Esquire's Best Bars In America

You know a great bar when you're in one. If it's a dive, it's a Christ-this-place-is-a-dive dive. If it's an Irish pub, it's not an "Irish" pub. If it's a cocktail lounge, it's got some Tanqueray Ten and a bottle of rye somewhere. This story is about those places. One thing: We haven't patronized every bar in America, though we're working on it. For the parts of the country we've never had the honor of drinking in (Hoonah, Alaska, for instance), we asked our friends—the most knowledgeable and passionate of whom is Esquire drinks correspondent David Wondrich. Despite our connections, we've clearly shortchanged some great cities and have no doubt overlooked some great bars. Let us know what we've missed at esquire.com/bestbars. The crawl begins in the West and zigzags across the United States.

The Office Bar
Hoonah Alaska
YOU'RE HAVING: A bottle of Rainier.
In most places, a plywood floor and metal roof wouldn't command attention. But hovering over the dock in the center of the native village of Hoonah—where the town's nine hundred residents cling to the mountainous edge of misty Chichagof Island, thirty-five miles southwest of Juneau—the Office is a temple for out-of-towners on the way out and locals on payday spending their checks at the bar and spreading wealth the ritual way. It's perfectly situated, in other words, to take advantage of a failed hunting expedition and late ferry back to Juneau. On the way back toward town, Pat had hopped out of the truck and shot a doe from the road, but to Randy and I that wasn't saving face, so we'd returned empty-handed from three days on rainy mountainsides. Killing time at the Office, we heard the first round-for-the-house bell clang behind the bar at four o'clock, a friendly gesture from a regular patron for the five or six guys in the place. That guy was smart to show early. For three hours, locals with paychecks filed in and swung the bell's frayed rope handle. The room filled, rounds for twenty, thirty, then forty guys arrived every few minutes. By seven o'clock, the three of us had four shots and five beers apiece lined up in front of us. There are nights when no one needs to twist your arm to dance with a 250-pound Tlingit woman; you just decide all at once to do it. By the time the ferry showed up, Randy had got- ten sick, Pat had given away his deer, and I'd descended into drunk- en melancholy at the realization that bars like this hadn't been seen in southeast Alaska since the cruise ships took over in the eighties. (151 Front Street; 907-945-3215) —CHUCK THOMPSON

La Mariana Sailing Club
HONOLULU
YOU'RE HAVING: Mai tais at sundown.
Here, where old tiki bars go to die, is the real thing. (50 Sand Island Access Road; 808-848-2800)

Zig Zag Cafe
SEATTLE
YOU'RE HAVING: A Deshler cocktail.
The floor-to-counter multi- tiered speed rack, stocked with rarities like maraschino liqueur, straight rye whiskey, Dubonnet, and Cynar, is a dead giveaway: The Zig Zag knows drinks. (1501 Western Avenue; 206- 625-1146)

Fu Kun Wu
SEATTLE
YOU'RE HAVING: On a date, anything with the aphrodisiac yohimbine in it.
More ancient Chinese apothecary than bar, Fu Kun Wu claims its herbal supplements provide "female radiance" and "anxiety relief." All we can vouch for is the taste. (5410 Ballard Avenue NW; 206-706-7807)

The Owl Tree
SAN FRANCISCO
YOU'RE HAVING: A rye manhattan with bitters—early, before the orders pile up.
From the great Jerry Thomas, who jumped ship in 1849 and got right to mixing, to the late, legendary Bruno of the Zam Zam, who'd kick you out if you ordered anything but a gin martini, San Francisco has always had great bartenders. Even today, there's no shortage of talent in town, what with—to name a few—the marvelous Alberta at the Orbit Room Cafe (1900 Market Street; 415-252-9525; go early and be sure to try one of her aviations), Jacques and Marco, the tequila wizards at Tres Agaves (130 Townsend Street; 415-227-0500), the crusty traditionalists at Absinthe (398 Hayes Street; 415- 551-1590; have an Old Pal), and even Duggan at Frisson (244 Jackson Street; 415-956- 3004), who thinks nothing of tossing a bit of squid ink into the mixing glass.

