Times Square Margaritaville Resort Is an Unlikely Balm for a Restless Mind

The 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar does not open until 5 o’ Clock, which puts a crimp in trying to live out the metaphor of its name. The whole point of the phrase is a justification to start drinking early, before the workday is done, because somebody, somewhere is off work. But no, for the 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar, one of four restaurants and bars at Manhattan’s new Margaritaville Resort Times Square, you must wait until the workday is over. I am furious about this. Sure, the License to Chill Bar opens at 2, but it’s the principle of the thing. Jimmy Buffett would not wait until the boss says you can go home.

The Margaritaville Resort Times Square sounds like an oxymoron. “Resort” conjures pristine beaches with reservable cabanas, room service delivered with an orchid, spas, and restaurants that will just charge your room, so you needn’t worry about even carrying a wallet on the grounds. To me at least, it does not mean a 32-floor hotel in Times Square. Like, I have been to a Times Square hotel bar before, and while I’ve enjoyed myself, it has never been a transformatively relaxing experience.

I’m biased though; being from here makes it hard to view the city through a tourist’s eyes. But while I can picture wanting to visit New York for many things — the museums, the theater, the history, the chance to meet a pigeon who’s eaten a whole slice of pizza — I can’t imagine coming here to engage in leisure. The kind of leisure where you get on a plane and check into a resort just to not leave for a week, to see no other sights besides the novelty tiki drink cups lining the hotel’s bars.

But this is the kind of leisure Margaritaville is built on. Almost all the Margaritaville restaurants and resorts — a vaguely tropics-themed hospitality empire inspired by one of Jimmy Buffett’s most popular songs — exist within massive tourist destinations like Cozumel, Mexico, or Atlantic City, New Jersey. On the surface, Times Square feels like a natural addition. But while other locales can at least offer some seclusion from the world in the form of a beach or an island, Times Square is in the middle of everything. It is hectic, crowded, overpriced, and blatantly capitalistic, a place where no one actually lives and few New Yorkers hang out unless they’re seeing a show or bringing their out-of-town niece to the Disney Store. It has no chill. But maybe the point is it’s not unsalvageable. Amid the stress and the noise, if you delude yourself enough, you can turn off your brain and have fun. So for 24 hours, I tried.

Walking into the resort on the lower border of Times Square, at the corner of West 40th Street and Seventh Avenue, I am first greeted by a statue of a gigantic blue flip-flop, with one of the straps busted, and a gigantic discarded pop top just in front of it.

If you are a Jimmy Buffett fan, you probably already get the reference (if not, look up the lyrics to “Margaritaville”). The entire resort is like if Ready Player One was only Jimmy…