• Ava Lounge

  210 W. 55th St., 212-956-7020

  This bi-level penthouse-rooftop lounge atop the Dream Hotel is a scene in every sense of the word. The view down Broadway from the fourteenth floor is exhilarating, and the largely single crowd of fashionable midtown office workers dress up a little more when they know they’re cutting out of work early to stake a claim on the shady benches. Specialty cocktails like the $13 Key-lime martini fuel early summer evenings, when Ava Lounge gets especially busy. If not for the sunlight, 6 p.m. here could easily be mistaken for midnight Friday, somewhere downtown.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine