Pilot’s quirky hobby turned him into an Instagram star
By
Rosie Gizauskas, The Sun
Published
Dec. 13, 2017
Updated
Dec. 13, 2017, 4:12 p.m. ET
Pilot Bill Young has become an overnight celebrity on Instagram — all because he likes to document the carpets in the hotels he stays in.
From Rotterdam to Los Angeles and everywhere in between, Young has been taking photos of the crazy, colorful and surreal patterns he’s been finding on lobby and bedroom floors.
Your standard chain hotel usually conjures up images of beige walls and carpets, but it turns out that hotel rugs are a lot more artistic than you’d realize.
Young started recording the varying carpets in his hotel rooms on Instagram in 2015, under the handle @myhotelcarpet.
But the account didn’t start to get much attention until his daughter, Jill, encouraged her Twitter followers to visit it.
She made the online plea last Christmas, with the message: “All I Want For Christmas is for my Dad’s hotel carpet Instagram to go viral, please help this happen.”
Much to their surprise, interest in the page skyrocketed and he currently has more than 661,000 followers.
Young told Buzzfeed: “I just decided to do it as something fun while on the road.”
“Some of them have like, almost weird Illuminati symbols on them…or big badges or crazy gargoyles on them, or something like that.”
Young’s daughter added: “I was always surprised he never put in effort to get a whole bunch of followers.”
She continued: “He didn’t really care about that, he just really liked carpet and that made me really happy.”
“People have been overwhelmingly kind and saying such nice, positive things about my dad and calling him the ‘Carpet King’ — someone even said, ‘I would die for you, Bill Young.’ ”
There is a reason that hotels all have such wacky patterns and it doesn’t have anything to do with some giant tacky carpet warehouse offering discounts to hotel owners.
Their main purpose is to hide any stains and to also mask any particular wear to certain areas where guests walk more regularly.
According to research, the carpets in Vegas casinos are even worse — and it’s for a scientific reason.
Dave Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, told Wired.com: “The carpets definitely play a big part in keeping the town as surreal as it is. Thought has been given to the carpeting by people who want to create this special atmosphere, [one] that defines Vegas as a gambling city.”
“Casino carpet is known as an exercise in deliberate bad taste that somehow encourages people to gamble.”