If you don’t post a selfie and spend all evening checking your “likes,” did you ever really make it up onto the roof? Even with frosty beverages, it’s still sweltering beneath the canopy at Eataly’s rooftop beer garden, La Birreria. The 15th-floor view is, admittedly, pretty great, with clear views of both the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building, though most of the patrons seemed more interested in staring at their iPhones than taking in the sights. They didn’t have any luck, but a gaggle of girls who entered screaming, “None of us are over 21!” did. Young guys clad in white calf-socks and baggy khaki shorts nagged the bouncer at the ground-level waiting area, a glorified alley decorated with too-cheery pop art, and loudly contemplated whether they should slip him some cash to cut the line, as the coolest kind of people do. Purple (180 Orchard St.) on the Lower East Side. Such was the scene on a recent Saturday at Mr. The reality is that you have to wait an hour to even get to the roof, then another half-hour to purchase a can of beer, and your friends are still stuck in line while you’re surrounded by bottle-service-loving blowhards who flock to rooftop bars like moths to a flame. The concept is full of lovely possibilities - relaxed afternoons that fade into tipsy evenings, dramatic views, refreshing micheladas, friendship and fun - but it rarely lives up to the dreams. The rooftop bar is summer’s most heartbreaking promise. I swore it’d be the last time I’d attempt a rooftop bar for the year, but I knew I was lying. “I really need a drink now,” I said, and found the closest mediocre Irish bar at ground level. The alternative roof we’d been siphoned onto wasn’t so much a roof but a cramped holding pen at elevation, with far too many cubicle dwellers and far too few bartenders. Only then did a hostess inform us that the main roof was booked for a private event. My friend and I followed the misguided masses up a dank stairwell that finally spit us out onto a roof. The elevator came to a stop, the doors opened, and the operator mumbled something. An operator pushed a button - you’re rarely allowed to command your own elevator to ascend to a rooftop bar, as if to emphasize that you’re not so much a person but a dumb sheep willing to pay $20 and wait an hour to drink a mojito while staring at the Empire State Building. “It’s not a cool place.” Stefano GiovanniniĪnd yet here we were, being ordered down multiple long hallways by various security officers before finally getting herded into an elevator. “It’s usually not too crowded,” I swore to my friend. Before I could talk some sense into myself, I was dragging a whiny but obedient friend across the street to the Sanctuary Hotel and its Haven Rooftop. “Cocktailssssss … on a rooooof … summery … so nicccce,” an insane phantom hissed in my head. ![]() ![]() The sun was just starting to set, temperatures were pleasantly mild and Midtown looked about as charming as Midtown can. Several weeks ago, on one of the first nice nights of spring, I emerged from my office’s fluorescent-lit confines. The weather finally warms up, and I’m tempted by a trashy siren’s song luring me to drink on a rooftop.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |