by FRANK BRUNI, The New York Times, July 22, 2010
The scene at Press, the rooftop bar of the new Ink48 hotel
Photo: Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times
Source: The New York Times
Shaken or stirred? Red or white? Draft or bottled? For most of the year these are the biggest questions confronting the thirsty New Yorker. And no answer is wrong.
But when the sun is strong and the days are long, an additional, equally important pair of options crops up, and the choice between them can make or break a good night.
Stay down or go up?
I speak of the rooftop bar, an institution with special relevance to New York City, where the roofs are higher, the views longer, the promise grander. In this vertical wonderland it seems only right to ascend.
But doing so is dicey, as recent skyward excursions reminded me. On a rooftop bar you indeed inch closer to heaven. But you can also wind up a whole lot closer to hell.
So a primer is in order: a set of instructions on what to hope for, what to brace for, and when, how, why and where a rooftop can be most pleasurable or insufferable. Icarus headed toward the sun in a heedless fashion — and more or less got burned. Don’t make the same mistake.
Know for starters that many of the city’s most vaunted rooftop bars don’t merely have velvet ropes, they have velvet barricades — sometimes in the form of oddly restrictive admission policies, sometimes in the form of random, inexplicable hours. [...]