Good Lord!
I bought my wife Red Sox tickets for Mother's Day. Win Win proposition. Usually we spend 250.00 or 400.00 on a hotel plus parking. This time, I figure what the heck. We'll go to a game, stay at Howard Johnson's. It's only one night. How bad can it be? 
The people were very nice. The parking was tight, but they rent spaces out for the game, I get it. We check in, no hassles. I paid 165.00 or so for the room. In Boston, that's cheap. We walk upstairs to the second floor, way to the back of the Hotel to our room. We are literally 100 feet from the back of Fenway Park by Van Ness Street. We can see the gym and watch the players warming up for the game. Cool I thought.
The Hotel hasn't been upgraded in about 60 years. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls, the heater/air conditioner sounds like it's on its last legs. When you flush the toilet, the flush suction is so strong that water actually sprays out of the toilet at you. Again, one night, it's all about the baseball. 
The look on my wife's face is priceless. I call her the 'Princess' for a very good reason. I convince her that it's an experience, we're here to see the game. She rolls with it, begrudgingly, but she rolls with it.
We go to the game, Sox win, Lester pitches brilliantly. It's all good. We go back to the room, and turn on the TV. No channel matches the name indicator on the top left of the screen. The TV is not a flat screen, but one of those sets that have the big fat back on it. I figure out what channel Hawaii Five-0 is on, the Weather Channel of course. Whatever, so we go to sleep after the show. Shortly thereafter, the drunks come out of the bars after attending the game, nice and loud (been there done that). Keep in mind that the windows are about an eighth of inch thick and open by turning a lever on the bottom and pushing it out, that's how old we're talking. That passes. Back to sleep. The the fire alarm goes off at Fenway Park. Very loud! That's for a half hour or so. Then we hear Bang Bang Bang, on the door of the room next to us. Open the door it's the Police! 
Eventually we get about three hours sleep. When I get up the next morning to go get coffee at Starbucks, there are two officers sitting in chairs by the door which is wide open to the room next door. Apparently, they were guarding the crime scene. To paraphrase Robert Duvall in the movie "Apocalypse Now", I love the smell of a crime scene in the morning. 
Boy this trip ended up costing me a fortune, because now I had to take the 'Princess' to Newbury Street shopping, to make up for this experience. Moral of the story, don't skimp on a Hotel in Boston.