GOODBYE TO THE SHITHOLE!

Reading HHH, Hash #658

Hare:  Lick My Trunk

Pack:  A bunch of hashers – 16 or so?

Date:  Monday July 24, 2006

ON-ON:  Penn View Motel

Apres:  Penn View Motel (planned) / Mimmos (Actual)

Hash Trash Author: Decoy

Question:  If you were running a small urban motel, what would you find more offensive?  Would it be:

1)  The guy in the black Suburban doing drug deals in the back parking lot;

2)  The hooker with the nasty case of adult onset acne wiping her john's deposit from between her legs while waiting for a cab in the parking lot;

3)  The toxic-looking green stuff oozing out of the cracks in the parking lot; or

4)  The 15 or so suburbanite adults who paid non-drug-related $$ to rent a room for a few hours, and then had the audacity to drop some biodegradable baking flour in the parking lot.

Hint:  To properly answer this question, you have to put on a few hundred lbs, wear some cheap-ass clothing that you bought at Goodwill and chainsmoke Marlboros, all the while harboring a dream that someday...yes someday, you'll pull yourself out of the toxic sludge that is Reading and move to a place of more class and sophistication, like maybe Scranton.

Answer:  (If you haven't figured it out yet, its #4.  If you guessed 1-2- or 3, you may have a future in the hotel and restaurant industry, unlike the current employees of the Penn View motel). 

It was a hot and sultry evening in a town that knows how to keep its secrets... But the word was out: the Penn View Motel, which over the years has been the site of countless drug deals, crack-inspired blowjobs, a haven for deadbeat parents, parole violators and fugitives, was soon to be but a cumstained memory.  In a bid to push the seediness of Reading back across the river, the county and the West Reading borough had declared its intention to condemn the Penn View by the end of the year, and so the dispossessed are to be once-again, dispossessed, (because you know, if we don't have to see a problem every day, then we can pretend it isn’t there, and then we won't have to worry about solving it.  And so what if Reading is a shitstained cesspool, as long as we can safely get to the Sovereign Center to watch a bunch of white guys dressed in purple prance around on iceskates, right?)

Anyway, for fear of offending the good Christian right-wing sensibilities of our esteemed grandmaster, let me get off my liberal soapbox for a second and get back to our tale.  Now where was I?  Oh, yeah, the Penn View.  Amongst travel Industry professionals, the Penn View is known for its...uh....umm.... Hold on, I know this one...ummm... Oh yeah!  The Penn View is known for its well-stocked condom machines in the lobby?  That's right, isn't it?  You know, its 2:30 AM, you just met the woman of your dreams, and luckily you had $50 for a half-and-half, but now you need a peppermint flavored day-glo-green french tickler, so your new honey can blow you and freshen her breath at the same time ...where do you go?  You're not gonna find that kind of equipment at Cabelas, my friend, and at that time of the day you're S.O.L. if you think you're going to make a run out to Excitement Video without having to drop another $25 on the girl.  No, you'll be at the Penn View, that blue and red neon beacon of hope for the desperate everywhere.

Shit, did I get sidetracked AGAIN?  Sorry, sorry sorry, it hass been a while since I wrote one of these things.  So yeah, it was about 6:15 when the pack started rolling into the Penn View.  Some parked in the Penn View lot.  The veterans amongst us (remembering that the newspaper is now printing the names of guys arresting for soliciting prostitutes) parked in convenient and discrete "off-site" locations (i.e., 3rd street).  Soon, our virgin hare appeared and welcomed us into the love-suite he had rented. 

Oh, it was a special place alright.  The décor reminded me of some porn movies I have stashed where the wife won't find them, and the plush linens and towels were definitely part of the Martha Stewart prisonwear collection.  .  Unfortunately, I had forgotten my hash cash, so I decided that in honor of the room, I'd strike a pose and see if I could earn $8.00 the hard way.  Surprisingly, there were no takers.  Maybe my luck will change after I get my vasectomy…

Just as the hare was about to circle-up for chalk-talk, he received a call from the front desk.  No, his wife had not tracked him down to this seedy little spot.  Instead it was the hotel manager informing our hare that he had too many single attractive women in one room and the other guests were jealous as hell..  After a brief argument with management, the hare gave us our "chalk talk" -- warning us that we were going through the worst parts of Reading, and that this would be true "ghetto hashing".  I believe the best warning we received was "if you think you're safe, you're not safe.  Don't be the DFL, and don't be the FRB -- stay together." 

We gave our hare a brief head start, and then followed him into the evening, down to the Penn Street bridge, and then under to where the hobbits live.  Now, theoretically, there was a beercheck down there...somewhere....but none of us found it.  We did get all fucked up for a while and found the late-great-Prickly Pete, who (like me) had lied to the wife and received the kitchen pass for the evening.

