Chapter 3
A lime green Art Deco pile firmly planted on the no-longer-fashionable end of Miami Beach, the Golden Palace is a crew-only hotel with which all World Wind flight attendants have a love/hate relationship. The poorly lit, gold-flecked linoleum lobby—too dark in the daytime, way too bright at night—helps manage expectations, but there’s still a moment of disappointed remembrance each time I open the press-board door onto my stuffy, wicker-laden room. Oh right, I always recall, climbing on the bed to reach the broken ceiling fan chain or hammering at the moisture-swollen shutters, this place is a dump.
However, the management goes to great lengths to see that crews are made comfortable. Many of us pass through here two or three times during the course of a six-, seven-, or eight-d
