My good friend and fellow photographer, Laurie Bailey, came back from this hotel a couple of weeks ago and told me immediately that I had to go there myself. I went to their website and I was hooked!
The Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs was a former Howard Johnson that had fallen into disrepair. It reopened as the Ace Hotel & Swim Club in February of this year.
I don’t consider myself the queen of hip but I immediately felt at home in this hotel — from the record player in your room, the vintage-looking bikes you can ride and the old GMC van near the swimming pool (I looked for a choke inside the van but alas there wasn’t one, my Dad’s 1969 Ford van had one).
When you hang out in the pool or eat in their great restaurant you hear Bill Withers, Johhny Cash and Nick Drake over their sound system. There is also a real and I mean real photo booth in their lobby (which I went a little crazy with since it takes credit cards). I mean you just can’t beat it.
I asked hotel management if I could photograph their hotel and they immediately said yes. So I brought every camera I own and every type of film I had in my fridge and shot away. I even shot a roll of (don’t freak out people)……Kodachrome film and used a pack of my very precious Polaroid Viva Type 80 film with my Holgaroid.
I will definitely be going back there some time this summer to shoot more.
