Boston Licensing Board Chairman Daniel Pokaski thinks hotel staff aren’t capable of dealing with nudity in their own establishment and police intervention is necessary. According to the Universal Hub, on March 3 a woman was in the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel on Washington Street, naked from the waist down. “The hotel security guard who found the woman told the board she appeared to be OK, aside from the fact she had no clothes south of her waist and that he figured she was drunk, wanted to avoid further embarrassment and that the other two women seemed to have things under control.”
Seems logical, right? I’ve never been on such a bender where I ended up half-naked in a hotel lobby, but hey, things happen. Nakie lady had two ladies with her who were apparently taking care of the situation. A car was called, nakie lady was taken outside, no more nudity in the place of business. Yet the police should have been called! Pokaski said, “You got somebody naked in your hotel and you didn’t call the police. I’m just dumbfounded by that. … You can’t allow this to happen again. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for their health, it’s bad for your health.”
You have someone naked in your hotel. You ask the lady to cover up or leave the establishment. She leaves. You clean any surface she may have sat on. What’s bad for business is having police in your lobby. What’s bad for business is relying on police intervention rather than common sense. I am dumbfounded that Pokaski believes that a hotelier can’t handle a half-naked woman in the lobby without calling 911.
I once saw a woman naked from the waist down at Planet Hollywood. She was doing something vulgar, which demonstrated her high time preference. Suffice it to say, no state intervention was necessary. The private security agents ended everyone’s fun all on their own.
They handled this quickly and discreetly, as they should have. She may have been a guest, or a “friend” of a guest, and a good hotel protects the privacy of its customers. Who knows what kind of mess the police would have made and how many customers would have been harassed had they shown up.