Over 10 years ago I took this picture of the Hotel Carter. Today the exterior is gaudy with a tall neon sign and banners that obscure but do not hide the "700 ROOMS" text seen as seen in the earlier photo. The Hotel Carter on West 43rd Street in Manhattan is steps away from Times Square and costs about $130 a night (more than double the 1999 rate of $59), making it a true bargain for tourists looking for a cheap accommodation in this stupidly expensive area.

The Carter, however, was recently named the filthiest hotel in the United States by TripAdvisor.com, a distinction that does not seem to stop tourists from staying at the Carter. If anything its reputation as a nasty shithole might entice those who think they long for a piece of old New York, or at least a New York that is not the antiseptic Anytown that the Times Square area has become.

The Carter was used as a homeless shelter in in the 1980s but when I moved moved here in the early 1990s I knew of it as an hourly rates hotel frequented by prostitutes and the Midnight Cowboy crowd. I would like to book a room at the Carter to see how it compares to my memories of the Parc Lincoln. I lived at the Parc Lincoln for about 9 months in 1990 and 1991 and while I do not exactly get nostalgic for those days of living in a hot, noisy, roach-infested shithole, I do sometimes question my own memory of that time. Was it really that bad? Or would I find it comical today? I imagine that the Parc Lincoln of the early 1990s was (at $106.33 a week) comparable to the Hotel Carter of 2009.