Illinois

It’s like a cheerleader. Beautiful but dumb, and not particularly necessary.

I was at The Wit Hotel in Chicago last week, and it’s a nicely and recently remodeled hotel with some nice assets, but many more serious flaws.

The Wit is a singles scene. They have a wonderful rooftop bar that the locals of Chicago (rightly) want to spend a lot of time in, but that means that as a hotel guest you won’t get good service. In fact, it’s unlikely that you’ll even score a table without a reservation. I was there as part of a Kenmore group, and we did have a table, and some delicious food, but cocktails are served in plastic glasses, which means you will have lukewarm wine. Not a deal breaker, but also not exciting.

My first night at The Wit was horrible. Not sort of bad, but absolutely dreadful. With the air conditioning blasting full force, the room remained over 70 degrees. At 2am I called the front desk. No one answered the phone. At 3am I called the front desk. Still no answer. At 8am when I had to get up for the drive out to Sears I wanted to put the hotel manager’s head on a stick.

When I stopped by the front desk and explained that there hadn’t been any air conditioning on a 92 degree day with ridiculous humidity no one was surprised. You see the building is an old building and in an attempt to be energy efficient they shut off sections of the building’s air conditioning at night.

They had no explanation as to why the front desk didn’t answer the telephone. The staff was lovely and appropriately apologetic. The left a plate of lollipops and fruit in the room after engineering fixed the problem.

Sadly, my friend Ciaran had no air conditioning in her room on our second night.

As much as I appreciate the clean rooms, and hipster vibe of The Wit, I’d caution anyone from actually spending a night there, because when push comes to shove, a hotel room that you can’t sleep in is worse than a tent. I would decline a free night at The Wit. It was that bad.