The Hotel Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave


This story in this morning’s NYT is wild.

On a June afternoon in 2018, a man named Mickey Barreto checked into the New Yorker Hotel. He was assigned Room 2565, a double-bed accommodation with a view of Midtown Manhattan almost entirely obscured by an exterior wall. For a one-night stay, he paid $200.57.

But he did not check out the next morning. Instead, he made the once-grand hotel his full-time residence for the next five years, without ever paying another cent.

It’s screaming to be made into a weird little movie. At one point the guy becomes owner of the whole hotel. Stranger than fiction.