Helix

The lobby may be channelling the Starship Enterprise, with flashing light squares and blue plastic check-in stands, and you may enter it through a purple curtain that sweeps open as you approach, but this does nothing to diminish the well-thought-out style and comfort of the rooms. Here, daring color matches (blue-green velour couch meets brownish-red footstool in a suite, for example) work, and there’s a 1950s-slanted attention to detail with Formica-look walls in the bathroom and curtains in colorful retro prints. Warholesque art on the walls, and a whole-wall black and white surfing mural in some rooms, adds eclecticism. The whole is actually pretty relaxing, in a pop culture kind of way. This is perhaps the Kimpton group’s most far-out property (speaking metaphorically not geographically, that is). You’ll recognise it by the large Magritte-style painting on the outside. There’s a complimentary champagne hour in the evening.