• Le Bain

  The Standard, 444 W. 13th St., at Washington St.; 212-645-4646

  Aside from the pleasurable combination of inflatable water beds (designed to look like diaphragms), corded chairs, and AstroTurf, the real achievement of André Saraiva’s Le Bain is that it lets you forget you’re at the Standard. Which is to say, it’s an attitude-free aerie perched on a bedrock of pretension. The grungier of the hotel’s two nightclubs (it shares the eighteenth floor with the former Boom Boom Room, now called Top of the Standard), Le Bain combines perhaps the city’s most debauched wading pool with a 2,200-square-foot terrace that’s positively placid by comparison.

From the 2011 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine