Stone Rose Lounge

10 Columbus Circle
Time Warner Center, 4th Fl
(between W Central Park & Broadway)

"Every rose has it's thorn." - Poison

There is that one bar in every major city that caters to six-figure salarymen and tourists who have too much discretionary income with too little knowledge about what's actually cool in NYC. That is Stone Rose Bar to a custom-fitted T.

If Jane Goodall were a nightlife anthropologist, she could spot a Randy Gerber bar by several distinguishing factors: 1) overpriced beer, wine, and cocktails; 2) slung by attractive, black-clad early to mid-twenties female bartenders; 3) with an over-30, finance-skewing male crowd unwittingly thinking it is cool to shamelessly hit on the hired guns; 4) in a sleek, stylish, masculine environment. It's a successful bar business model he's honed to perfection at Whiskey Blue, Whiskey Park, Underbar, and parlayed across other major US cities like Los Angeles, Ft. Lauderdale, and other meccas of US nightlife, Scottsdale, AZ.

Stone Rose is a beautiful bar, especially during sunset with the stone, rosewood, and glass accents throughout the barframing the sunset as it falls over Central Park. But at night, it becomes a veritable urban nightlife safari, not with lions, tigers, and bears, but rather Botoxed cougars, fresh meat of young, supple, female bartenders, and those with corporate accounts that hunt and pounce on them. It makes for an slightly amusing ambience for about 15 minutes, and then becomes gratingly annoying.

I wouldn't have any problem with this menagerie of NYC animals in this pristine urban environment, if the drink list weren't full of poorly made cocktails and a poorly selected wine by the glass list. The bartender (who looked fresh out of college) made me an Islander, a cognac based drinks that ended up inexplicably tasting like a well-brand Long Island Tea. My friend had the Stone Rose, their version of a Manhattan with Woodford Reserve, which tasted almost medicine-like. The wine list include such classic brands as Sonoma Cutrer, a California brand owned by a multinational corporation, that is pretty much regarded as garbage by anyone familiar with wine.