The 13-story Gansevoort hotel was next. It had just opened its rooftop bar that
evening. Up top, I found dozens of young men in striped shirts and young
women in short skirts, enjoying the fantastic views. (Full disclosure: I, too, was
wearing a striped shirt.) The service was still coming online — the drinks took
awhile — but at least they cost only $14.
The neighborhood's developers have unwittingly built the Epcot Center of
alcoholic fun, with everything from ersatz France (Pastis) and ersatz Goa (Spice
Market) to ersatz Miami (the Hotel Gansevoort, the Maritime Hotel) and ersatz
London (Soho House). Throw in a handful of new lounges and clubs that you
could find in pretty much any of those places (PM, One, Cielo), and you have
exactly what it feels like on any given night in the meatpacking district: a
mobbed, boozy and tragically hip theme park.
The intersection of Greenwich and Gansevoort Streets has become a kind of
night life Five Points, with rival gangs of Frat Boys, Stiletto Girls and Expense
Account Creatives battling the Euros and Those From the Boroughs. One
half-expects Daniel Day-Lewis, whose Bill the Butcher would have felt at home in
the old meatpacking district, to emerge in a Thomas Pink shirt and a pair of
Gucci loafers.
Defenders of the district say the explosive development is a result of the
increasing stringency of rules on noise and what they perceive as a crackdown
on night life in other parts of the city.
"It's like Custer's Last Stand," said Mark Baker, an owner of Lotus on 14th Street,
one of the original group of cooler-than-thou bars that opened in the area about
four years ago. "Night life has been squeezed out of every other neighborhood in
the city, but this neighborhood doesn't have a real residential presence yet, so
night life doesn't disturb anyone."
NYT.
Posted by dc at July 5, 2004 03:36 PM