D.A.R.E. to stay at these hotels

The online magazine Perceptive Travel always has cool stuff (full disclosure — I write for their blog) but this month’s issue had an article that really caught my eye since I’m the mother of a teenager.

“Let’s Spend the Night Together,” or rock star rooms with a grisly past.

Meaning, um, the rock star died there, and each time it was a drug overdose.

Call me sicko parent (my daughter sure will when she hears about this latest Great Idea for Travel) but I can’t think of a better way to drill the dangers of drugs into a teen’s head than to check in with them and spend a creepy night where Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons or former New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunder shot up their last.

It’ll deglamorize the hell out of drug use.

You also get to work in a visit to Los Angeles (Joplin) the Joshua Tree National Park area (Parsons) or New Orleans (Thunder) respectively.

The PT article’s author, Chris Epting, has a book out that includes many less-frightening rock n’ roll landmarks across North America: “Led Zeppelin Crashed Here.” He has a gift for re-creating the atmosphere of the times when he stays at these places, complete with playing related music in the room and reading pop culture history books about the deceased. In fact, he even creeps himself out, a little bit.

“Busted flat in Baton Rouge…,” indeed.

Technorati tags: travel, family travel, drug abuse, hotels, rock n roll