More rooftop bars

Roof Garden Café

Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roof Garden Café

The atop-the-Met cocktail hour ends at 4:30pm on weekdays, but on Friday and Saturday nights, you can sip Stella while looking at Frank Stella until 8:30pm. His twisty, Beetlejuice-like sculptures make a better conversation starter than that game of Connect Four.
Perfect for: Meeting an art student, a MILF or that foreign guy/girl type who goes to museums alone, looking content and...hot.
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave at 82nd St (212-535-7710)

The Heights

No one would mistake this place for 230 Fifth—the enclosed roof deck has a view of a Duane Reade and an optician’s office. Still, you get more beer for your buck (a pint of Colorado-brewed Hazed and Infused will run you $5), and for the Morningside Heights college-student crowd, that’s enough.
Perfect for: Snaring a fellow Columbia junior, or his cute Barnard friends.

2867 Broadway between 111th and 112th Sts (212-866-7035)

The Heights

Photo: Jodie Love

HK Lounge

Ah, 39th Street and Ninth Avenue—the homeless guy lugging his tarp, the Greyhound bus fuming by. This is romance. No, really. Perched above HK restaurant is this loungy bar, with a candlelit rooftop deck.
Perfect for: Finding other singles into that homey, Brooklyn-lounge feel without the train ride—and Friday is a popular gay night.
405 W 39th St at Ninth Ave (212-947-4208)

Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club

It costs $20 to get in ($25 on Saturdays). But everyone feels like a rich man at the rooftop bar, which offers a pretty nice view, albeit of Jersey and the West Side Highway.
Perfect for: Straight dudes looking to meet other straight dudes, to talk about what makes them horny and cigars. Anyplace else would be too gay.
641 W 51st St at Twelfth Ave (212-247-2460)