New York in the summertime is a curious affair.
While the 11 percent capable of forking out $400 a night to escape the city every weekend via a decadent three days in the Hamptons, those unable to seek refuge from the stifling heat but for a relationship with an AC unit in their overpriced shoebox apartment, spend the aforementioned three days clamoring for any body of water.
What’s peculiar about the city’s summer shutdown, is that, upon the fashpack’s return to living in New York ‘full time’ come fall, winter promptly descends on Manhattan for the next ten months, during which the entire population trundle around amid the urine-crusted melting slush, while complaining about the cold in their uniform sleeping bag.
For those in search of a place to dip their toes that doesn’t require an unwanted staycation in a town already too-expensive to live, the Dream Downtown provides two of New York’s most coveted assets during the fleeting eight-week summer – a pseudo-public swimming pool and a kickass rooftop.
While New York’s equivalent of an elevated summer oasis hardly rivals that of its neighbors in Vegas, the chance to spend a day pretending you’re living somewhere else of better quality than the season affords is worth throwing down some cash for.
In the case of the Dream, a reasonably priced $55 day pass gives you a secret key to a day of perfect, sunny bliss, along with 768 other fun-loving Jersey folks intent on 10 hours of fist-pumping and throwing back shots like it’s the end of the world, while their female counterpart bachelorette stags celebrate the end of their friend’s chance to snog any man of her choosing, by smashing the requisite number of martinis needed to render her physically incapable of doing so.
The second-floor terrace of the relatively recent addition to the hip Meatpacking District, wedged above Asian hotspot Tao and adjacent to The Maritime Hotel, ‘The Beach’, as the venue is so creatively named, channels the French Riviera, complete with navy-and-white pool lounges and sand shipped in from Montauk, a lasting chance for the out-of-town New Yorkers to throw shade at revelers who have paid for the chance to spend a day in their empty city.
The glass-bottom pool floats directly above the lobby, offering one-of-a-kind views for both swimmers and the arriving guests, who, by simply looking up, are able to witnessing them peeing in the water below.
While the trippy glass pool provides an ‘only-in-New York’ experience, the faux sand beach and accompanying 70 Cote D’Azure-inspired chaise lounges and private cabanas create a Las Vegas club vibe, in which you’ll easily convince yourself there’s not one action you’ll have any regrets about tomorrow.
Grab a Kelvin slushie drink at the full-service bar as you groove in your Speedos to the resident DJ spinning Drake tunes sure to induce a Vixen twerking session, three skill levels below the one at which you think you are capable of performing.
Beefy bodyguards guard the pool with the professionalism of a members-only swanky nightclub, except this one takes place during the day and everyone – whether or not they probably should be – is almost naked.
Think you have seen body jewelry before? Think again. The Dream Hotel’s pool features more body bejazzling than one needs to see in a lifetime.
For $55, you can snap-up the chance to wedge yourself between a giant inflatable swan and a giant inflatable ex-Hulk Hogan male, all marinating in the miniature waist-deep pool, which, after an hour, you come to the uncomfortable realization that you’ve seen barely a sole head for the bathroom, despite consuming several rounds of drinks.
While people in other, more healthy living-inspired parts of North America promote pools as places in which to exercise come the warmer months, at the Dream Downtown, the only part of your body getting a workout will be your eyes, as you watch the train wreck of separate stag parties colliding, placing bets on which drunken bride or groom-to-be will, in 12 hours and one hangover later, be questioning their wedding vows.
If the scene at the Dream Downtown pool had an anthem, it would be the Black Eyed Peas, ‘I Gotta Feeling’, complete with the mandatory vow to promise that ‘tonight’s gonna be a good night, that tonight’s gonna be a good, good night.” No really, it is.
Because if, after eight hours of sun, eight frozen margaritas and an eyeful of naked flesh isn’t enough to give you heatstroke and send you to bed instead of making bad decisions on an extended evening out in the Meatpacking District with the bridge & tunnel crowd, then you might be better suited to saving your pennies for a trip to Coney Island for some PG-rated fun of the family variety.
Sweet Dreams, indeed.
