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We’re coming out of the long weekend with guns blazing. Eighty degrees. Sunny. Severe sundress warnings in effect for the tristate area. That’s a beach day on any calendar. Lucky for you, we happen to know a sandy spot that’s easily accessible… via elevator. Introducing the Dream Downtown, a summer-loving MePa hotel that’s capped with the first rooftop beach in Manhattan history, soft-opening this week. What you’re looking at here is essentially a Saint-Tropez-themed version of the elevated lounge. A sand-covered, bamboo-shaded oasis situated on the second floor, where you’ll come for a dip in the glass-bottom pool anytime the UV index breaks 7. (Or anytime you’re taking a summer Tuesday.) At the precise moment when the sun’s at its strongest, you’ll want to shift from the first-floor lobby (with views up into the glass-bottom swimming pool) to the beach deck, secure a place to sit and drop by the bar for a piña colada. You’ll find it toward the back, surrounded by picnic tables and located on a plot of white sand. And though it may have all the telltale signs of an exclusive beach club, the pool is open to the public, so access won’t require a room key, a cabana reservation or even a properly zinc-covered nose. But you’ll probably want to have the zinc just in case. |
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Archive
Category: Hotel
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| DECKED OUT |
| Press Lounge at Ink48 Hotel |
| There’re a few crucial ingredients to a successful rooftop lounge: 360-degree views. Seasonal cocktails. Generous salumi plates. Now take that, blow it out by 3,000 square feet and throw in a wading pool and a bunch of couches. The result: a roof deck that roof decks want to hang out on.
Press Lounge at Ink48 Hotel, 653 11th Ave, 212-757-2224 |
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We’ve been saying it for years: if you’re going for a drink in an underground lounge in a boutique hotel in Tribeca, there should at least be some bullfighting capes on the walls.
Finally, someone listened. Introducing Toro, the dark, lush new hangout at the Thompson Smyth Hotel in Tribeca, opening this Wednesday to inspire carnal tendencies and serve up blood orange caipirinhas in equal measure. It’s dark down there. And carved up into lots of nooks and crannies that are decked in rough-hewn wood, splashed with lots of red paint and protected by matador capes hanging on the walls. It’s just the kind of subterranean hideaway you’ve been wanting to descend upon for a secret, late-night autumnal rendezvous. Drop by after 10pm and commandeer the plush, circular red bench in the heart of the lounge. You can’t miss it. It’s the one with the massive pair of bull’s horns on top. From here you and your co-conspirators of the Tribeca night will survey cavorting hotel guests, sip on infused cachaça and mingle with the collected after-parties from a dozen nearby loft parties. And at least one rodeo. |
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August is a time of casual diversions, lazy Sundays and even lazier Mondays.
But when Tuesday becomes even more languid, well, that’s a sign that all this summer casualness is approaching a dangerous crescendo.
The only possible antidote we can think of: a crisp gin martini, preferably in a handsomely appointed lounge of a slightly formal persuasion.
Introducing Salon Millesime, a glossy new vintage hotel lounge, opening tonight in NoMad for your cocktailing, sultry live music and late-night lounging needs.
Designed as a regal rumpus room for Sinatra and Fitzgerald types, Millesime (French for vintage) is decked out in tiger-printed chairs, ebony and bronze tables and a retro cocktail list to match: sidecars, Last Words and martinis on top of martinis.
It’s the sort of dark, seductive space where you might find yourself getting a little comfortable with a French 75-loving date, and all the while not realizing that an alluring chanteuse in a red dress has taken the low-slung stage at the center of the lounge.
Her job is to make you forget all about the pork belly lollipops and croque-monsieurs you’ve been snacking on, and descend deeper and deeper into the quiet, gin-bathed haze of an old school evening as a master piano man tickles the ivories on the salon’s grand Steinway.
Just to clear up any confusion, that’s a piano.
Salon Millesime
92 Madison Avenue
(at 29th Street)
New York, NY 10016
212-889-7100
Downtown.
It’s changing.
Finally.
Only took a decade, but the most controversial 16 acres in America has a Freedom Tower going up and a Deutsche Bank building coming down.
But today we bring you a different reason to visit those grounds: the new Living Room Bar and Terrace at the W Downtown, opening today as your go-to for breezy, post-office rendezvous.
Among the new hotel’s 58 floors, you’ll want to concern yourself primarily with the fifth, which looks like where Judy Jetson would go for astro-cocktails if she worked at a galactic bond trading office: everything is shiny, white, metallic and glowing. Just like the future should be.
Stepping off the elevator, you’ll be dwarfed by the undulating ribbed ceiling, a strange organic shape pulsing with the heartbeat of thousands of recessed LED lights. Glide over to the bar, where you’ll find a more familiar take on downtown in the form of cocktails like the Brooklyn Bridge, Five Points and Dutch Courage, a jenever and tonic take on the English gin version.
But to really appreciate your locale, step onto the sprawling wraparound terrace, with the canyons of FiDi rising up all around, not to mention the Freedom Tower itself. Consider this your front row seat to the rise of New York’s next icon.
Because Lady Gaga can’t last forever.
| Living Room Bar and Terrace at the W Downtown 123 Washington St New York, NY 10006 646-826-8646 official website |
