LA Weekly

While downtown burns, get even higher at the Standard Hotel’s Rooftop Bar — or cool off with a dip in the barside pool. You won’t risk drowning in its three-and-a-half-foot depths, but the view will take your breath away: It’s the top of the world, high-rises beaming back at you in full urban regalia. And the hotel’s denizens — a blend of club rats, camera-toting Japanese tourists, visiting business folk, USC frat boys and after-work barflies — are dressed to shine as bright as the skyscrapers behind them. Blasts of Euro-pop beats beckon urbanites to the dance floor, and the Art Deco décor of Shawn Hausman (co-founder of the club Area) recalls a more stylish Dr. Seuss, with a red, yellow and steel color scheme, angular lines and large red poolside pods encasing waterbeds that look like oversize Papa Smurf hats. Before leaving, be sure to circle the roof and take in the full 360-degree splendor of crumbling skyscrapers. At the end of the night, as you zip down the escalator, pause to admire the revolving strip of words that offer such aphorisms as “The mundane is to be cherished.” Looking back at the elegant rooftop scene, one might have to disagree.


550 S. Flower St., dwntwn., (213) 892-8080. Open noon to 1:30 a.m. daily.