That said, the best San Francisco bartender is Bobby "C. Bobby" Cook, the pixilated gent who has owned and presided over the Owl Tree since 1977. The owls are all over the place— hundreds of 'em, stuffed, paint- ed, sculpted, macraméd, you name it. The place looks like something out of a dream sequence in an early Richard Widmark film. But an eccentric line of decor will get you only so far; to achieve true greatness, you've also got to be rude to the customers when they need it (which is usually), slip in a friendly remark when they least expect it, and, of course, be able to transform a buck fifty's worth of middle-shelf hooch into a vision of a better life. C. Bobby qualifies on all counts. (601 Post Street; 415-776- 9344) —DAVID WONDRICH

Vesuvio
SAN FRANCISCO
YOU'RE HAVING: A pint of Anchor Steam.
No matter how many tourists drop in for a pint or one of the bar's rudimentary mixed drinks, it still feels as though it's full of locals. The gallery upstairs is a particularly fine place to spend the day thrashing out what it all means. (255 Columbus Avenue; 415-362-3370)

Zeitgeist
SAN FRANCISCO
YOU'RE HAVING: A Bloody Mary.
Zeitgeist looks like a biker bar, but really it's a bike-messenger bar, and anybody's welcome as long as they're cool and don't mind a lot of leather jackets and tattoos. Because the people who come here tend to prefer two wheels, motorized or not.

It's been here forever, since before the neighborhood was gentrified, back when this was San Francisco's ghetto. The inside of the bar looks like a double-wide decorated in beer signs and bumper stickers. The stickers say, MASTURBATING IS NOT A CRIME and I'M SAD BECAUSE I'M SO FUCKING BORING.

It might not sound like the best bar in San Francisco, but it is. The drinks are generous. The Bloody Mary has so many vegetables, it's practically healthy. Pitchers of microbrew are twelve dollars. There's a giant outdoor beer garden with rows of picnic tables in a line of portable toilets so you don't have to wait. A fence keeps the wind out, and a eucalyptus tree provides the shade. And every night the tamale lady comes with her cooler, selling the best tamales you will ever have.

But there's something at Zeitgeist that goes beyond the great food and the great beer garden. The bar seems angry. The symbols are angry. The bumper stickers are angry. But Zeitgeist is not an angry place. In fact, it is unmistakably friendly and open, even happy. At Zeitgeist, nobody's a freak, not even the guy in the khakis and polo shirt. (199 Valencia Street; 415-255-7505) —STEPHEN ELLIOT

Musso & Frank Grill
HOLLYWOOD
YOU'RE HAVING: A martini before dinner. (Try the sand dabs.)
The bar, jammed to the edge of the dark and dowdy dining room, is neither big nor elaborate. But it can turn out a martini that Bogart would've judged worthy of the name. That counts for a lot in this world. (6667 Hollywood Boulevard; 323-467-7788)

The Polo Lounge
BEVERLY HILLS
YOU'RE HAVING: Scotch, on the rocks
The tenders of this small bar will do everything they can to make exactly what you ask for, even if it happens to be a regrettable choice. (9641 Sunset Boulevard, in the Beverly Hills Hotel; 310-887-2777)

La Gitana
ARIVACA, ARIZONA
YOU'RE HAVING: A beer and a shot, Sunday afternoon.
La Gitana has bloodstains on the floor, bullet holes in the walls, and the occasional free dental extraction on the pool table from a pliers-wielding biker. seriously. (7201 West Fifth Street; 520-398-0810)

Double Down Saloon
LAS VEGAS
YOU'RE NOT HAVING: Ass Juice.

Once, at the Double Down, I saw a beautiful woman drop her jeans and shoot pool in red panties, but that's not what makes this a great bar—or at least it's not the only thing. What makes the Double Down great is this: While it's in Vegas, it's not of Vegas—except in a few ways that matter. The paradox of Las Vegas is that all your cavorting takes place in the most meticulously calculated, carefully monitored environment known to man. Not at the Double Down. This joint is primordial, and yet a kind of Vegas theatricality rules, like Liberace inside out, with pagan grunge in place of glitter. Decadent murals of women and guitars crawl up the walls and across the ceiling. Weird movie clips and anime loop on the TV. The house drink is called Ass Juice, and, brother, you don't wanna know. "Vegas needs more places like this," said a clean-cut guy standing next to me on a recent, typical night at the Double Down: frat guys, vampire hipsters, Bukowski-grade barflies, and, as always, someone who made the wrong choice regarding leather pants. In a group that varied, no one's out of place. Vegas's main industry now is the outsized "experience," but if you have one at the DD, at least you won't have to credit a casino imagineer. It's all you and the Ass Juice, man. That's what makes this a great bar. (4640 Paradise Road; 702-791-5775) —SCOTT DICKENSHEETS

