December 16, 2003
Bedbugs at Helmsley Hotel
Is Leona Helmsley landlady to bedbugs as well as many NY businesses? A Mexican father and son claim that they were mauled by bedbugs at the Helmsley Park Lane hotel and are suing the Leona's hotel. Last summer, Ventura Arrangoiz and Ventura Requejo stayed awoke at the Park Lane hotel with many bug bites all over their torso and arms, but did not think they were from the hotel and left for the day. Upon their return, they were relocated to another room due to "renovation." They left NY and realized the bedbugs must have been from the Park Lane, and by that time, the bed bugs had infiltrated their luggage and home in Mexico, necessitating fumigating and parts of the house being dug up.
The men's lawyers are asking for damages from "physical pain, mental anguish,
emotional distress and lost earnings." Helmsley lawyers are saying that the lawsuit is a publicity stunt, considering they have only heard about it through the media. But what a publicity stunt it is: The Queen of Mean and bedbugs!
More about the Park Lane Hotel and bedbugs. And Jeff Van Dam covered bedbugs in NY earlier in the Times.
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what exactly are these "bedbugs" anyway? mites? lice?
The Post seems to think louses/lice, but scarier. There's also a creepy thing called scabies, where you basically need to boil your sheets to disinfect the bugs.
A colleague of mine got super badly bitten by bed bugs at the Paramount a few months ago. Then another friend was put up there by a law firm and said the whole place smelled like BO. What's up with dirty expensive hotels?
Paramount is not an expensive hotel, quite cheap when compared to other NYC hotels. Also, the owner is going bankrupt- standards decline when ya cant pay the cleaners.
that's absolutely sick. how the hell do these things get there? i mean, why don't we hear of more infestations all over apartments and cheaper hotels? ick!
Here's a fun lesson about the power of the internet: Never, NEVER try to self-diagnose using internet sites.
I had ridiculously itchy legs all winter, and went on the internet trying to figure out what it was. An hour later, I was *convinced* I had scabies, freaked out and went running to my MD.
Of course, it was just basic dry legs and a little topical steroid from my derm fixed everything up. But my roomie got kinda freaked out when he came home to me running around blathering on about microscopic bugs. I think he had me pegged as OCD. (perhaps justly so).
Do scabies turn into bedbugs?