Up on the Roof, Under the Stars, Down the Hatch

Up on the Roof, Under the Stars, Down the Hatch

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.

With altitude comes attitude. My attempts Saturday to locate a suitable rooftop destination for three friends and me illustrated the point. I called 60 Thompson, a hotel in SoHo, to make sure its rooftop bar wasn’t closed for a private party. Experience had taught me that rooftop bars often are.

“It’s open,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “But it’s for members and hotel guests only.”

I asked, “What’s a member?” I wasn’t aware that you could join or pay dues to a hotel.

“A member,” she said, “is chosen by the hosts only.” Before I could ask who these mystical hosts were and by what mysterious criteria they made their selections, she was gone.

My next conversation, with someone at the Hotel on Rivington, on the Lower East Side, was even more confusing. “We do have a rooftop bar,” she confirmed, “but I don’t believe it’s open tonight.”

“A private party?” I asked.

“We do have private parties there sometimes,” she answered, “and sometimes we have public parties.”

And on this night?

They had neither, she said.

So why was it closed?

“I don’t know,” she said, her bored tone suggesting that she was as untroubled by her ignorance as I was exasperated with it.

Even when a rooftop bar is open, it’s rarely easily accessible. You have to find a special entrance, take a special elevator, follow a trail of bread crumbs left by the last pathetic saps who dared to dream of drinks under the stars.

Take mad46, the bar on top of the Roosevelt Hotel, in Midtown.

The main bank of elevators won’t get you there. Instead you must go to a specific northeast corner of the hotel. on the sidewalk there I spotted an official-looking sentry dressed all in black, with a very conspicuous, secret service-style walkie-talkie. The walkie-talkie and its cousin, the headset-and-earpiece combo, allow crowd managers not just to communicate with one another but also to create an air of extreme exclusivity. Needless to say these accessories are ubiquitous among the staff at rooftop bars.

More rewarding too. While there are beautifully manicured hedges at mad46 and some inviting daybeds with white canopies, the cocktails are too sweet, the wines by the glass are pedestrian, the plastic cups in which drinks are served are flimsy, and the food is unforgivable. Sometimes a rooftop drinker gets hungry; he or she should have the possibility of an edible snack. The duck quesadilla at mad46 did not qualify. I could make a better treat out of emery boards and dental floss, and I’m not a particularly gifted cook (or cosmetician).