Beach Ball
NEPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA
YOU'RE HAVING: A White Russian for breakfast.
Oh, Lord, the Beach Ball. It's easy for a bar to be great in New or New Orleans where there are plenty of buildings old enough to have a good patina on them. In Orange County, not so easy. The Beach Ball makes the list because it opens at 6:00 A.M., and there's a line. And it's on the beach, but there's no patio. And because this outpost of "normalcy" is in Orange County, where plastic surgery is performed on pets. And because the late Spencer Rush, my father-in-law, used to drink here. A Orange County native, and an ornery one, he looked like Bruce Dern an taught history to the pretty little heads a Marina High. I Spence liked it and it liked Spence, it's a great bar. (2116 West Ocean-front; 949-675 8041) —D.

Petrossian Bar
LAS VEGAS
YOU'RE HAVING: A sidecar.
Out front, open to the Bellagio lobby, tables surround a piano; deeper within, velvet couches await. Don't worry about fitting in. Everyone's come for the same reasons you have: glorious fish eggs and smoked salmon, terrific specialty cocktails, and a break from the noisy chic of the new Vegas. (3600 Las Vegas Boulevard South, in the Bellagio; 702-693-7111)

The 49er Lounge
GALLUP, NEW MEXICO
YOU'RE HAVING: Whiskey, rocks.
Back when westerns were box- office gold, the El Rancho Hotel was where the stars ate, drank, and slept when they weren't sitting on horses. The hotel's lounge is both rough-hewn and rough around the edges. It doesn't serve a lot of fancy cocktails, but it has great booze. (1000 East Highway 66; 800-346-8357)

Charlie B's
MISSOULA, MONTANA
YOU'RE HAVING: A very stiff drink.
Without question the best place in the country to find a beautiful woman who can gut her own trout. Just be sure she's twenty-one. (428 North Higgins Avenue; 406-549-3589)

Cruise Room
DENVER
YOU'RE HAVING: A gin martini.
Except for a minor face-lift in the eighties, the art-deco interior at this 1933 Denver lounge has been kept gorgeously intact. Low crimson lighting, classic cocktails, exceptional martinis. (1600 Seventeenth Street, in the Oxford Hotel; 303-825-1107)

Donn's Depot
AUSTIN
YOU'RE HAVING: A Shiner.
A puzzling mix of old-school acid cowboys, students, and retirees drinking inside a collection of old railcars. Donn Adelman, who founded the place in 1972, is the man taking requests from behind the piano. (1600 West Fifth Street; 512-478-0336).

The Bars of Silver Street
HURLEY, WISCONSIN
YOU'RE HAVING: A Leinie's or a Hamm's.
I discovered Silver Street on a recent road-to-nowhere bar crawl with my Peace Corps buddy Adam. Heading north out of the Chippewa reservation in Wisconsin's Northwoods, the darkness and endless tracts of firs will whittle your expectations down to nothing. Until you crest a hill and see the old mining town of Hurley and its Silver Street: a quarter-mile-long stretch of road with twenty-five bars and half a dozen strip clubs. We crossed our Rubicon when we entered Nora's Bar & Red Carpet Lounge. A couple bottles didn't set us back five dollars, including tip. Then it was Mac's Bar, the Krash Inn, Freddie's Old Time Saloon, Iron Nugget, and a dozen others. At Iron Horse, we happened upon a "meat raffle," with meat-raffle girls in tight jeans spinning a wheel for beef prizes: "pasties and sauce," raw hamburger, and prime rib (for which everyone stood up).

