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Jazz Age Hotel Normandie may roar again as ‘pot-tel’

Marijuana advocates are renovating the aging Koreatown building, starting with Room 420.

April 19, 2010|By John Hoeffel, Los Angeles Times

Most recently, with rooms advertised on banners at $49.99, it catered to budget travelers, long-term tenants and Korean-speaking visitors. Its nightclub and restaurant, with their fanciful and outdated decor, are abandoned. Its lobby houses an odd assemblage of furniture and vending machines. Its rooms are decorated in a palette of flesh tones. It is comfortable but worn.

Peron has promised rooms with a "hippie rustic" theme, but so far there is little evidence either of that or of the stoner kitsch that has become standard fare at Los Angeles dispensaries. Before the money from donations ran out recently, Peron and his crew had been yanking up carpet, refinishing oak floors and painting rooms in soothing earth tones. They started, of course, with Room 420.

Very little marijuana is evident. But Eastman says the hotel has had some pot-smoking visitors. And Peron and some friends have established an outpost on the fourth floor.

On a recent day, Caroline Lewis had a blunt wedged into a notch in an ashtray beside her bed. She said she smokes pot for back pain from the epidurals she had during four C-sections. She moved in about three months ago and loves the vibe. "Oh, God, it is so freaking terrific," she said. "It'll give medical patients a safe environment where they aren't hassled by the police."

She lives with Dennis Carpenter, who says he has been smoking marijuana to relieve stress. He works for Evangelista and was helping refurbish the rooms. "I was envisioning it to be like a green hotel," he said. "I was expecting it to be a lifelong project."

john.hoeffel@latimes.com

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