that Green Tortoise might direct him
to
the tenderloin, for it would be assumed that such a person is more
a
"transient" and a working person rather than a backpacker.

At least you have had the good grace to cancel the race factor out in
the
second paragraph of the two quoted above. So we're left with, "unless
the
person was a traveler, the Green Tortoise might send them elsewhere."
Which
I don't think anyone can object to. They cater to travelers.

But I was a traveler!! I had moseyed all the way from Fiji!!

I find that during the time in which I did not work a full time job as
a software engineer and instead wrote shamelessPlug the book Build
Your Own .Net Language and Compiler (Apress 2004) /shamelessPlug I
was a member of a class which David Shipler and Barb Ehrenreich
describe as "invisible in America": the working poor.

Thus we see that a "backpacker" is not the sort of bindle stiff, stew
bum, hobo or tramp that I'd see growing up by the tracks in the 1950s.
Instead, he is (in the encoding used by Green Tortoise) always and only
a person with the luck not to get fleeced of his 401K, or to be a trust
fund baby, taking the *WanderJahr* or Grand Tour while Daddykins keeps
a seat for him or her at UBS WarBucks.

During the period in question, I elected through lack of funds to
travel in the manner of the underclass. To get to the Microsoft
Author's conference in 2001 I took the bus from Chicago to Seattle.
I
took a budget carrier, Spirit Airlines to LA to meet a client.

On the bus, I found my fellow passengers, although well-behaved,
nearly
terrorized by the Greyhound drivers who treated them as a bunch of
losers, warning them repeatedly not to drink or drug...when all of
them
were clearly just exhausted working people and single mothers who
didn't have the money to do either. Indeed, Greyhound is so nasty
to
its underclass clientele, and so unable through incompetence to
make
money, that a Chinese entrepreneur is doing a roaring business
substituting his operation

Really? I thought the only Chinese bus operations in the US were on
the
coasts (mainly the east coast, but some in California). Can you give
me more
info about the Chinese bus from Chicago to Seattle?

At this time, the operation goes from Boston to NY and Washington, a
popular student route. But the sky's the limit given the foul way in
which Greyhound treats people and the fact that a bus trip can be
priced lower than the lowest possible air fare.

based on the simple respect for the weary traveler I see here in
China
(where I live), not Greyhound's contempt.

China is the world capital of inexplicably turning people away from
places.
As a non-Chinese speaker I've been turned away from hotels,
restaurants,
shops, and even police stations. Almost every person I know who's
traveled
in China has similar stories.

Never had such an experience. I was not only welcomed at guest houses
at the Mirador, the lads importune you on the Nathan road. The Imperial
hotel always has been accomodating down the road apiece. Perhaps you
need to learn a few phrases of the language?

Furthermore, it might be understandable that Chinese establishments
might not want to accomodate foreigners: I assume here you are not
Chinese. They might be ashamed of the facilities or they might believe
that the foreigner might not be used to them.

Having said this, I understand that all over the world, the struggling
proprietors of doss houses, guest houses, and estaminets regard the
premises as their private property and given their own struggles,
reserve the right.

But this *de facto* right does not remove from me the right of free
speech, and to narrate as best I can the Green Tortoise experience as
in fact a part of the experience my black brothers and sisters
encounter, after years of civil rights legislation, and years of coded
Republikkkan racism, when they go to Denny's or the Bates Motel.

A woman I worked with in Chicago, of color, was a diginified and sober
mother, but when she and her well-dressed bourgeois family would visit
relatives in Mississipi, they being "of color", they had to pack a
picnic lunch and sleep in the car in 1995, because they could never be
certain of their reception.

What was isomorphic to their experience was in fact their dignity and
grace which in southern motels and Denny's restaurants TODAY used
against them. In the scene I am describing (with a combination of
"logic" and feelings), the applicant/supplicant's being well-spoken and
well dressed is used against them, just as the fact that James
Meredith's sobriety, when he matriculated at Ole Miss in the ealry
1960s, drove the crowds of slobs wild with rage.

What's "isomorphic" is that the legal principle of "we reserve the
right", valid in itself, is if permitted no exception used not against
obvious drunks and stew bums but against travelers who like my friend
in Chicago are more responsible, more sober, more whatever than the
people admitted in.

"We reserve the right" as a principle unchecked by other legislation
means that peasant suspicion is controlling and this is what destroys
cities...turns them from places, from the cities of mediaeval Spain and
old San Francisco, that welcomed the traveler, that assumed the best of
him, to places that increasingly demand proof of membership, as in
Islamic fundamentalist cities as much as American rural towns.

What this MEANS is that for many Americans, America is a virtual
third-world country where in place of the Metropolitan and urbane
welcome afforded the weary traveler in a place like Paris, "red sullen
faces sneer and snarl" behind closed doors. And my Green Tortoise
experience teaches me that hippiedom was part of this reversion to
barbarism.

I am well aware that American discrimination law cannot without
great
effort overcome "we reserve the right", but isn't that the problem?

I think it would be quite hard to do business in a society where
everyone
was required to accept transactions with everyone else no matter
what.
Imagine how easy that would be to abuse.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 35 countries on 5 continents:
http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Malaysia, Israel, Palestine, Austria, Thailand