Adam ended up winning ten pounds of skirt steak; we traded it to the locals for beer. The last bit of Silver Street is a section of tiny strip clubs: Cheeks, Club Carnival, the Silver Dollar Saloon, and others. For as remote as Hurley is, the girls aren't bad. Even in mukluks. —TONY D'SOUZA

The Inwood Lounge
DALLAS
YOU'RE HAVING: A Tanqueray and tonic.
A martini lounge in a 1947 movie house, the Inwood smells like gin, smoke, and warmed-up celluloid. And fresh popcorn. And although the key-shaped bar is the most inviting in the city, the best place to drink is at one of the tables next to the silent curtain of water falling down the wall. (5458 West Lovers Lane; 214-350-7834)

Nye's Polonaise Room
MINNEAPOLIS
YOU'RE HAVING: A manhattan, rocks.
If they made a sequel to Fargo, the first scene would be set here. The sparkling vinyl booths and sing-along piano bar made this place the epitome of swank for the generations of Polish-Americans who populated northeast Minneapolis. Thankfully, the old-timers refuse to yield. (112 East Hennepin Avenue; 612-379-2021)

Half Time Rec
ST. PAUL
YOU'RE HAVING: A round of Guinness.
Rowdy but friendly blue-collar barn of a joint with Irish music. Oh, and, strangely for an Irish pub, bocce-ball courts in the basement. (1013 Front Avenue; 651-488-8245)

Holler House
MILWAUKEE
YOU'RE HAVING: Beer all night long.
If Milwaukee can't do a beer bar right, then America's in worse trouble than we thought. Judging by the venerable Holler House, things'll be okay. (2042 West Lincoln Avenue; 414- 647-9284)

Los Ojos
JEMEZ SPRINGS, NEW MEXICO
YOU'RE HAVING: A tequila shot with a beer back.
The best way to get there is from below, like supplicant. You drive up from Albuquerque through the Indian reservation and red rocks to the deep cottonwoods then follow the winding stream up the mountain. If you time it right and the light hits the sheer canyon walls, they turn into majestic golden ships sailing straight for the center of the sky, and you realize something you must have always known: This is why people think the desert is a sacred place.

Then you get to Jemez Springs, a town so small, it doesn't even have a stoplight—but it doe have one Buddhist monastery, one nunnery run by the Handmaids of the Precious blood, one hot-springs restorative mineral-water bathhouse, and one former dry-out center for wayward priests.

Across the street from the old dry-out center in every sense—physically, spiritually, and metaphorically—is Los Ojos. The building is faded adobe, and inside there's a long wooden bar and barstools that are logs carved with a chain saw. It doesn't take long, sitting there. You have one shot of tequila and talk to the scientist from Los Alamos, have another and say hello to the outlaw biker, a third and listen to the priest brag about all the times he drove home from church smoking a joint and cranking Le Zeppelin. As you continue to fortify yourself, you develop a theory about monasteries and bars, the necessary balance between the right side of the road and the left. Then you remember the punch line to the classic joke about what the Buddhist told the hotdog vendor—"Make me one with everything"—and that reminds you of something else you must have always known: God is in the tequila. (17596 Highway 4; 505-829-3547)—JON H. RICHARDSON

The Red Lion Pub
CHICAGO
YOU'RE HAVING: A beer with the beans on toast.
To not mention Colin Cordwell, the co-owner and frequent bartender, would be to ignore this bar's best feature. He'll talk till he's forgotten you've ordered a beer. He'll talk till you've forgotten you've ordered a beer. And if the Lion were really about drinking, one of you might care. (2446 North Lincoln Avenue; 773-348-2695)

Bungalow
CHICAGO
YOU'RE HAVING: A manhattan.
You'll never have to remind the bartenders what you are drinking. Ask mixologist Chad Johnson to make you the manhattan he perfected in Louisville. (1622 West Belmont Avenue; 773-244-0400)

The Matchbox
CHICAGO
YOU'RE HAVING: A lemon drop.
Being in a triangular building, it should properly have been named the Matchbook. The original owner (he was off-the-boat Polish) had it right, though, in terms of scale, if not shape; there is as much room behind the bar as there is for the patrons on stools: about four feet. The Box's dedication to fresh, top-shelf cocktails is legend, from the house-infused vodkas to the twelve brands of gin to the row of ten shiny shakers beckoning from the bar top, the dregs of which are always left with the customer to top things off. (770 North Milwaukee Avenue; 312-666- 9292) —TED ALLEN

Hideout
CHICAGO
YOU'RE HAVING: A whiskey sour.
If you think it's weird that the Meatpacking District in New York became trendy for three minutes, consider the Hideout, originally a third-shift bar for the garbage men and snowplow drivers who park their trucks directly across Wabansia Avenue. Surrounded by warehouses, it's now home to a percolating music scene with an alt-country bent—a sort of clubhouse for the Bloodshot Records label. (1354 West Wabansia Avenue; 773-227-4433)

Chipp Inn
CHICAGO
YOU'RE HAVING: Honker's Ale.
Excepting that time each year when Kate Campion throws her annual adult spelling bee (named not for randy content but for the added challenge to literacy that alcohol represents), the Chipp Inn is not the sort of place that gets (or seeks) attention. Tucked in at the nondescript West Town corner of Greenview and Fry, it has no food, save chips and Slim Jims, although you can peruse the delivery menus if you like. It's got a barkeep, Joe, who has a passing resemblance to a young Mayor Daley, but he's probably tired of hearing that. If you buy a pack of cigs from Joe, he will unwrap it, flip the top open, and present them to you. This is a nice thing for Joe to do. (832 North Greenview Avenue; 312-421-9052) —T. A.

The Bar at Tujague's
NEW ORLEANS
YOU'RE HAVING: A Sazerac at sundown.
Opened in 1856, Tujague's has all the amenities you'd expect from a bar that old: none. So if you're looking for a comfortable seat or even a barstool, go somewhere else. Stay if you want an unassuming atmosphere and bread pudding that'll make you weep. (823 Decatur Street; 504-525-8676)

Fritzel's European Jazz Pub

NEW ORLEANS
YOU'RE HAVING: Beer, when the band's all warmed up.
All Fritzel's—a German jazz bar, if that's not a contradiction—has going for it is a huge portrait of Field Marshal Rommel, a blisteringly hot swing combo that takes requests, massive mugs of cold lager, and cheap shots of Jäger-meister, which was supposedly introduced to America here. (733 Bourbon Street; 504-561-0432)

Pinkie Master's Lounge
SAVANNAH
YOU'RE HAVING: A gin martini in a plastic cup.
A few years ago, a newspaper assigned me to find the ten best martinis in Savannah. I had only one evening to do it, and it ended, like all my nights out, at Pinkie Master's Lounge. My vision was wobbly, but I knew Pinkie's by heart: its flushed young students and florid old regulars, its rebel flag and signed R.E.M. poster, its sticky bar top where virtually every politician in Georgia has ordered a drink. Pinkie Masterpolis died in 1977, and I don't think they've dusted his drapes or raised his prices since. My martini cost $3.50, came in a plastic cup, and was perfect. (318 Drayton Street; 912-238- 0447) —LUKE DITTRICH

Churchill's Pub
MIAMI
YOU'RE HAVING: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please.
When? Morning, when the game's on. Premier League soccer in the day, punk bands at night, British round the clock. (5501 Northeast Second Avenue; 305-757-1807)

Robert's Western World
NASHVILLE
YOU'RE HAVING: A PBR and a burger.
The best bar/western-wear store/music venue in Nashville and a historic spot that launched the best band you've never heard of: neo-honky-tonkers BR549. (416 Broadway; 615-244-9552)

The Tune Inn
WASHINGTON, D. C.
YOU'RE HAVING: A ten-dollar pitcher of Miller with a burger.
The mounted deer heads on the wall make this dive interesting. The deer asses make it great. (331 1/2 Pennsylvania Avenue SE; 202-543-2725)

The Grey Lodge
PHILADELPHIA
YOU'RE HAVING: A pint of Flying Bison once things start to pick up a bit.
At the outer edge of the vast sea of decrepit two-story row houses that is northeast Philadelphia, there's a cemetery. Past the cemetery, there's a Burger King and a car dealership. Past them, there's the Grey Lodge. If Moe Szyslak's umpteenth suicide attempt actually succeeded and if, through some unlikely but amusing chain of events, Comic Book Guy took over his bar, this is what you'd end up with. It's a long way to go for a beer. It's worth it. (6235 Frankford Avenue; 215-624-2969)

El Chapultepec
DENVER
YOU'RE HAVING: A Bud and a shot of Jack at 8:45, right before the show starts. ,br> You can always spot the out-of- towners along the bar at El Chapultepec. Their faces ask, "Are we really in Denver?" Though it sits on the edge of the city's dwindling skid row, El Chapultepec smells like New York, feels like New Orleans, and sounds like southside Chicago. Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Miles Davis—all the greats have played El Chapultepec, aka the Pec, drawn by the bar's cranky but charismatic owner, septuagenarian Jerry Krantz. A "full-blooded Russian," Krantz is a dead ringer for Norman Mailer and says he was a dear friend of Ella Fitzgerald's, who used to sit in her limo outside the back door so she could hear the music and not deal with the people. Sinatra came by, too. He'd ask Krantz to cook him up some Italian sazeech. Krantz will tell you the stories, but not if you're an asshole. Krantz don't like assholes. These days, more and more customers are assholes, he says glumly, and one night he had to wrap a bar towel around a cue ball and knock the teeth down the throat of one truly spectacular asshole. Krantz invites you, therefore, to sit down at one of the half dozen red booths, drink your $1.25 draw beer, and listen politely to the music. By day, the Pec's a quiet bar, with regulars like Lefty, Pretty Boy, Oxygen Joe, and the guy who hit the lottery for eight mil a few years back but tries to keep a low profile. Then at 9:00, the Pec changes: live, old-school, straight-ahead jazz—free. The best players beg to perform here and often jam long after closing time, because the place has that kind of vibe and because Krantz has that kind of reverence for the artist. Unless the artist misbehaves. Bono? Two girls in his party were underage, so the Pec carded his Irish ass. Kerouac used to come in, too. Again, Krantz was deeply unimpressed. "I thought he was just a fucking wino dope addict," he says. "He'd sleep in a car next door and come in and wash up in the bathroom." Then Kerouac went back East, Krantz says, and wrote some kinda road book. You read it, Jerry?"Naaah. I know it." (1962 Market Street; 303-295-9126) —J. R. MOEHRINGER

Southwark
PHILADELPHIA
YOU'RE HAVING: A rye old-fashioned.
After fifteen minutes at this uncanny re-creation of a pre-Prohibition corner bar, you'll be running simultaneous conversations with one stranger about Sumerian zymurgy and another about the problems dating a girl who live with her identical twin raise. And drink a perfect rye old-fashioned. (70 South Fourth Street;215-238-1888)

Dee's Cafe
PITTSBURGH
YOU'RE HAVING: Yuengling, late.
A twenty-three-ounce beer for only $2.25. Pool tables, three jukeboxes, and Ping Pong. Every 'Burgh bar crawl goes though Dee's. (1314 East Carson Street 412-431-1314)

21 Club
NEW YORK
YOU'RE HAVING: Southside.
Once you master the dress code and navigate the gantlet of staff members by the door whose sole purpose seems to be to keep the riffraff out by making them —you—feel like an eighth grader at a high school mixer, how quietly eccentric it turns out to be. Just like a real bar, only much, much richer. (21 West Fifty-second Street; 212-582-7200)

Nicky Blaine's
INDIANAPOLIS
YOU'RE HAVING: The Dean martini.
Sitting at Nicky Blaine's is like inhabiting a Damon Runyon sentence: dated, but at the same time eternal and full of attitude. The place is a joint, an experience that asserts something inarguable about ducking off a city street for a quick smoke and two fingers of vodka. People will always need the comfort of a basement bar where the bartenders are attentive, the barstools succoring, and the lights, well, the lights transform everything. The women look sumptuous, fleshy, and flush; the men seem to stand taller, faces stripped of weariness and pretension. At Nicky Blaine's, everyone is sexy and full-blooded. I don't know if it's the wall sconces or the table lamps or the bar uplights or the candles here and there, but I am always struck by the fact that people there look the way they do in great paintings—elegant, a little sad sometimes, centered in the middle of the small gestures that make us human. Yes, there are cigars to be had, plates of cheese to be lingered over, couches and armchairs and the warm wrap of red velvet and a regular jazz quartet. Sure, you can order what you want, and it will be better than you have a right to expect. But you'll sit to have a look, to absorb the visual comfort of a bar so thoughtfully lit. (20 North Meridian Street; 317-638-5588) —TOM CHIARELLA

Shamrock Club
BALTIMORE
YOU'RE HAVING: A Guinness. It's hard to find a corner bar in Baltimore that hasn't been affected by real estate porn, but the Shamrock is still untouched by the tapas menus and deejays.

