The prize.

The ads! The Harbaugh family! Beyonce! (We love her non-lipsynched rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the Superbowl press conference.) There’s even a football game. (We’re from Northern California, so Go Forty-Niners!)

Where do you want to be when the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco Forty-Niners clash on Sunday? We at Overnight New York suggest a New York City hotel bar geared up for the big event with soaring screens, buckets of wings, mountains of sliders and gallons of beer. Here’s how to transport yourself to the Big Easy in the Big Apple.

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A last look at the old sign.

Anyone who has seen the movie Taxi Driver knows that Times Square wasn’t always a desirable location for a hotel. But that was a long time ago. Now even hotels that aren’t all that close to Times Square are adding the spot-where-the-New-Year’s-Eve-ball-drops to their name.

The latest Times Square pretender is the Sheraton New York Hotel, which today augmented its name to become the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel – even though the hotel is ten blocks north of the Times Square’s throbbing heart, where Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42^nd Street meet.

At least you can see Times Square from the Sheraton.  The same cannot be said for the TRYP New York Times Square South, which is a lot closer to Madison Square Garden and Penn Station than Times Square. (more…)

New balloon in town: no peeking.

Companion, the giant balloon depicting grafitti artist KAWS’ iconic bashful character, isn’t all that’s new at this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 22.

After years of marching down Seventh Avenue, the parade has a new route for 2012 — and probably beyond. And as we reported last year, for guests hoping to watch from a hotel room the choices have changed — and shrunk.

Eight Seventh Avenue and Times Square hotels, including giants like the Park Central New York, Sheraton New York, Doubletree Guest Suites Times Square and Marriott Marquis, won’t be seeing Santa & Co. this year.  (more…)

The ads! The half-time show! Madonna! We love football (Go Giants), but it’s not the only reason to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday.

Where do you want to be when the Giants and the Patriots go helmet to helmet? We suggest a hotel bar that’s geared up for the big showdown. We found six  – three in midtown and three downtown — where you can settle in with a pitcher of beer and a bucket of wings and drink in the early February festivities, be it the game, the sideshow or both, on a big screen (or two, or 17). (more…)

Macy's inflatable Hello Kitty.

It’s early November, a great time to scope out a hotel room with a view of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – for next year.

Nearly a dozen midtown hotels are blessed with rooms that overlook New York’s 2011 parade of parades replete with floats, marching bands, balloons and Santa. But prime real estate – a room that plants you eye-to-eye with Snoopy, Spiderman and Kermit the Frog – gets snapped up months before the bands strike up. You can still get a room if you’re not too picky. But it will cost you.

Parade-view rooms are sold out at the Marriott Marquis, the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers and the Manhattan in Times Square (a special parade coordinator oversees reservations at the latter two properties). (more…)

Times Square as seen from R Lounge.

This is what Times Square looks like from a window table at R Lounge, the Renaissance New York’s second-floor restaurant and bar with the flashy address – Two Times Square. Talk about the thick of things.

It’s one of those wow-I’m-in-New York! views, up there with the dining room at Helmsley Park Lane (Central Park), the roof bars at the Kimberly (Chrysler Building), the Bentley (East River), the James (lower Manhattan) and the Gansevoort Meatpacking District (Hudson River) and the revolving roof restaurant at the Marriott Marquis (the entire city).

And miraculously, when we stopped by mid-afternoon this week we had the room all to outselves, save for a woman with a broken leg seated by a window.  “Sit anywhere you like,” said the greeter. (more…)

The Algonquin.

Historic hotels have their charms – the evocative architecture, the whiff of time travel, the (often) dazzling out-of-the-past guests lists. But there’s nothing charming about historic plumbing, which could be one reason the Algonquin, New York’s oldest operating hotel, is closing for four months of renovations beginning on January 1, 2012.

The news, reported in USA Today, seems a blend of surprise and what-took-them-so-long. The hotel, called the Puritan when it opened in 1902, oozes history in all the right places, namely the cozy/urbane wood-paneled lobby that still reels in an intriguing crowd, and the tile-floored Blue Bar, which opened the day Prohibition was repealed. (more…)

Crossroads Lounge tower.

And that’s exactly what they did. Good-bye, power suits. Hello, 21^st century.

Earlier this month the Marriott Marquis unveiled its new lobby, centerpiece of its $39 million renovation. As befits a big hotel almost three decades old and 1,900-plus rooms strong big changes are on view in the sprawling 8^th floor John Portman atrium lobby, punctuated by colorfully lit elevator cars whizzing up and down.  With the demise of the sushi bar, a touristy American restaurant and a fleet of tables littered with empty Starbucks cups, the hotel has sluffed off its shopping mall food court look and moved upscale in keeping with its high season room prices, currently starting around $500. (more…)

Where the parade won't be in 2012

Thanksgiving 2012 may seem a long way off, but for those who plan ahead, like parade organizers, it might as well be next week. Last week Macy’s long-term planners dropped a bombshell – due to construction to the pedestrian plazas throughout Times Square, the parade will be rerouted down Sixth Avenue for 2012 and 2013, bypassing a patch of New York as famous as the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty combined.

Hotels like the Warwick, Jumeirah Essex House, Ritz Carlton Central Park, New York Hilton, Eventi and Residence Inn Times Square will no doubt give thanks. But others won’t. (more…)

Algonquin memorabilia.

You’d never know it to look at them, but the Marriott Marquis, a brute, 1980s John Portman behemoth, and the Algonquin, a demure, history-drenched Edwardian, share something besides easy proximity to Times Square.

This week the Algonquin became a Marriott hotel — sort of.

The unlikely bond comes courtesy of the Algonquin’s new affiliation with Marriott’s Autograph Collection, a new subset of Marriott International comprised of one-of-a-kind hotels that prize personality. The Algonquin, in business since 1902, has personality in spades. Long-gone literary lights like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Alexander Woolcott hung out here. Matilda, the hotel’s prize-winning cat, still does and is often underfoot in the lobby. (more…)