Once an exquisite, expensive hotel in the 1920's and 1930's, the Barcelona Hotel has now deteriorated into a transit hotel in downtown San Diego. Within the walls and down the halls of the old hotel tales of despair, loneliness, drugs, madness, betrayal, murder, love and redemption are played out by the dispossessed trying to survive another day. Beatrice Bloom, a hard, tough business woman in her 80's, manages the hotel for Addison Cliff, the owner. She hires Billy Wine, a sexually confused and frustrated young man raised in orphanages, as a front desk clerk. He begins to take drugs which leads to acts of desperation and murder. Beatrice Bloom also hires Richard Lee, a bitter and unemployed middle-aged construction worker, as a night security guard. He becomes a witness to the lives of some of the tenants: Wendy Miller, an elderly lady who waits each night on the curb for deceased husband; Leo Weltz, a divorced man who misses his daughter, drinks too much, and loses his money in the Black Monday stock market crash; Lonnie Crow, a retired Merchant Marine, who can no longer walk to the corner store and take care of himself. Beatrice and Richard form a bond of friendship and together they deal with the problems of the hotel. Danek Gorski is a disillusioned war veteran and displaced steel worker from Pittsburgh. He decides to stop drinking and start a new life in San Diego. He rents a room at the Barcelona Hotel. Another veteran of the war, Larry Posey hires him as a security guard at a downtown high-rise, tries to help Danek with his trauma from the war, but in the end is betrayed. A transgender woman from La Paz with a life long dream to study art in the United States, Maricruz Ramos is scorned by the Catholic Church and hated by her father for her gender identity. She moves to Tijuana to work and save money to cross the border. There she meets Febe Cruz, a transgender brothel madam, who helps her transition into a woman and cross the border. In the United States, Maricruz rents a room at the hotel. Billy Wine mistakenly believes she is his lover and savior.Along with other memorable tenants, Barcelona Hotel: A Hard-Core Hotel is a gritty portrayal of living on the edge of society.