The women patrons seem tougher than the men: These gals are funny, big-boned, and uncursed by fashion, and they have a bevy of blue-collar male suitors pursuing them. "Ma," a toothless motorcycle enthusiast who is quite entertaining to talk to if she doesn't punch you, has a certain charm you usually don't find in the showbiz circles in which I'm forced to ravel.

The men are mostly straight but certainly open-minded. "I used to be a male stripper," one fifty-year-ld roofer confessed to me one night between his turns at the pool table. "Why aren't you still?" I kidded him. "Who wants to look at these old buns?" he launched before going back his game.

Another night when I chatted up a reasonably handsome roofer with Band-Aids on his face, a feminist biker who's become a friend whispered to me, "Don't talk to that guy. He's a wife beater."

"Oh, well," I responded. "I'm not marrying him." It's that kind of place. You might have a bad night at the Shamrock, but you'll still have fun. I love it, but wouldn't go there if I were you. (6004 Harford Road;410-426-9715) —JOHN WATERS

Freddy's Bar & Backroom
BROOKLYN
YOU'RE HAVING: A pint and a whiskey back. The nondescript no-man's- land between Park Slope, Fort Greene, and Boerum Hill—three well-manicured Brooklyn neighborhoods—has no name, but it does have three world-class bars, all within a five-minute walk of one another. Hank's Saloon (46 Third Avenue; 718- 625-8003), O'Connor's (39 Fifth Avenue; 718-783-9721), and Freddy's, where the taps work, and there's more than one grade of booze. By local standards, that makes it a palace—although if it were a real palace, its own inhabitants would be plotting its overthrow. (485 Dean Street; 718-622-7035) —D. W.

Grassroots Tavern
NEW YORK
YOU'RE HAVING: A pitcher of Bass.
Nobody knows Grassroots is there, but it's always full. Three reasons: beer, darts, conversation. And enough gloom to keep the NYU students from making it a "college bar." (20 St. Marks Place; 212-475-9443)

Bill's Gay 90s
NEW YORK
YOU'RE HAVING: A Rob Roy.
It's a former speakeasy where you still feel as though you're getting away with something. Even in midtown. (57 East Fifty-fourth Street; 212-355-0243)

The Hotel Bar
YOU'RE HAVING: Another.
Ready drinks. Chatty women. And clean sheets an elevator ride away. Hotel bars offer not a place where everybody knows your name but a place where nobody does. It doesn't matter whether you're sipping an Oban on the rocks at the 2001-inspired Hudson Hotel bar in New York or nursing a Miller Lite at the Comfort Inn in Colby, Kansas. All hotel bars at their core present the possibility of a chance encounter with a stranger that secretly fuels all travel.

The hotel bar is the palliative for the defeated soul coming off a three-hour delay in Salt Lake City, the ad hoc meeting place for the sales team in Memphis, the post ceremony venue where the last of the stalwarts convene to bitch about the shitty buffet and try to score with the bridesmaids. But beyond the mundane, it's the possibility that anything might happen— could an old soak like Bill Murray have beguiled Scarlett Johansson anywhere else?—that makes the hotel bar the first place you go. And very often the last. —CHUCK THOMPSON

Napoleon House
NEW ORLEANS
YOU'RE HAVING: A Sazerac as early in the day as you can make it over.
The Napoleon House might be the best bar in America. First of all, it's in a 209-year-old house in the French Quarter of New Orleans, still America's best bar town. It's not a rowdy place. (Sure, they'll serve you a hurricane in a go cup, but you shouldn't order one.) The only music played is classical. But neither is it stodgy or stiff; the crowd is a lively mix of locals—more than usual for a French Quarter bar—and well-behaved out-of-towners. It's not a fancy place or an expensive place, but it's not a dive, either. It's got food: The muffuletta is considered the city's, and hence the world's, second best. And it's famous for its Pimm's Cup, which is fine. More important than all that is that it has an on-and-off relation- ship with Paul, the surly son of a bitch who makes the best Sazerac in town. He mixes 'em as if he's doing you a huge fucking favor, and he is. (500 Chartres Street; 504-524-9752).—D.W.

