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To access the Hotel on Rivington’s nameless “private” lounge, you can either contend with the bouncer at the unmarked door outside or slip through the sliding portal between the lounge and the eatery Thor inside. In the small, narrow, high-beamed rectangle designed by Marcel Wanders, displaced Meatpackers crowd into a narrow area between a glass, crystalline bar and a row of five semi-enclosed pods fit to transport bottle-buyers into outer space. If the DJ reheating leftover hip-hop/rock drowns out your conversation about the latest film festival, you can retreat to the adjacent banquettes in the lobby lounge. Wines by the glass, most of them Austrian, compensate for strange cocktails combining beet juice with sangria or incorporating syrups that out-flower the cherry blossom arrangements. The kaleidoscopic black-and-white pattern that covers the walls and ceiling may make you place feel like you’re inside a hat box so here’s a tip: A second bar upstairs has the best design element of all: A floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the red-carpet arrivals below. — Daniel Maurer