113 Jane St., New York, NY, 10014, 212-924-6700,
Rates: start at $85 a night for a single “cabin,” $125 a night for a two-person bunk-bed room, or $250 a night for a double room with a bathroom. (Shared bathrooms for single and bunk-bed rooms are down the hall.) Single rooms are about 50 square feet. Wi-Fi is included.
Stay here if you: need a cheap place to sleep and leave your luggage in New York City and don’t expect to spend a lot of time in the room.
It’s located: across the street from the Hudson River in New York’s West Village, undoubtedly Manhattan’s most charming neighborhood. Three blocks to the subway, which connects you with virtually anything in New York. Spitting distance to the white-hot Meatpacking District nightlife area.
The rooms are: tiny is far too generous a term to describe these super-compact accommodations. Each single “cabin” has a single platform mattress with drawers underneath, plus about 3 feet of clearance to get dressed. A small flat-screen TV mounted at the foot of the bed, plus ample mirrors, temper the potentially claustrophobic feel, but you do feel like you’re in steerage. Bathrooms are down the hall; a short robe, paper slippers, and a towel will get you from here to there. (Barely — the robe is not cut for anyone over 5 feet 10.)
They put all of the money into: real estate. This is an excellent, extremely expensive location, tucked away from (but not out of reach of) Midtown’s insane traffic and noise. Coffee shops, boutiques and some of the country’s best restaurants populate this same neighborhood; foodies can’t ask for a nearer room to stumble home to after a progressive dinner starting at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Perry Street restaurant and ending at the Spotted Pig. Architecture freaks will swoon at the mix of pre-Civil War buildings and contemporary construction (Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel) that pepper the west side of downtown. Fashionistas will appreciate the Christian Louboutin, Marc Jacobs and Stella McCartney shops nearby. They just won’t have much space back at the “cabin” to store their purchases.
The bottom line: While cute and convenient, there really is nothing luxurious about the Jane. You’ll need a youthful attitude to put up with the spartan accommodations. But when your bill at the end of the weekend just grazes $200, your pain is eased. (Also easing the pain, a cocktail downstairs at Cafe Gitane, a Franco-Moroccan restaurant and bar populated by lots of very beautiful people.) Tucker Shaw
