I had eventful day yesterday. It started at 7am and me having Jury Duty! I got myself to downtown Brooklyn by 8:30 and got cozy in the waiting room where I stayed for 8 HOURS! They never called my name. What a gyp! I actually would have liked to be a juror. At least I don’t have to go back for 8 years…and they showed a hilarious video with re-enactments of how justice was done back in the day, featuring Diane Sawyer, Todd’s favorite anchorwoman (she’s hot).
After going home, showering and resting for about 10 minutes, I hurried back into the city for Sleep no More. Luckily, my friend Masha had gotten there early and was at the front of the line, which moved inside just as I arrived.
***Let me preface my entry here by saying that this experience was AMAZING. I would highly recommend you go yourself…and also to read no further, so you will be surprised as to what you see. ***
When you enter the building, the first thing you notice is that you can’t see shit. It is dark as fuck. They take your coat and bag and send you to “check in” where you receive a playing card, which is your “room key”. You then walk up stairs and through a dark labyrinth of a hallway all the while listening to a Hitchcock soundtrack, and you end up here:
It’s the bar. A 1930s/40s bar complete with jazz band, smoke, a fortune teller and tiny round tables. You can get a drink while you wait for your number to be called to enter the hotel.
When they call your number, you receive a mask and head into a small room. There you are told to always where your mask and that there is no more talking from here on out. Everyone gets in the elevator. The man running the elevator stops on random floors and lets one or maybe a few people out at a time. This is where I lost Masha and Charles. I was on my own.
The first floor i got off on had some children rooms, an elaborate graveyard and a large room encased in french doors which had a clawfoot tub on a platform in the middle of it. In this “hotel” you are allowed to do whatever you want. You can sit on the furniture, you can open drawers, you can eat candy, bang the walls, read the books. It’s a free for all.
The different areas were designed and decorated with the utmost expertise. The furnishings are all antique gorgeousness (I want to raid that place when they are done) from the wallpaper to the books. Some of the rooms include an apothecary (below), a candy shop, the hotel lobby, a hospital wing, a taxidermist, a mental hospital, an embalmer’s office, etc… You basically wander this building’s five floors in anyway you want exploring the rooms for any amount of time and in as much detail as you like. And as you wander, there are soundtracks that accompany each area. A lot of old jazz (think The Shining style) and scary noise.
As you maneuver the space, you occasionally see the actors. The first one I happened upon was a woman crying and eventually stripping and getting into a tub to wash the blood off herself (the whole thing is based on Macbeth). I then saw a couple dancing in a bar-like room with a pool table. Their choreographed dance was mesmerizing. At the end of it, they separated and you could follow either one of them wherever they went. I followed the man into the embalming room. The woman grabbed a guest and started to dance with him. I didn’t notice this, but apparently, some chosen guests were taken into rooms by them selves and locked in there. I’m glad that didn’t happen to me. There friends were left to bang on the door which they were soon ushered away from by the people in black masks as if to say, “Nothing is happening here. Move on.”
I don’t want to give it all away now, there is so much more! All I can say is the music and atmosphere paired with the acting, smoke, everyone in masks and darkness make for an ultra creepy experience. You should totally throw down eighty bucks and go.
