After Midnight

THE SUN'S

TIME FOR

ROUND!

OUR TOUR OF

GREATEST

BARS

CHICAGO

tnougk it'& neue^i going to end.

You're at a dyna- mite bar long after you should have gone home. The hands on the clock

seem to stop. The music is turned up. You get this feel­ing: Anything can happen. When the magic hour comes, deals get made, lost souls are found, beautiful women offer themselves up to the whims of the night. The party feels as though it's never going to end—at least until it does, at last call. How do you find the magic hour? You go to one of the bars on our list of America's best late-night

drinking establishments. Start with the Green Mill in Chicago. "Where else in the world do you go if you want to hear great live music at 4:30 in the morning?"

asks Dave Jemilo, owner since 1986. The Green Mill is Chicago's oldest jazz club, where Al Capone hung out in the 1920s with his henchman "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, who was part-owner of the joint. Years after Frank Sinatra frequented the Green Mill, you can still smell his cologne. See you there—after midnight. (4802 North Broadway, greenmilljazz.com)

A

WASHINGTON, D.C.

T There's no sign for Jimmy Valentine's Lonely Hearts Club, and it's difficult to find. You need to venture near D.C.'s H Street Corridor, until recently an urban wasteland, and look for the pink halo above the door. Step inside this beer lover's bar and you've entered a strange world where no one would bat an eye if Flash Gordon were to walk by. As one frequenter described the vibe at Jimmy V's: "ran­dom, crazy, awesome." (1103 Bladensburg Road NE, jimmy valentineslhc.com)

FRANKLIN

' \ BOSTON /

The Franklin Caf6 closes at two a.m., which in Boston— hardly the city that doesn't sleep—is

damn near sunrise. The kitchen stays open until 1:30 a.m.; you won't find a better

pork chop in Beantown at that hour. We've spent many magic hours at the Franklin,

slurping gibsons and listening to locals complain about the time Red Sox owner Harry

F r a z e e sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for a pittance so he could finance a stage play called No,

No, Nanette. Hilari­ous! (278 Shaumul Avenue, franklin cafe.com)

MISTER ii

NEW YORK'

Armin Amiri's new Mister H (short for Mister Hung) is reached through a discreet door on the quiet side of the new Mon-drian SoHo. Expectations are high when a dandyishly dressed dwarf and a giant named Disco man the doors. With exotic

but comfy decor, Mister H transports you simultaneously to a Chinese cathouse and Casablanca. The dance floor gets going around one a.m. We don't rush to the lat­est club, but we're hanging at Hung's. (9 Crosby Street, mondriansoho.com) d

JUMBO'S

HOLLYWOOD

Only in Tinseltown can a pseudo strip club be a city treasure (since 1970). The kind of place B-movie legend Russ Meyer found his female fodder, Jumbo's is Ringling Bros, gone burlesque—mirrored ceiling, stripper-pole stage, white tablecloths.... Step right up. (5153 Hollywood Boulevard, jumbos.com)

SALOON

LAS VEGAS

9he5Dou£(e3)ou»t So&>" claims

tfr it uv iw !»i|tttie&t ftCace &tv8a^tk."

Call the Double Down Saloon and ask when it closes, and you'll hear a man (clearly with a cigarette in his mouth) say proudly, "Never." The Double Down claims to be "the happiest place on Earth." It's a monument to graffiti, where you can gamble freely and you can still smoke, a Vegas shrine that smells of beauty and despair, where rockers, models and the homeless rub elbows all night long. And yes, it's also home of the fabled bacon martini. If you don't like loud punk music, you might want to bring cot­ton for your ears. Even the address of this place is cool. See you there. (4640 Paradise Road, doubledownsaloon.com)

-TAM PA-

IN LOCAL PARLANCE,

A HUB DRINK IS ONE WITH

A HEAVY POUR

NEW ORLEANS

In New Orleans you can get tipsy just thinking about where to go for ^

late-night drinks Try the Club Ms. Mae's, a barn-size drinkery

that's open 24 hours. Tour­ists and Tulaners welcome. Locals

are outraged that,H under the new ma nagement, ^^_ double-shot*

drinks have ^ risen from f $2 to $3. What's w this world ' coming to? (4336

M a g a z i n ;l Street, msmaes^ wallof shame.blog spot.com)