After saying a few 'Hail Marys' and calling my insurance agent to make sure that my term-life policy was paid up, I followed the pack across the bridge and then up through one of the finest neighborhoods in all of Reading.

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate mayor Tom McMahon for the stellar job that he and city council are doing to clean up the streets in Reading.  The streets were immaculate.  I mean, you could eat off of them.  Of course, it appears that all that trash has now been moved to the railroad tracks (Its Conrail's problem now, right Mr. Mayor?) 

We hit the railroad tracks bearing west, hoping and praying that we would cross back across the Schuylkill into suburbia, but it was not to be -- once more onto the fine streets of Reading, and finally down to a little wooded area along the bikepath for a beercheck.  A quick check confirmed that this is where young hispanic children come to learn how to swim / die, so we had that going for us...which was nice.  We waited at the beercheck for OE and Ribbed, who had disappeared soon after we crossed the bridge.  After a while we figured that Ribbed had probably taken the railroadtracks back to safety and OE was likely the current victim of a gangrape, so we took all the beer out of the beercheck cooler and fled for our very lives. 

Eventually we found ourselves on Riverfront drive, where you could smell safety -- well, actually you could smell vegetation rotting due to the floods back in June, but it COULD have smelled like safety, couldn't it? 

Arriving again at the hotel, Deathwish, Lenora, Eager and I were greeted by the hare who informed us that we had been kicked out of the motel.  On top of that, (GET THIS!) the hare was given a broom and sent out to the parking lot to clean up the flour he had dropped.  I know its bizarro to think that the staff at the Penn View would know what a broom is, but I can confirm that they ACTUALLY have one.  No shit.  I AM NOT MAKING ANY OF THIS UP. 

The pack assembled in the parking lot up by the pool (and despite what the Penn View website www.pennviewmotel.com will tell you, the pool, like the restaurant is closed).  As we waited for the police to come and report the untimely and gruesome deaths of OE and Ribbed, we were entertained by the interaction between Trunky and the desk clerk who was demanding additional $$$ as well as free maid service from the Trunkster.  Apparently Eager Beaver had been overheard calling the Penn View a "shithole" (which in my mind is a generous statement when you think about it, because unlike the Penn View, shitholes get cleaned once in a while) and this really got the clerk's size XXXXXXXL panties in a wad. 

The pack headed down to Mimmos for beerz, pizza, wings and circle.  A circle was held on the back patio @ Mimmos, where down-downs were awarded, out-of-towners were jeered, and etc. etc. etc.  Oh, and to the proprietors of the Shit View Motel....just so you know, we're taking our business elsewhere (Klein's Motel 4800 N. Fifth St. Highway in Temple 610-929-9431).

Finally, a websearch of "Penn View Motel" yielded this review on travel.yahoo.com. 

"Nicer than where I did my mission work in wartorn Angola" 

"Golly, I wish I could say that that our stay at the Penn View was splendid...or decent...or adequate...or...well, you get the idea. When we pulled in, it looked as if this place hasn't seen a fresh coat of paint since the early 1960's. Vending machines in the main office appear to be from the same era, although the goodies from within said machine appeared to be recently updated, dashing my hopes of finding a mint condition Jim Palmer rookie card for 50 cents (GO ORIOLES!). I'm fairly certain my girlfriend would have at the 40+ year old gum, but like I said, the snacks appeared to be of recent vintage. Upon entering our room, we stepped back in time to the 1970's wood paneled hell (a word I don't use lightly). While the room wasn't covered in filth, it wasn't exactly clean either, the place was quite dreary. To sum up the mood the room created in one word, I'd use suicidal, but the promise of cable TV seemed to be the key to sprucing up the joint. Alas, you can't change the channels without dishing out $5 for remote control (refundable upon leaving, provided you don't void your receipt by writing a suicide note on it). To give credit where credit is due, they went all out on their basic package cable, everything from BET to CSPAN to TRINTITY BROADCASTING NETWORK, so we were somewhat satisified with that. Furthermore, THE PENN VIEW MOTEL's SHOWERS MIGHT HAVE THE BEST WATER PRESSURE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Access to TBN and world class water pressure made us rethink how wonderful the Penn View might actually be, that it might actually justify spending $10-$20 more then the recently built EconoLodge, until the next morning when we woke up to an ice cold room. The heat broke overnight and it wasn't fixed prior to checkout (thankfully, a generous 12 noon). Just prior to checkout, while attempting to locate the remote deposit reciept, I came upon a what I could only guess was a crack pipe stem (I've seen New Jack City at least two or three times). It's a said state of affairs when the scurge of crack cocaine makes its way into the heartland of our once great nation. Now, let's be 100% clear, the Penn View probably had no idea it was there, but that's because they didn't clear up the room they way they should have. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and while the Penn View is not next to God, it is next to Rt 422, and the Penn Street bridge, convienent to downtown Reading and all the nearby outlets.