They may be a favourite of serial killers and runaways, but a night in a rest stop where no one knows your name is better than therapy
I was in California last week, in Los Angeles for a night, where I stayed in a chain hotel in Beverly Hills, and then in San Jose, where I checked into an airport motel. The latter was situated on a traffic island between interstates, one running towards Oakland, the other in the direction of San Francisco to the north and LA to the south.
It was a transitional place, the kind where no one stays for longer than a night or ever returns to, and where, for dinner, you have the choice of walking along the freeway to a branch of Chipotle, or using the vending machine in the lobby. More pertinently, it was the kind of place that features in American pop culture as a rest stop for serial killers, runaways and those with no final destination in mind.
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As the violence escalated and it all went Ken Loach, I wondered if I should be shielding my own baby’s eyes
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