20 July 2011

Floored

In our ongoing attempt to cross items off of our "bye-bye list", we are currently in Door County, in Sturgeon Bay to be specific staying at Sturgeon Bay's oldest and reputedly funkiest lodging establishment, the Holiday Motel.  Occupying a point in the interior design spacetime continuum between Art Deco and Mid Century Modern, the Holiday Motel exudes its designer's good aesthetic sense to leave alone what is priceless and only append where necessary.

Which brings me to the inspiration for this post and perhaps the oddest appraisal this motel has ever received.  Who would've imagined that not in San Francisco, Miami Beach or any of the design hotspots in the U.S. but here in unapologetically uncool Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, here in this typical municipal offspring of the industrial and maritime trades of more than a century past I would happen on the coolest tiled bathroom floor I have ever seen.  (And as a victim of home renovation fever, I've seen quite a few.). Who would have guessed that the original designers of this establishment would have been moved to swing out on such a wild design fancy.  The pink wall tile with maroon bull nose and baseboard doesn't do it justice; it is singular.

If my praise rings sarcastic in its effusiveness, I do not intend it to be so  I am utterly sincere in my admiration of this floor.  Perhaps all the more so because it occupies the bottom of an otherwise unremarkable bathroom in a functionally kitschly redecorated motel in the guilelessly down-to-earth town of Sturgeon Bay.

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