You paid $300 to stay on a fold out couch in a strangers living room. $1000 sounds like market price for a hotel room then.

This is fair. But the market of barebones $300/night sleeping spots was underserved by hotels, and likely even hostels.

Couldn't you stay in a nice $300/night hotel and just close your eyes when you walked by the pool?

Was there an event? I stayed at the historic Boulderado hotel for 350/night 13 years ago when Airbnb was getting started.

What you described is an experience I would expect using couchsurfing.com which was around long before airbnb.

Source: Have hosted couchsurfers very long ago

I find this hard to believe unless some major event was occurring while you were staying in Boulder and you purchased at the last minute.

Can you actually? Every major city I've been to in the past five years is pretty harsh on that sort of thing. I'd happily pay $300 to avoid the risks of arrest and having all my stuff stolen.

If you don't look poor it is considered normal to sleep on public coaches in terminals. You might need to sit up though.

Funny but couches can be pretty comfortable, and in the days of Airbnb being a monetized couchsurf, you'd at least wake up to fresh coffee

Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door

> there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now

Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.

> Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.

Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.

DC Union station charged me I think 10usd per bag per 24hr , no smaller unit accommodated, but I decided $30 was worth it to enjoy my Amtrak layover for 3 hours and walked to the botanic garden unencumbered

Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.

All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)

Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.

Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"