Julius'
NEW YORK
YOU'RE HAVING: Anything in a bottle.
Sure, it's a gay bar, but this dingy, loose-hinged old survivor is still more masculine than 90 percent of the straight bars in America. If Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams were drinking buddies, Julius' would've been their bar. (159 West Tenth Street)

Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden
QUEENS, NEW YORK
YOU'RE HAVING: A pitcher of Staropramen with Saturday brunch.
Attached to this little bar— manned by a bartender so closemouthed that some think he's kidding—is a high stone wall surrounding half an acre of gravel punctuated by rows of century-old trees and bench after bench of people of every stripe (after all, this is Queens, perhaps the most diverse place in the world), all peacefully drinking beer and munching sausages. Paradise. (29-19 Twenty-fourth Avenue; 718- 274-4925)

No. 9 Park
BOSTON
YOU'RE HAVING: An old-fashioned old-fashioned.

Precision mixology by folks who give a shit is always worth supporting, even in Boston. (9 Park Street; 617-742-9991)

Pegu Club NEW YORK

YOU'RE HAVING: A manhattan.
From 1800 until approximately the Nixon era, it was universally acknowledged that the best bars in the world were found in New York hotels—the old Waldorf-Astoria, the Metropolitan, the New York. The honor roll is a long one. For the guys who worked at these places, mixing drinks was a calling. Can you imagine a modern-day New York hotel bartender smiling when you order a manhattan, asking you which kind of bitters and which kind of rye you'd like in it, producing a prechilled mixing glass, hand-cracking the ice, stirring everything together with a suave, easy rotation of the wrist, retrieving a shapely cocktail coupe (also prechilled), popping a brandied cherry into the bottom of it, straining in the drink, twisting a swatch of lemon peel over the top, wiping the rim of the glass with it, sliding you your drink, and pouring you a glass of ice water on the side? Thankfully, over the last few years, a handful of bars have sprung up in Manhattan dedicated to doing things the right way, no shortcuts or substitutions: the lovely Flatiron Lounge (37 West Nineteenth Street; 212-727-7741), Little Branch (20 Seventh Avenue South; 212-929- 4360), Employees Only (510 Hudson Street; 212-242-3021), and a handful of others. The only thing that keeps Pegu Club, the bar "Libation Goddess" Audrey Saunders opened last year on a nondescript stretch of Houston Street, from rivaling the one at the Hoffman House—enshrined in city lore as the city's best cocktail bar ever—is that there's no hotel upstairs where you can sleep it off. By the way, that manhattan? That's exactly how they make it at Pegu. (77 West Houston Street; 212-473-7348) —D. W.

Doyle's Cafe
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASSACHUSETTS
YOU'RE HAVING: A pint of Guinness with a Jameson back.
In 1979, when I moved into the uppermost apartment of a three-decker on a hill near Franklin Park, I quickly fastened on Doyle's, a dark joint on Washington Street under the elevated tracks down the hill. Jamaica Plain was just beginning to gentrify, and Doyle's was a throwback. There were vintage signs on the walls, including a triptych of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito cupping their ears above the legend ENEMY EARS ARE LISTENING . On Friday nights, it hosted local folksingers, including Stanley Matis, who would sing a song about Buster Christ, a mechanic who wanted nothing to do with the trouble his brother was causing. Now it's a theme park for the city's political class. The apotheosis came in 2004 when, with the Democrats in town, the place found itself afflicted with pols, pundits, and cable-TV layabouts. (It's hard for a bar to stay cool when Chris Matthews is on the next stool, I can tell you that.) What saves it, of course, are the Burkes, who bought the place from the Doyles in 1971. They've managed to clean it up without selling it out and have seen the place become nationally famous while maintaining the basics of a great saloon. I feel proud that I met it when I did. (3484 Washing- ton Street; 617-524-2345) —CHARLES P. PIERCE

Additional contributors: Richard Grant (West and Southwest), Ted Haigh (California and Southwest), Robert Hess (Northwest), Edd S. Hurt (South), David Mahoney (Midwest), Louise Owens (Southwest), and Terry Sullivan (Midwest).