Distressed Murals Westin Hotel

Photographed on 24 January 2009

Long before Disney brought pure Teutonic evil to Times Square, driving away before its fury all that was good and decent from the neighborhood, an evil mastermind, Ernest W. Hahn, turned Horton Plaza from Hippie paradise where young swain hustlers could ply their trade and romance was a mere descent down the magical stairs to the underground "facilities", into a ghoulish monument to corporate sterility where one might find such "murals" as these.

For the connoisseur of the tacky these murals on the Westin Hotel in the Horton Plaza are an embarrassment of riches. Imagine a scholar who spent his life dedicated to study and documentation of tackiness in America. After decades of roaming the nation cataloging various displays of tackiness our weary traveler could gaze upon these murals and die safe in the knowledge that their mission had been complete, the Holy of Grail of tackiness so perfect that by its very existence proves the existence of a deity who can bring forth a work of tackiness far beyond the meager efforts of mortal man.

I will go through the various elements of these murals which meet the definition of tackiness. To be truly tacky a work must have been commissioned by an entity of wealth and power. These murals grace the Westin Hotel untold millions were spent on its construction and appointments. True tackiness is inexplicable. Tacky for Tackiness sake unjustified by the slightest hint of style or purpose. These murals are European scenes with artificial distress. The architecture Horton Plaza and the outside of the hotel might generously be referred to as modernist adobe. It is though it was designed by Hitler after he had been given LSD and read random passages from mediocre magical realist writers. The interior of the Hotel is decorated in what one might high McDesign which gives one the general sense of being expensive without any threat of quality, character, or originality.

How does a distressed European mural find its way to San Diego, and why would one put it a hideous orange insult to Native American culture? Why--it just refuses to even try to make sense. The fact that at the bottom of one of the murals there is real distress which shows that the "mural" was actually applied to plywood, that Velveta cheese product of woodlike material which must be hideous doom of trees who lived immoral lives. But the pièce de résistance is of course the fact that this monument to all that is tacky is lit, so that one may behold its Polaroid Picture of Perfection during the night time. Believe it or not these murals are not the tackiest element of the Hotel. Keep checking, to see what can possible top this.

The information for the Westin Hotel is as follows. Be sure to book several days, these masterpieces can not be fully enjoyed over just one day's viewing.

The Westin Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego
910 Broadway Circle
San Diego, California 92101
Phone: (619) 239-2200
Fax: (619) 239-0509
email