Overall I was happy with my stay at Sonder, all things considered. The location was incredibly convenient for me so worth the expense (which itself was relatively reasonable — hashtag en why see).
On the upside, the room is spare but spacious, with tall windows, a modern color palette, new sheets and pillows, a big enough TV that supports Chromecasting, and a desk for working. The internet was sufficiently fast and the lights didn't shine too bright. The shower had many spouts and spigots like a vertical car wash, and I imagine I was able to wash off most of whatever New York tried to infuse into my skin.
All in all, I found contentedness.
Yet, there was no kettle for boiling water with which to make my bougie coffee using my hand grinder and AeroPress. In desperation, I attempted to make do with the apparently environmentally sound K Cup alternative, but merely ended up with hot brown water. I thought these things were idiot-proof, but I guess they didn't user test on someone like me. Word to the wise: don't make my mistake — just do the proper thing and give in a daily pilgrimage to Devoción, the Columbian third wave caffeine dealer a few blocks away.
For the bummers: the bathroom is obscenely small and awkward. If you decide that you'd rather not bring your #2s to Starbucks, make time for some yoga ahead of time so when your knees are pressed into your cheekbones, you won't hold the compression stress in your back. In the winter, or when it's cold, it will also be cold inside the room owning to those large, thin windows I mentioned above. And as if it was bad enough that the windows seemed cut from a single pane of cellophane, the doors might be as well, which is to say that you may hear all about how "Benjamin" was cheating on his girlfriend-but-not-official-girlfriend and while she knows that they're not "official", it still hurts, and of course NOW he says that he loves her because he's drunk and it's 4am, but it's not like he said that he loved her before, and if you do happen to hear more of this story, you can expect it to loop for, say, an hour or so, before you eventually find the helpfully provided traffic-cone orange ear plugs should such a drama arise in the hallway.
But at least over the tall, too-thin windows are near-black-out shades that will keep out most of the sun in the morning that shall inevitably rise in two hours, and hey, it's New York baby in the nearly post-pandemic not yet pre-apocalyptic era, so what's there to complain about? Really?