The Best Western Gregory Hotel in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn offers high speed internet access, spacious meeting rooms, and free continental breakfast. Also offered: Murder! Yesterday the body of a 52-year-old man was found in the bathtub at the hotel, with his mouth gagged with duct tape. "The police said they were investigating the death as suspicious." Well, they know better than me, I guess. But hey, it's the same hotel where a 26-year-old man was stabbed to death in December by his lady friend after sex got too rough. Sounds like the lesson is, don't stay here if you are into kinky sex and your age is any multiple of the number 26. Or, more likely, the killers were looking for the guy (from, predictably, New England) who wrote this incredibly entitled yet asinine online review of—we remind you—a Best Western in Brooklyn:

We're constantly scheming up moneymaking plans that will get us the hell out of here; one of our recent concepts was to open up a chain of salons to which New Yorkers who live in tiny apartments with their partners could come for an hour and check into a private room in which they could cry for as long as they needed. (We expected the clientele to be mostly male, so porn would have been made available for the post-weeping session. Think about it; you've got a big box of tissues in there anyway.) Well, the Times already used the idea, at least office-wise, so we're having a hard time finding funding. Still, if you need a place to go sob to yourself for a bit this summer, consider The Tudor. From July 7 to August 26th, the Tudor City hotel (formerly known as the Crowne Plaza) will be charging $19.31 per weekend night. It's a hell of an opportunity for a wailing session. Or a meth-fueled gay sex party, your call!

Herald Square hotel owner delighted that Life magazine once had its offices in the building, goes nuts putting up old magazine covers everywhere. [NYS]

If our father is to be believed, living in the shadow of Jason Pomeranc's Allen Street hotel is a lot like what it's like to be married: Each day you wake up with something uglier and uglier. The Lower East Side hotel is slogging towards completion, even as Pomeranc flirts with moving to Miami. Last week, a muddy Debbie Downer glass fa ade went up, and it was soon followed by a slate gray panel siding. Without the color of Blue or the light airiness of THOR, it seems like Pomeranc is subscribing to the Secretive Government Organization school of architecture. Ominous!

With the Chinatown Holiday Inn being converted into a "high-end cutting-edge destination" boutique hotel by the secretive monolithic enterprise Highgate Holdings, the area has begun its walkabout from slightly gritty ethnic enclave to gleaming diorama of "New York City." As the Post's Cuozzo reports, the Highgate hotel at 138 Lafayette will fully embrace the "downtown aesthetic," recruiting Edison-bulb-loving firm AvroKo and bringing in Marc Packer of Tao and Richard Wolf of AvroKo-designed Stanton Social.

Oh, the Cooper Square Hotel, 21 (we hear 21, now!) floors of fun and intrigue on the Bowery. After a recent post about the hotel's three humongoid entertainment venues, we received some dish. First up, the hoteliers: The Peck Moss Group is no longer. The board two weeks ago decided to be done with Gregory Peck, one half of the partnership. (Let's call it a permanent Roman holiday! Ha!) Reason? In the words of one, "He's a huge douchebag." Fair enough.

Sound familiar? A new hotel towering over the Bowery created by two successful young hoteliers. A hotel with three separate entertainment venues including a somewhat exclusive basement restaurant? Right now, I bet you're nodding and thinking, "Ooo, that does sound familiar! In fact, it sounds like the Bowery Hotel!" Well, you're both right and wrong!

The Lafayette House Hotel [HotelChatter]

Today's Dining section of the Times stars food critic Frank Bruni's review of room service during a week spent in hotels. There are questions, and there are answers. There are answers that look like questions. There are also significant references to Bruni-hating chef Jeffrey Chodorow, which remind us that the chef is implicated in the McNally-Gansevoort Meatpacking wars. We retreated into the warm confusion of a group IM chat to get to the bottom of it all.

Chip Conley of boutique hotelier Joie de Vivre likes to use specific magazines as inspirations for his hotels. After he's picked a magazine, he and his staff then come up with five adjectives that describe the mag, and by extension the hotel concept. For example, the buzzwords associated with a hotel ostensibly inspired by National Geographic Traveler were "enchanting, international, cheerful, bohemian, eclectic." Another is equal parts Giant Robot and Lucky: "inventive, warm, optimistic, practical, quirky." Yet another property takes Wired as its muse, though your guess is as good as ours as to their keywords. Saddest of all, though, is San Francisco's Phoenix Hotel:

As anyone who's ever had cheap relatives visit town surely knows, the hotel situation in New York can be formidable, forcing you to spend way more time with that older cousin who touched you inappropriately back at the family picnic in 1986 than you'd ever want to. Fortunately, a number of inexpensive bed and breakfasts have popped up to save you from the indignity of sharing your cramped studio with your judgmental parents for an uncomfortable weekend. Let's look at Loftstel, an organization offering accommodations in Brooklyn. What's their constituency?

