“Everywhere I stay becomes a part of me in the long run”

“I almost become a different person for each different vibe in hotels,” says snowboarding legend Shaun White, who just retired from professional sports last year at 35. “I’m gonna become, you know, this person in this place at that time.” For a guy who spent two decades locked into intense daily training for high-stakes competitions, where his fate would be decided in less than a minute on the halfpipe, it’s no wonder he’d want to escape to another place, and another persona, now and then.

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Recalling his many travels touring for pro skateboarding and snowboarding competitions, and with his band, Bad Things, White talks of taking on the character of the hotel he checked into. “I was down at Be Tulum and you almost feel like you’ve joined like an ashram culture,” he says of the bohemian vibe of the Mexico hotel. “Everybody’s listening to this certain kind of music, and you can’t help but think: Oh, I have to get this outfit to go with my incense and stuff. You take a little bit of it home with you; everywhere I stay becomes a part of me in the long run.”

In one particular instance, this saw him channeling a famous British songstress in a New York City hotel lobby. “It all started on a trip where we got completely snowed in, so I got on YouTube and learned just one song on piano, Someone Like You by Adele,” White recalls. “I’m thinking, there will be a scenario someday where there’s gonna be a piano and I’m gonna play the song.” That moment came late one night at the Bowery Hotel. “After an awards show, I wander into the lobby and there’s a piano—it’s my moment,” he says. “I start playing the song and heads turn; everyone came over and surrounded me and started singing along, my buddy’s just crying into his cheeseburger, it’s like four or five in the morning,” he says. “That had to be the best.”

“Las Vegas is a place like that, too,” he says of the city where everything seems possible. “I once had a friend call down to the front desk and ask for 50 pies, and they’re like, ‘What? What kind of pies?’” Cut to the friends handing the desserts out to hungry guests in the lobby. “In places like Las Vegas, you see some true colors come through and you think: Wow, I didn’t know you had that in you,” he says. “But I like that: It’s fun to see how a hotel can transform somebody and show you something you didn’t know about them.”

And how do hotel staff feel about White’s many alter egos roaming their hallways? “As long as you’re not upsetting anybody or making it difficult for the staff, I think everything’s kind of fair game,” he says. “It’s kind of your getaway space; the staff want you to let loose, they want you to be like: Alright, I feel comfortable enough here to really just be myself,” he says. “You’re all roommates at this point, you know? I like that about hotels, personally.”

Martina Sheehan

Writer

Martina Sheehan is a Chicago-based travel writer-editor who has written for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Budget Travel, Forbes Travel Guides, and Time Out guidebooks, among others. She has traveled to 38 countries and 46 states, and never leaves home without a good map app, a themed playlist, and her daughter.