A Tale of Two Lodgings, Part One: Borg's Motel in Pacific Grove

I kinda fell in love with a motel. Friday and Saturday nights we were in Pacific Grove, California, on the Monterey Peninsula, for a wedding. What I really like about PG is that it is everything wonderful about coastal California, without the slightest whiff of pretention or even fanciness. Maybe all the fanciness has been syphoned off by Carmel, its neighbor. But all I know is that, right smack down on the prettiest part of the waterfront, where you would expect to find something expensive, swanky, or trying-to-be-swanky, you find this precious gem. My friends, I give you Borg's Motel.




I want to kiss it right on the mouth for wearing its "motel" label so unashamedly, especially in this age, when anyone with a spare room can call themselves a B&B, and any tiny lodging place, no matter how dingy, is a "boutique hotel."
And here is the key: Borg's is so dated, so seemingly untouched for the last 45 years, that it is almost hip. Like, if I read that some high-end designer had bought Borg's as a pet project, I would be, like, "Yup, I get it." Kind of a Prada Marfa thing. But, I mean, just look at it.


I mean, the floating side tables, the dark and light veneers, the Master and Commander-ish seascape? That painting alone is like, so perilously close to an ironic quotation of period motel décor. But this is the thing itself. So lacking in furbelows and "luxury" that it looks totally fresh. I don't know about you, but when I saw that room, I was in the mood for romance.


When I checked in, the friendly desk guy Frank told me, "Don't forget, from 6 to 9 every morning, here in the office, we have hot beverages." He didn't say "coffee and tea," allowing me to compose a mental list of other delectable hot beverages they could surprise us with. Sake? Hot chocolate? Mulled cider? But it was just coffee and tea after all.


I liked this tiny breezeway. And here is the view from the Borg.



That's Lovers' Point. And the view in the other direction was just as pretty. When we arrived at this place, I said to Matt that it was like the Bates Motel, but I didn't mean in the Psycho, mummified corpse of Mother, way. More in the modern, California-in-the-60's sense. Kind of a Hitchcock-blonde vibe. After all, Hitchcock lived in Scott's Valley for a while, just up into the hills from Santa Cruz, and now when I watch his movies from that era, like Vertigo and The Birds, it's obvious how taken he was with the look and the landscape of Northern California. So stylish.



Here's the town as seen from Lovers' Point. A friendly, pretty place, really just about the ideal little coastal town. More even than Santa Cruz, because here you're less likely to walk in on a homeless man washing his ass at the sink in the women's bathroom at the bookstore downtown. Just to give an example from my experience.



So I give both Pacific Grove and Borg's Motel my hearty recommendation. I would love to get back there soon. And good grief, it's cheap! Our room was $82 a night (that's the winter rate), and the oceanfront rooms (which were all taken--practically every wedding guest was at Borg's) were just a bit more. It was clean, too.

Our San Francisco lodgings were about as different as they could be. More about that tomorrow. Thanks for scrolling, and I hope this makes you want to run away to Borg's a tiny bit. And if you go don't forget about the hot beverages.