Beauty + Fashion
Julianne Beffa
Mr. Purple Is Still NYC's Ultimate Rooftop Party- and Sun Daily Proved It
Mr. Purple continues to reign as one of the best rooftop bars in NYC. From its 10th anniversary celebration to the unforgettable Sun Daily party, here’s why the Lower East Side hotspot remains a nightlife favorite.
- By: Julianne Elise Beffa I Photos By: @dolla_onlyus
In a city obsessed with what’s next, there’s something remarkable about a venue that manages to remain relevant for ten years.
New York nightlife has always had a short attention span. A rooftop opens, the crowd rushes in, influencers flood Instagram with skyline photos, and for a brief moment it becomes the only place anyone wants to be. Then the inevitable happens: tastes change, a newer venue opens down the street, and the cycle begins again. Most nightlife hotspots enjoy a season in the spotlight. Very few become institutions.
Mr. Purple is one of them.
The Lower East Side rooftop recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, a milestone that feels increasingly rare in an industry where longevity is often harder to achieve than initial success. As someone who has been going there since I first moved to New York more than a decade ago, the anniversary felt surprisingly personal. Somewhere in my camera roll are hundreds of photos from Mr. Purple spanning nearly every chapter of my adult life: college nights, birthdays, rooftop cocktails, random Sundays that became unforgettable, and more blurry skyline shots than I’d care to admit. Two years ago, my best friends hosted their engagement party there, and just a few weeks ago, I found myself back at the venue celebrating its first decade in business.
What has always fascinated me about Mr. Purple is that its success has never been entirely dependent on the things people usually associate with great rooftops. Yes, the views are spectacular. Perched atop Hotel Indigo, the venue offers one of the most recognizable skyline views in Manhattan, stretching across downtown skyscrapers and the East River. But New York isn’t exactly suffering from a shortage of rooftop bars with beautiful views.
What it is suffering from, however, is a shortage of rooftops that still feel genuinely fun.
Over the past several years, rooftop culture has become increasingly homogenized. Walk into enough venues and they begin to blur together. Different cocktail menus, different furniture, different neighborhoods- but often the exact same atmosphere. Somewhere around sunset, a DJ starts playing an endless stream of godawful house music remixes while a crowd politely sways with drinks in hand and I hold back from throwing a hissy. Nobody is having a bad time, but nobody is exactly having the time of their life either.
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THE CLUB
For a city that built its nightlife reputation on energy, personality, and cultural diversity, many rooftops have become surprisingly predictable.
That is precisely why Mr. Purple’s longevity makes sense.
Unlike many venues that have spent years chasing a singular identity, Mr. Purple has remained flexible enough to evolve alongside New York itself. The venue has never locked itself into one type of crowd, one type of music, or one version of what nightlife is supposed to look like. On any given night, you’ll find tourists experiencing New York for the first time, hospitality veterans who have spent decades in the industry, downtown creatives, birthday groups, and regulars who have been coming back for years.
Most importantly, you’ll find a venue that understands not every rooftop party needs to sound exactly the same.
THE BAR
That flexibility was on full display during Sun Daily this past Sunday, which ended up becoming the perfect finale to my birthday weekend. As a Gemini whose birthday fell on Saturday, May 30, I had fully committed to extending the celebrations for at least another 24 hours. What I wasn’t expecting was to stumble into one of the best rooftop parties I’ve attended in years.
From the moment I arrived, the energy felt noticeably different. Part of that energy came from the fact that Sun Daily wasn’t trying to be another generic rooftop DJ set. The weekly party, presented by Israel Hoffman and Cyrese and hosted by personalities including Anyia, WHLN Worldwide (What Happened Last Night), and TinaBinaBlue, felt intentionally community-driven. A rotating lineup of DJs including Jazmin Lavish, Phonese, Taylor Nuri, Milhouse, No Sleep T, and Proper Edakit kept the soundtrack moving between genres, generations, and moods. The result wasn’t a crowd gathered around a skyline view- it was a crowd gathered around a shared experience. People weren’t standing around waiting for the perfect Instagram photo. They were dancing, socializing, and actually participating in the party.
That’s another reason Mr. Purple continues to stand apart. The venue understands that successful nightlife isn’t always about creating its own programming. Sometimes it’s about creating a platform for the right people, communities, and cultural moments to take over the room. On Sunday, Sundaily did exactly that.
The biggest difference, however, was the music.
As someone who firmly believes rap remains the superior party soundtrack, I have spent years wondering why so many New York rooftops seem terrified to embrace it. Somewhere along the way, house music became the default language of rooftop culture, to the point where entire venues began sounding interchangeable. Sun Daily felt like a refreshing departure from that formula. Rather than relying on repetitive beats and predictable drops, the soundtrack was built around records that people actually wanted to hear, creating the kind of energy that naturally pulls people onto a dance floor.
THE GUESTS
The result was exactly what nightlife should be: people dancing without self-consciousness, singing along to songs they knew, murmuring whatever Iceman lyrics they’ve memorized thus far and collectively creating the type of atmosphere that no amount of interior design or marketing can manufacture.
The funniest validation of this came two days later while I was sitting in LaGuardia Airport waiting for a flight. Behind me sat a couple in their fifties who were flying home after their first-ever trip to New York City. They had stayed at Hotel Indigo, and before long I overheard them talking about their visit to Mr. Purple.
The husband laughed as he described walking upstairs on Sunday afternoon expecting a quiet rooftop cocktail and instead finding a full-scale dance party.
“I couldn’t believe how hard people were dancing on a Sunday, don’t they have jobs?” he asked.
I had to resist the urge to turn around and butt in, because he was talking about me, and yes, we all work. And?
What struck me wasn’t the coincidence. It was that after more than a decade of living in New York, my takeaway from Sunday was identical to theirs. We weren’t talking about the cocktails. We weren’t talking about the skyline. We weren’t even talking about the rooftop itself. We were talking about the energy.
And that’s why Mr. Purple has survived while so many of its contemporaries have faded into New York nightlife history.
THE VIEWS
The venue’s greatest accomplishment isn’t that it’s maintained a loyal following for ten years. It’s that it has never allowed itself to become trapped by a single version of success. Most nightlife venues spend years trying to define themselves. Mr. Purple has spent ten years proving that reinvention is often the smarter strategy.
On one weekend, it can host a polished anniversary celebration filled with industry veterans, longtime regulars, and hospitality executives reflecting on a decade of memories. On another, it can transform into a Sunday afternoon rooftop party where strangers dance like they’ve known each other for years. Neither version feels forced. Neither feels like a gimmick. Both feel authentically New York.
That’s a surprisingly difficult balance to achieve.
Too many venues mistake consistency for repetition. They find a formula that works and refuse to evolve until the city eventually moves on without them. Mr. Purple has done the opposite. It has managed to preserve the elements people love while continuously adapting to what New Yorkers actually want from a night out- or, in this case, a Sunday afternoon.
In a city obsessed with the next opening, the next trend, and the next place to be seen, Mr. Purple has quietly become something far more valuable: a constant.
Ten years in, it remains one of the rare venues capable of attracting first-time tourists, hospitality veterans, downtown creatives, birthday groups, and longtime regulars while still feeling relevant to all of them. That’s not luck. That’s not nostalgia. That’s not a skyline view.
That’s great hospitality.
And perhaps that’s the highest compliment a New Yorker can give. In a city where nightlife trends come and go with dizzying speed, Mr. Purple isn’t surviving because it’s the newest rooftop.
It’s surviving because it never stopped understanding what people came there for in the first place.
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