Welcome To Washington's Elite Mayflower Whoretel
There are two iconic Washington hotels, swank palaces so famous that their very names have come to define the two main activities of our political elite: corruption and whoring. The first, of course, is the Watergate. The second is the Mayflower, which was named for the famous pimpette Sydney Biddle Barrows, the "Mayflower Madam." It's a little pricey even by D.C. lodging standards, so if you're a regular there, you're probably a regular user of $4,300 hookers -- according to the liberal New York Times.
Eliot Spitzer's recent shameful fall from "hated governor" to "really atrocious scumbag" again highlighted the Mayflower's role as Hooker Headquarters. Spitzer shipped his super-classy Jersey Girl hooker to the Mayflower on a freight train from New York, and the fancy room in which he tried to have unprotected (probably anal) sex with Ashley Kristen Alexandra Dupre became so notorious that Mayflower staff stripped the number off the room's entrance!
In a long and pretty interesting NYT feature -- hey, it's in the Fashion section! -- the Mayflower's long history as a gleaming tower of illicit sex and terrible crime is recounted, along with the preferred way of bringing your hooker to your room (she goes to the bar and orders a club soda and you meet her there and walk her past the security guard to the elevators) and many funny stories about Eliot Spitzer sitting in the pricey cafe bragging about how he'd like the piano player to come up and perform in his suite later that night. Oh, and Ashley-Kristen arrived on that fateful Valentine's Day Eve with four bags, probably stuffed the latest Hot Topic/Lane Bryant fashions. She went home the next morning "in jeans and an Army camouflage jacket."
Anyway, what does a former Carter Administration official have to say about all this?
"All of the parasitic industries -- lobbyists, political consultants, lawyers and hookers -- have gotten bigger and more sophisticated," he said, though his matter-of-factness was belied by his reluctance to be named in print. "It makes the city more interesting."
Mayflower [New York Times]