Too Hot to Handle

On Friday night I went out for dinner and drinks to celebrate a friend's birthday. Dinner was fine, then we went to a bar in the Meatpacking District called APT (or Apartment). We knew we were headed to a good place when the guy walking down the street in front of us stopped and asked a bouncer at a nearby club where "Apartment" was. After getting an answer, the guy then shouted to his 'buddies' across the street to "keep going dudes, its down there." Oh I knew this would be fun.

APT is the sort of place that believes its so cool that it doesn't even need a sign to let people know its there. I suppose that makes sense, since if you keep walking down the street past it you'll fall into the Hudson. Or maybe not, maybe there are a ton of even cooler places in the two buildings to the west and I'm just too boring to know about them. Only a little stone above the nondescript door said APT and the building number on it. Had I not been with cool people who knew about this place, I would probably have given up on finding it and gone home.

We walked in and had to go through a couple more doors before it was clear we were in a bar. It's called APT for a reason--it looks just like a real apartment. There's wallpaper and a long hallway with some doors on it, and then an open room with a bar, a bed, some sofas and tables and another little room I didn't venture into.

We settled into a sofa and coffee table arrangement and looked at the menus. The first page had a list of some pretty normal fancy drinks on it. The second page had food made up of foie gras or caviar or a combination of the two. The last page was a list of bottles of liquor. You could get a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka for $300. Or perhaps you'd rather have a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin for $350. I ordered one of the cheapest drinks on the menu, which was $11. I can't remember what was in it, but it didn't taste all that good.

Lets discuss how creepy the bed in this place must be. When we got there it was empty, but when we left (just as it was getting busy, at 11pm--yes, we are HUGE losers) there was someone either sleeping or passed out on it.

Second, I couldn't locate the bathroom and was not about to ask the scary looking waitress if she could help me out. So I asked one girl in our group, and she pointed me to two unmarked doors down the long wallpapered hallway. I tried the second door but it was locked, so I went into the first one. And saw the blood. Little juicy drops of it, on the toilet seat and even more disgustingly on the floor around the toilet, like a woman had had a little 'accident' and had to hobble around the room till she found her 'supplies.' I can deal with nasty toilet seats (what woman living here cannot? You MUST master the hover!) but things get much more complicated when you also have to watch where you're putting your feet. Of course when I left the bathroom some man was waiting to go in and now he probably thinks I'm the one who did it.

When I got back from the bathroom, I saw that in the corner towards the back of the room a man and a woman were sitting together and the woman was sobbing into the man's shoulder. This made me feel uncomfortable.

APT's website describes the bar's decor as suggesting "an almost naughty sense of voyeuristic intrusion." APT "cross-references high style with homey comfort." If this means that people feel at home enough to bleed all over the bathroom (perhaps thinking they'll clean it up later?) and cry uncontrollably while other people watch, then I guess the place lives up to its description.

Here's the main thing: If I wanted to sit around drinking a bottle of Stoly in a dirty apartment, I would go to the liquor store and pay $25 and then go home to MY apartment and drink it.