Boston's hotel bars are heating things up and packing 'em in
On a recent Friday night, the crowd waiting to get into the Liberty Hotel
(215 Charles Street, Boston, 617.224.4000) was about 30 well-dressed
people deep. Inside, diners, drinkers, revelers, and presumably some
actual hotel guests swarmed the lobby. It was a typical weekend night
at the Liberty, the holding-cell-turned-hotspot that emerged on the
local nightlife map just over a year ago. And the momentum doesn’t
appear to be slowing down.
The idea of hotel bars used to conjure up two
starkly different — yet similarly unsexy — images. Images, on the one
hand, of dark rooms awash in mahogany and filled with a sea of suits
and power politicians drinking $20 martinis; images synonymous with
private men’s clubs, low on fun and high on pretense. And on the other,
images of sparsely filled barstools where traveling businessmen sat
killing time between meetings.
But for Boston, that stereotype has been steadily
shifting as hotel bars shape themselves as destinations — places where
locals go after work and on weekends to take in the scene and a few
well-mixed cocktails.
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