Favorite Haunt May Be A Hotel

The Mayflower Park Hotel may be playing host to a freeloading guest. On three different, unrelated occasions in the past few weeks, guests have complained about "a strange presence."

All had been booked into room 1120 in the 70-year-old hotel.

One guest said, "I feel as if someone is in there with me." Another guest, a Japanese visitor, insisted on another room.

On the good side, however, all three guests felt the ghostly presence was "benign."

The Mayflower's general manager, Marc Nowak, is not taking the complaints lightly. To check them out, he slept in room 1120.

"Maybe I'm not tuned in," reports Nowak. "I didn't feel a thing." The room is on the southwest corner of the 11th floor of the hotel at Fourth Avenue and Olive Way, facing The Bon.

When last heard from, Nowak was paging through the Yellow Pages, looking for a psychic or a ghost buster.

Next assignment: Seattle may be losing a newsworthy resident: Karenna Gore, 23, daughter of Vice President Al and Tipper Gore. Karenna, who has been working as an editorial assistant at Slate, Microsoft's online magazine, has plans to wed a New Yorker in November.

Gore's fiance is Dr. Andrew Newman Schiff, 31, a primary-care physician at New York Hospital. He's the offspring of a well-known family. (His great-aunt, Dorothy Schiff, is a former owner of the New York Post.)

It's apparent Karenna Gore (known to the Secret Service by the code name "Smurfette") has had matrimony on her mind. Slate recently posted a Gore-bylined story titled "Modem Marriage."

Gore's story opens with this arresting sentence: "The first weddings happened by capture." The story links to other Web sites, including one that features off-color wedding humor.

"Smurfette" is no prude.

Ocean blew: Seattle trumpeter Fred Radke is back from an ocean cruise. Radke, whose band plays the Garden Court at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel, spent two weeks aboard the Cushing, a Navy destroyer traveling from Guam to Hawaii.

At the request of one of the Cushing's officers - his son, Navy Chief Maurice Radke - Fred put together a band of 360 sailors. The band performed on arrival in Hawaii.

Radke's wife, singer Gina Funes, reports all went well. She says, "Fred gets seasick, but he took along pills."

Bed and briefcase: Overheard on a Seattle street corner while waiting for the "walk" light: a couple discussing a single friend who "lives" at his office.

The fellow was speaking: "This guy has a (couch) and a small refrigerator in his office. He and his wife split, and it's the only way he can afford to keep two households going."

The light changed. The conversation continued, before trailing off: "I know at least three other men who are living in their offices. . . ."

Faux paw: The Humane Society billboard on Fourth Avenue South near the Kingdome shows an appealing calico cat with this caption: "Looking for Mr. Right."

What does it mean? Presumably, the calico is seeking a new owner.

On the other hand, calicoes are almost invariably female. Could the SF (single feline) be searching for an SMC (single male cat) for an LTR (long-term relationship)? Sounds politically incorrect.

Jean Godden's column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the Local News section of The Times. Her phone is 464-8300.