Johnny Rotten was “a pain in the ass,” Chip Conley says. “Sinéad O’Connor, when I babysat her baby, was very nice,” he continues, drumming his fingers on the wooden table. “… MC Hammer was nice.”
Conley is sitting in the bar of the Phoenix Hotel, which he founded in the ’80s, scanning through his mental Rolodex of celebrity guests. He rattles off the names casually, as if a run-in with Sinéad O’Connor was an everyday occurrence. Because at the Phoenix, it was.
San Francisco has fancier hotels, like the Fairmont and the Palace. But it’s the Phoenix, which was retrofitted from a two-story Tenderloin motor lodge, that has reigned as the city’s magnet for celebrities, artists and musicians. Conley envisioned the Phoenix as a rock ’n’ roll hotel, a spot where touring bands could roost after a show at Slim’s or the Great American Music Hall. The bands came, and the hip crowd followed.
It’s the sort of San Francisco institution that gathers bits of lore, similar to how a sheet of flypaper catches bugs. After Kurt Cobain’s death, investigators found a second note in his wallet, separate from his suicide note, which was left on Phoenix Hotel stationery. Keanu Reeves made the news in 1993 when he cannonballed into the hotel’s pool, splashing a nearby table of IRS employees…