Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Noted

A photo posted by MR. PURPLE (@mrpurplenyc) on



The New York Post checks in with a piece on how awful some rooftop bars are in the city, including Mr. Purple on Orchard Street between Houston and Stanton.

An excerpt:

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.

Such was the scene on a recent Saturday at Mr. Purple (180 Orchard St.) on the Lower East Side. 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.

They didn’t have any luck, but a gaggle of girls who entered screaming, “None of us are over 21!” did. 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. If you don’t post a selfie and spend all evening checking your “likes,” did you ever really make it up onto the roof?

Meanwhile, the June 20 edition of The New Yorker has a short review of Mr. Purple.

Per writer Sarah Larson:

Aiming for a kind of neighborliness, the proprietors named the bar after the eccentric L.E.S. icon Adam Purple, a community-garden activist with a dark past, offending locals and relatives alike. The luxury-on-Ludlow vibe is equally uneasy. The interior, meant to evoke an artist’s loft, leads to two outdoor patios, with chaise longues, purple chairs, staggeringly gorgeous views, and a swimming pool. “This is horrible!” a neighborhood man said on a recent night, scowling. “It’s like a disco bar in Thailand in 1995.”

And!

And how are the drinks? In an age of near-universal craft-cocktail excellence, they are mediocre, pricey, and boldly unsubtle, served in acrylic.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] The upscale hotel bar with a pool named for the late environmentalist Adam Purple (44 comments)

[Updated] The Gerber Group responds to criticism over Mr. Purple (23 comments)

As the Hotel Indigo and Mr. Purple continue efforts to be part of the LES neighborhood (25 comments)

27 comments:

Glenn said...

These places are for rubes.

Edmund Dunn said...

“It’s like a disco bar in Thailand in 1995.”


A fitting statement re the EV in general today.

Edmund Dunn said...

Sorry, late addition to my comment. Is Bro/Wo-Hoo/OMG culture now the definitive millennial (at least here in Manhattan) culture? Have both merged together like Brundlefly?

IzF said...

It's a great view. Just don't go on the weekends like EVERY FUCKING PLACE around here.

Anonymous said...

Just because you're at a pool doesn't mean you have to swim. You do what you'd do when not at a pool.

I can't believe they didn't change the name of this place yet.

Makeout said...

Acrylic? Fuck me. Cheap screws.

Anonymous said...

@2:52pm: No, the answer is to NEVER patronize these ridiculous places, and let them go bankrupt.

The people who want this kind of "scene" are mental midgets. And they're wearing out their few brain cells with booze.

Anonymous said...

@3:36

Right there with you on your last point. Sexual abuse of children sure makes me thirsty...

Anonymous said...

I cringe whenever I have friends in town that ask me to take them to a rooftop bar. I tell them the experience is not unlike buying a ticket for a Chinatown bus. The lines are long, the crowd unbearable, and the next few hours are going to be pure misery. Bros to the left. Hos to the right. Here I am. Stuck in the middle of the bourgeoise.

Anonymous said...

That's not a rooftop pool, it's a giant outdoor urinal.

Walter said...

So just take the L train and go home.

Anonymous said...

Look, this place is a horrifyingly named shitshow (and I'm sure the pool itself is a cauldron of piss and STDs) but serving drinks in acrylic is about the only smart thing they're doing, otherwise glass shards would wind up at the floor of the piss-pool every single night and they'd have not just drunk but also bloody-footed douches to contend with. It does not surprise me that a highfalutin New Yorker reporter is the kind of smart person who is too dumb to realize this.

Gojira said...

“It’s like a disco bar in Thailand in 1995" - oh hell, a Thai disco in the mid-90s would have been far preferable to this hotbed of narcissistic vacuity; at least in 1995 no one was woo-ing drunkenly, like some bovine mating call, yapping inanely on a cell phone, or taking fish-faced selfies every other second, plus the music would have been better. I know, if given the choice, in which milieu *I* would rather hang out in, and it ain't on the 15th floor of a stupid LES hotel. Bring on the mirror ball and the boy toy cage dancers!

HippieChick said...

Only hicks and bumpkins go to places like this

Brian said...

Sounds nice and rip-offerish.

Anonymous said...

Tragically, a young woman leapt to her death from a roof bar on Park Avenue South last year. It had something to do with a her depression and rebellion against her family's strict Hasidic beliefs. And guess what everyone in the roof bar did? They just says there and finished their drinks.

Brian said...

Tourist love rooftop bars.

Anonymous said...

Anyone else read the dark side of purple article in the village voice? http://thevillager.com/2015/12/31/the-dark-side-of-purple/


Perhaps the douchebag bar is named correctly!

Anonymous said...

The good thing about those places? They keep the riff raff off the streets and waiting in line to get in to get 10 dollar PBRs!

Anonymous said...

Roof top bars, heck, and the new EV are for the bourgees, not the bourgeois.

Anonymous said...

I have a friend who lives for the rooftop bar scene. He is such a dweeb. Doesn't care if he gets rejected at the door or whatever. And once he gets up to a rooftop he just kind of stands around smoking and creeping on chicks. It's a dumb scene, from what I've seen at least.

Anonymous said...

8:45 AM: We've all read about Adam Purverted.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting how people could barely be bothered to shrug their shoulders when a young man got murdered recently on Avenue D, but people can muster all kinds of outrage when someone mentions a rooftop bar in a different neighborhood. Pathetic!

Anonymous said...

@2:21pm: You're comparing apples and oranges, and you're illogical. (I guess you think we shouldn't be pissed off about SantaCon either, unless we personally mourn every person who is murdered in the neighborhood all year long.)

Anonymous said...

I never said that you can only have one problem at a time. But in terms of priorities and focus, it seems as if two dead black men within the past few months seems like it generates a hell of a lot less interest, comment and concern than a rooftop bar in a different neighborhood. To me, a rise in murders seems to be a bigger issue than Santacon. I believe that I am quite logical in that regard. How many dead black men does there need to be until this is as important as Santacon? Where are the community groups that can't get themselves heard loudly enough over whenever the inconvenience of Santacon threatens to show up? Where are the block associations of NIMBYS and busybodies now that there is a real problem?

Anonymous said...

2:21/6:40pm I seriously doubt you've posted about the two men who were killed on Avenue D and how would we know if you did since you post anonymously, so pipe down.

You obviously haven't read EV Grieve blog comments because if you did you'd know that there is a big time resentment, dislike, hatred, call it what you will towards bros, shebros, woo hoos, etc. like the ones who infect these rooftops. Whenever I see the headline about parties, rooftops etc. I expect to see at least twenty comments and smile.

Tons of comments about murder usually don't happen because it more often than not opens up some random heartless scumbag to say something dumb. What can or should be said about a murder? It's sad, it's depressing, and it's in poor taste to speculate - even poorer taste to make a joke or cast blame on the victim.

Brian said...

Ignore the bar on 15, and hit up the cafe on 14 instead. Always empty, gorgeous views. Best kept secret in LES.