• David Hasselhoff is just exhausted, so much so that he fell asleep during a televised interview. He says he hadn't been drinking, just popping ludes. [AHN]
• Bobby Brown faces arrest after failing to pay child support to the mother of his first child. Considering his gravy train just filed for divorce from him and he's asking for cars instead of appearance fees, we're thinking that cash isn't going to be showing up anytime soon. [Reuters]
• The Chinese can be relied upon for two things: food and spit. Regarding the latter, Animal magazine is looking for your spitting-Asian pictures, presumably for some sort of expose of the saliva-flecked streets of lower Manhattan. [Craigslist]
• After finally agreeing to count cab drivers, New York's population is revised upwards to 8.2 million. [Crain's]
• The U.S. finds a new method of torture: having detainees at Guatanamo eat 4,200 calories per day. [AP]
• After all that crazy Jew-starving, what's better than a cookie and a Frappucino? [AOPJLH]
• Chevrolet is SO FUCKING AMERICAN. And Stephen Colbert, don't steal that line. [Jalopnik]
• Know your downtown hotels and avoid them. [HotelChatter]
• Wait — bloggers aren't above the law? Crap. [USA Today]
• Jason Calacanis unfamiliar with common male desires, libido, and/or heterosexuality. [Valleywag]

If you grew up in this area during the eighties, there are a few things that are probably permanently stuck in your head in the place where algebra should be. Among them are "Pix pix pix pix pix," that Melle Mel/Van Silk "don't do it" PSA for WNBC against crack, and this commercial, which has probably been buried deep in your subconscious. Well, HotelChatter dredged it up for us; we're going to do the same for you.

• Vadim Perelman, the director of Uma Thurman's next film, In Bloom, has been arrested in Connecticut on sexual assault charges — but Thurman's not blinking. A paycheck is a paycheck, even if the stub is covered in bodily fluids. [Page Six]
• Christie Brinkley continues to endear herself to the press, giving pink lemonade, water and cookies to the reporters camped outside her Hamptons home. Of course, she had her assistant actually hand out the treats — Christie isn't going to go out in this weather. [NYDN]
• If and when Cuba becomes free, expect every boutique hotelier to head down there and ruin the place. [R&M]
• If you suggest that Star Jones and Al Reynolds are getting a divorce, bitch will sue you within an inch of your life. [Page Six]
• Bruce Willis is claiming a childhood friend is shaking down the actor for $100K and a car. That's it? Jared Paul Stern shakes his head in disappointment. [TMZ]

What, you surely ask, the hell is this? Funny: when Gawker Media darklord Nick Denton sent us this picture yesterday, we asked the same thing. Silly us — this was something he actually wanted to share with you! Far be it from us to stand in the way. A self-referential explanation after the jump.

This week's Time Out New York is full of chirpy advice about crime-themed "staycations," where one can exult in the city's summertime calm by seeking out locales famous for scandal, pain, suffering, and/or death. For example:

• In honor of the devil's big day, Maxim declares that as Satan, Katie Couric deserves to be their girl of the day. [Maxim]
• Maybe we're just slaphappy — no, we're definitely just slaphappy — but we cannot stop laughing at this stupid video. You know some lonely little gay is so in love with Anna Wintour that he spent an entire week locked in his parents' basement, creating this homage for the one he loves. It's sad and completely hysterical. [YouTube]
• If you want to smoke outside on the Maritime's patio, you must be sitting down. No standing — your lungs can't handle the strain. [HotelChatter]
• The Bulgarian Bar is back! Re-opening party to be hosted by Ariel Kaminer! [Gogol Bordello]
• The Wall Street Journal declares Philly home of the cheesecake. [Philadelphia Will Do]
• When MySpace wrongs you, upload hardcore pornography. [Consumerist]
• You don't want to know this, but the truth will set you free: Janice Dickinson spent three days in a hotel room fucking Dolph Lundgren and Grace Slick. OK, we lied. The truth will just make you a little sick. [Cityrag]
• Tricia Romano crawls deep inside Mr. Black's ass. [VV]
• And don't forget, today is the National Day of Slayer. Celebrate by rocking the fuck out with the angel of death. [NDS]

• Starting next week, Hearst begins its move into their new W. 57th Street digs. While we expected an impeccably organized move, we certainly didn't expect moving phases to be divided into color-coded teams, complete with "team captains." After the move, will there be a giant game of capture the flag? [Jossip]
• David Carr, clearly having never worked at a doughnut shop, is wrong about employees consuming the very goods they sell. [The Daily Transom]
• Vanessa Grigoriadis is hiring a new mule. [Columbia]
• We've always maintained that the fervently athletic are intellectually feeble; triatheletes competing for a new bike by touching a bike frame for 70 hours straight seems to support that notion. [Big and Sharp]
• The Marcel Hotel at 24th Street and 3rd Avenue flooded yesterday, forcing 130 travelers to be relocated elsewhere. In case you were wondering, they're still all booked for tonight and tomorrow. [WCBS]
• The Department of Justice presents Your Vagina: A Gateway to Information. [Video Dog]

The gentrification train continues to chug apace throughout Park Slope, continuing down Fourth Avenue all the way to the site of a forthcoming Holiday Inn Express. Situated on an otherwise Maclaren-free block of Union Street, the Holiday Inn will offer an expanded continental breakfast (for the homeless), marble bathrooms (for the cokeheads), and self-parking (for the foolish). It sounds like a glorious alternative to the Hotel on Rivington, but the Daily News asks:

• Will Ferrell did not die in a paragliding accident. And if he did, do you really think you'd hear about it through a barely literate press release? [Defamer]
• So long as MTV-ready bands behave like this in Manhattan hotels, we'd rather sleep in our shoebox. Fucking trash monkeys, all of them. [Hotel Chatter]
• Ladies, prepare yourselves: Tomorrow is Steak and Blowjob day! Share it with the man you love, or at least one you don't mind sucking off. [SteakandBJDay]
• We can hardly fathom paying $82 for a stack of magazines. Make them a stack of bridal magazines, and you've the third ring of hell. [Bridal Blog]
• A Gay Clay is a defective one. [Got Detroit?]
• The bad thing about winning the U.S. Memory Championship is being unable to forget the reporter bugging you, that damn Foer kid. [Slate]