"Front desk. May I help you?"
"Hi, this is Danny King in Room 3083. Howya doing?"
"Good, Mr. King. How can I help you this afternoon?"
"I have kind of an odd request. Is there, uh, any way I can get a room on a lower floor?"
"You want a room on a lower floor? Hmm. Let me check into ..."
"You know what? Don't worry about it. We're good." Click.
My room at San Francisco's Westin St. Francis was spacious, well-decorated and clean. Sadly, it forced me into an existential crisis every time I had to leave or return to it. Upon a visit last month to the City (San Francisco locals capitalize the C), the folks at Westin parent Starwood Hotels were kind enough to give me a room on the 30th floor of the hotel's Tower Building, which is reserved for Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty members.
Unbeknownst to me upon check-in, this involved taking a glass elevator ("It's the third-fastest elevator in the City," I was told) that protruded from the building's eastern edge.
I didn't understand the full ramifications of that last detail until about a third of the way up my maiden voyage in what I can only describe as a capsule of terror. That's because the elevator starts in a shaft of sorts, then faces the back of the Westin's original 12-story building just a few dozen feet away.
Once it clears that airspace, though, it's Willy Wonka time. Only, it's not the part with Gene Wilder, as the title character, singing the soothing dulcet tones of "Pure Imagination," but more like the dark, psychedelic, boat-in-the-tunnel scene in which Wilder screams his poem about having "no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going," birthing a million nightmares and sending a whole generation of kids who grew up in the 1970s into therapy in the process.
Likewise, during my elevator ascension, the bubble quotes from my brain morphed from "Ah, we're all good here" to "Oh well, this is kind of interesting" to "Oh s&#!, makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop!"
"Ding." The elevator doors opened on the 30th floor, and this reporter barreled right-shoulder first out of the capsule of terror. "Welcome, Starwood Preferred Guest," a disembodied female voice said. Phew!
Acrophobia, an extreme fear of heights, has been my lifelong partner, not exactly an attribute for someone who writes about travel. That said, it's not all-encompassing, and I've usually found ways to skate around it.
Ski chairlifts, with the exception of Mammoth Mountain's Chair 23 (hoo boy!), haven't been an issue. Over the years, I visited the observation decks of New York's World Trade Center as well as Chicago's John Hancock Center. I was offered the opportunity to do some hard-core ziplining on a familiarization trip to Puerto Vallarta last year, but I opted for the boat trip/snorkeling activities that day (and judging from my discussions with those who went ziplining, my decision was a wise one).
And, yes, for many years, plane rides were somewhat anxiety-inducing, but that was only until I flew seven years ago with my then-21-month-old son, who screamed all the way from Los Angeles to Austin. Since then, any plane travel without kids is a minivacation.
But, oh, those glass elevators, those friggin' crystal lifts, relics of the 1970s that should have gone the way of the eight-track tape and AMC Pacer, are still around, tormenting those who, like myself, dare to admit it.
Not that the glass elevators should overshadow what by any account is a fine hotel. Situated on the western edge of Union Square, the Westin St. Francis is a fascinating combination of the can-do spirit the City took on in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed the town, and the architectural aggressiveness of the 1970s that transformed San Francisco from the high-hill/low-rise city made famous in films like Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" to a metropolis with a downtown district whose Montgomery Street became known as "the Wall Street of the West" because of its lofty skyline.
Like the Fairmont, four blocks up Nob Hill, the Westin's oldest building (now known as the Landmark Building) actually replaced one that was destroyed in the '06 fire and opened 12 stories tall in 1907. The rear, 32-story Tower Building, with its bank of glass elevators, was completed in 1972, the same year San Francisco's iconic Transamerica Pyramid was finished up.
That tower and my trip to its higher points became my own personal Moby Dick during my two-night stay at the hotel. Making my first trip down all the more difficult was the crack of broad daylight one can see between the elevator doors when approaching them in the late afternoon, giving me visions of a potential plunge to death and spurring the aforementioned phone call to the front desk.
Upon hanging up the phone in shame and making my second anxious trip down (there were friends to meet and beers to drink), I spotted a housekeeping gentleman approaching the elevators about the same time as I was, and I almost asked him to hold my hand before he disappeared into one of the other hotel rooms.
Alas, I finally got the nerve to step into the elevator, at which point that female voice intoned, "Going down." Duly warned, I pressed my nose against the elevator panel, closed my eyes and commenced some deep breathing. Of course, the elevator stopped (temporarily teetered) at the edge of the 27th floor to pick up another guest, thrilling me to no end and forcing me to get in touch with my inner-Dude. "Yo," I said, voice cracking, to my erstwhile elevator wing man. "Whazzup?" A few seconds later, I welcomed the shadow of the hotel's front building on my safe trip to the lobby.
Of course, one man's phobia shouldn't spoil the efforts of an otherwise perfectly good hotel stay. That Tower Building earlier this year completed a $20 million renovation, and it looks great. The rooms are elegant without being stodgy, and they have the prerequisite connectivity-related bells and whistles commensurate to a tech-driven town. The lobby area in the Tower Building's first floor was a very comfortable place to hang out, drink coffee and do work, and it was bustling with activity every time I went down there.
The Landmark Building's bottom floor retains its Parisian-inspired elegance, complete with its Magneta grandfather clock, and exudes a welcome calmness for those walking in from Union Square's chaos. Newbies with a car might gasp at the $55 nightly parking rate, but it's pretty much the going rate for high-end hotels in the Union Square-Nob Hill area (about the same as the Sir Francis Drake and the Fairmont charge).
And of course the view from that tower is nothing short of mind-blowing, complete with a very sturdy bird's-eye view of San Francisco's Financial District, the Bay Bridge and glimpses of blue-gray water spanning from the north to the south San Francisco Bay. Hell, I could spot Walnut Creek from up there.
Besides, after my fourth or fifth elevator trip, the terror became slightly more palatable, and on my final (though not final) trip down, I actually started to turn my head around to peer at the ...
Nope! Couldn't do it.