The Washington Post reports today that CityCenter is likely to snag a 370-room Conrad Hotel, Hilton's "contemporary luxury" brand so far found in the US only in NY, Chicago, and a couple other cities. It so happens we've stayed in two of the Conrads because our Bisnow events were nearby, and can attest to the hipness of the template. Above is a picture we snapped recently of the lobby atrium of the NY Conrad, next door to the World Financial Center where we hosted the "Future of Downtown." This seemed to us to illustrate at the time the future of New York's downtown, but now we realize that perhaps it represents DC's as well.

Speaking of hip hotels, just how retro can some of them get? We've written about the throwback style that is hugely in among new entrants in the Manhattan market--like the NoMad, Ace, Bowery, and Greenwich hotels--but yesterday we saw for the first time a rotary phone brought back for guests' use. We snapped this on a sneak peek at the Jade Hotel on 13th Street in the Village; some of you reading this might be old enough to remember actually using them. So now we must ask ourselves the same question we ask about our baseball cards, thin ties, and vinyl records: Why did we throw them away?