Book Two Nights and the Queer Nonbinary BIPOC Trotskyite Suite Comes With a Complementary Bottle of Veuve Clicquot

In his essay “The Language of Privilege,” Nicholas Clairmont described wokeness as “a bourgeois sop to self-dealing millionaires.” The point of gentry socialist wokese, a language full of signals about inclusion, is that it excludes — it signals I live at the higher end of the upper-middle-class. “Rather than empowering the marginalized, it condescends to them and entrenches the privileges of the already advantaged.” Harvard undergraduates wearing keffiyehs on campus, aggressively performing their solidarity with the oppressed….

….are signaling their readiness to interview with Bain and McKinsey. They speak the language of high status, which pretends to attack status and elevate the low, who play their role by remaining low so they can be spoken of warmly for signaling purposes. Very few people saw what I wrote, years ago, about Ojai magazine, which is full of militantly anti-capitalist editorial content that appears alongside advertisements for six-million-dollar hillside estates with saltwater pools. We’re enduring a moment of fashion for claiming status and comfort by the subterfuge of gesturing at how much you despise status and comfort, insert own joke about Zohran Mamdani’s childhood here. Extremely wealthy former CEO:

So.

The Radical Hotel, in Asheville, North Carolina, which I have now seen but mercifully not stayed in, features graffiti-themed rooms. If you stay at the Radical, which called to me from a distance by the mere fact of its name, you get this:

It’s so wonderfully authentic, as if MS-13 had actually just broken in and trashed the place, but in a really designy and chic vernacular.

Just imagine the…pleasure of…spending the night in this:

It’s street-elegant encampment chic, like the team that designed the Bellagio or a palace guest room in Kuwait City started smoking fentanyl right before they started their next project.

The Radical promises “Luxe With Edge,” and here’s a logo on the hotel’s website:

Sample hallway:

Luxe! With edge.

Downmarket is upmarket. High status is a freeway underpass near Skid Row. When you check in here, and this is an actual sign at the front door, you’re entering the radical sector:

All this radicalism is a product of — well, here:

Radicalism, a new product from Hilton. I suspect we’re going to see more of this, as down becomes a sociocultural signal for up: design-shabby, “luxe with edge,” low end as high end, ugliness performing as elegance.

Graffiti everywhere / “Hilton’s Tapestry Collection.”

We’re owed a Karen Bass Suite at the Four Seasons, with the glass of broken crack pipes crunching under your feet as you walk to your Balenciaga “stained mattress.” The MacArthur Park Collection, tent-style rooms start at $650. Preview of the hottest new boutique hotel of 2026:

“Ohh, I absolutely adore this room! It’s so…full of graffiti.”