Hmmmm. OK, I have three places I want to check for starters, which I can do later today; I intend to get them to knock the rate down as low as possible, whatever any of the hotels offer, because of San Francisco's insane hotel tax. New York has one as well, and it's a damned good thing I remembered it; otherwise, the bill would have come as a shock.

Teppy, my thinking was basically either the hotel restaurant (hire the back room, have dinner there, have them clear it away and then party all night) or, if it's something, say South of Market, hire one of the local clubs for the evening; there are a lot of them. Being an old rock and roller, I also love the idea of hiring one of the local rehearsal rooms for the evening, so we could have live music for whoever wanted to play, plus they come with a built in PA system...

And my mama in law just found this one:

[link]

Internet in every room, they'd offer a 10% discount (which would go a ways toward erasing that fucking hotel tax, thank you, ex Mayor Dickhead WIllie Brown). Could book the entire hotel at a flat rate, most likely.

Need to see if they have anything suitable for a hospitality suite....

From my experience this year:

• booking an entire small hotel sounds fantastic, but I'm wary. If what happened last year happens again, we could end up with many fewer people than expected and be stuck with still having to foot the bill. The only reason we didn't get screwed at the St. Louis was because they're a big enough hotel that they were willing to renegotiate the room block without penalty less than a month from the function. I'm not sure if a boutique hotel could do that.
• the complaint I heard the most at the St. Louis was that people couldn't access the internet from their rooms. I agree that it isn't a priority for everyone, but it seemed to be extremely important to most of the group.

At least half the places I'm looking at list "data port" or "modem port" in every room. That's what we're talking about, right?

Booking an entire small hotel sounds fantastic, but I'm wary. If what happened last year happens again, we could end up with many fewer people than expected and be stuck with still having to foot the bill.

That is wary-making, but if we're able to lock in a seriously low rate (the Hayes Valley Inn has a current online special running as low as $49 and an absolute maximum non-special rate of something like $99; I don't know what group rate we could get, but presumably it'd be somewhere in between), that might be enough to prevent a repeat of last year.

Though it's frustrating that it's all so much at the mercy of craxy airline price whimsies; we can exert some small (semi)control over the hotel costs, but the folks who will ultimately decide who can and can't make it are utterly beyond our control.

Deb, no. That's likely dial-up-ready phones.

wrt the Internet, I'm going in assuming (based on my own experience) the hotels will have 1 of 3 situations: 1) not at all 2) only in the lobby and/or conference rooms 3) everywhere. After NOLA, I don't see #1 or #2 leading to shiny happy Buffistas.

Debet, Nic just told me that "data ports" in every room means that the hotel is DSL-wired. Surely that's what we're looking at?

JZ, one of the deals on booking an entire small place is that we wouldn't be getting on a per-room basis; the likelihood is a flat fee for the time allotted.

And if there is in fact a nice PA-ready rehearsal room in SOMA or South Beach, how would people feel? I'm thinking four limos from hotel to rehearsal room and back again would do it....

charmed by "Betsy Goes To SF" doggie children's book thoughts Tep.

Debet, Nic just told me that "data ports" in every room means that the hotel is DSL-wired. Surely that's what we're looking at?

IME, it can go either way, with that language, so you'd have to ask them whether the data ports are dial-up or Ethernet. If they have no idea what you're talking about, it's probably dial-up.

Surely not everyone cares about having internet access in their room? For instance, I really don't.

I don't either -- to me, part of the fun of being on vacation is getting a break from the screen -- but, as others have said, it does seem to be dealbreaker-y for many people.