BY JULIE SEYLER

Last Friday night, my way-left-of-59 office buddy and I headed over to Salvation Taco on East 39th Street for an after work cocktail. We had been there once before when she had taken me out for a pre-wedding fete. That night it had been pouring rain so we skipped the rooftop bar. But last Friday evening was exquisite. Drinking a chilled and salted margarita at a facsimile of a Mexican patio high above the streets of Manhattan was enticing.

We arrived and saw a line of Raybanned millennials hanging about the entrance and a hostess taking names.  We bypassed the crowd and walked through the glass doors to the elevator.

There was a sign posted “See Hostess for Rooftop Bar.”

We looked at each other and got in the elevator and emerged to see the cloudless blue 6:00 sky and started to head in. We were stopped by a bouncer.

“Let me see your stamp”.

“What stamp?”

“The stamp you get downstairs from the hostess to come up to the rooftop bar. You have to go back down and get stamped.”

We really did not have the time to trek back down to the ground floor, wait on line and then wait to go up. So I did the next best thing. I looked that bouncer straight in her unwrinkled eye and said sweetly,

Look, I’m old. Please let us in?

She saw there was some truth to that statement and kindly replied

Go on in.

That margarita tasted sooo piquantly delicious because being almost 60 had delivered an unexpected perk: entrance into an overpacked happy hour.