The last place a visiting night crawler looking for action would think to find a classic American bar would be in downtown Tampa. But look beyond this conventional-minded city's skyline for a certain corner neon bar sign, and you'll find alternative musicians, college students, bus station drifters and former mayors all mixing it up at this classy dive, fabled for its checkerboard floors, up-to-speed jukebox and heavy pours. Hit the sidewalk hot dog vendor outside when you get hungry. (719 North Franklin Street, thehubbartampa.com)

DEUCE

: MIAMI BEACH :

You want to meet a one-eyed fisherman wearing a pink polo shirt who used to be a powerful politico before he went to jail? Go to Mac's Club Deuce. What other bar can claim to have served drinks to Keith Richards and denied Kate Moss entry? As one patron puts it, "You can be the ugliest person in the world, walk in here, and everyone gets the same treatment. The best people I've met in Miami I've met here." Bonus: Drinks are two for one from—gulp-eight a.m. to seven p.m. (222 14th Street)

JVUU FONIAINE

MEMPHIS

Mollie Fontaine Lounge is housed in a Victorian mansion that looks as though it's haunted by the ghost of Carl Perkins. Opened in 2007 (though the building has been around since 1886), the place serves up dynamite mac and cheese and stays open "till the spirits go to sleep," as the motto goes. It has two bars, one upstairs, one downstairs, so you can pick your vibe, which is sure to get weirder as the night moves along. (679 Adams Avenue, molliefontainelounge.com)

f

ROOM

The Rio Room is new for 2011. Its "spaceship" dance floor and bar have made quite an impression. Chromeo and Erykah Badu were at the opening party, and in February the Rio Room hosted Dallas's best Super Bowl party after the game. As one attendee put it, "There were so many beautiful women, I thought I'd died and been reborn in an issue of playboy." Now that's saying something. (4515 Travis Street, rioroom.com)

'j-'jj

The Endup is pure San Francisco. Anything ^^

goes, and we mean anything. Over the years, this stand­out party spot has been voted

the best dance club, best DJ, best

bartender, best

singles scene

and best

gay club. Upstairs, downstairs, inside or out— you'll find what you want in the wee hours.

(401 6th Street theendup.com) ^h

REGGAE

GOLD ON I

SATURDAYS,!

10 P.M. TO

SFIVE A.M.,

HIGHLANDER

coveted. Jagermeister: flowing like water. Mix all this with the legend­ary Jamaican jerk chili at one a.m. and you've had a night. Bonus: free Wi-Fi! (931 Monroe Drive NE, thehighlanderatlanta.com)

What used to be a number-crunching accounting office is now a cocktail house where you can chase deviled eggs and house pickles with champagne cocktails until well after two a.m. An alterna­tive to Portland's usual beer bars and hippie dives, this watering hole has an air of "mid-century-modern sophistication^ as one

THE GOLD

dust:

champagne and grape­fruit juice

nightlife arbiter put it. At the same time, it doesn't take itself too seri­ously. It's known for its 60-ounce scorpion bowls, large enough for you to dive in and take a swim. Happy hour officially lasts six hours here, but in truth it never ends at the Gold Dust Meridian. (3267 Southeast Hawthorne Boule­vard, golddustmeridian.com)

ALIpJNTO HIS

he thought may already have occurred to you: Why not chuck the office job and open a bar? It's not easy, but it can be done if you plan well and com­mit to a lot of work. Neal Bodenheimer, 34, did it. Along with his partners, Matthew Kohnke and Kirk Estopinal, he now runs one of the hippest bars in one of America's hippest cities: a swank cocktail boite called Cure, at 4905 Freret Street in New Orleans. Bodenheimer was

working at an ad agency in Manhattan when he decided he'd had enough. "I was walking past the Red Bench in SoHo one night, a little joint on Sullivan Street," he says over a pint otbiere pale. "I realized then I wanted to run my own bar." After five years in New York, Bodenheimer returned to his native city to open his own bar. How did he do it? "I didn't know anything," he says. "I didn't know how to finance it. I didn't know about human resources, insur­ance, licensing. I had worked as a waiter and bartender. I had some budgeting experience. Location is first and foremost. You need to work up a good business plan. What drives restaurants and bars? Seats and tables. The basis of your financials is seats. And what are the hours? Are there zoning restrictions? How many times can you turn the restaurant tables? Negotiate hard on anything that makes money: food, drink, whatever. Keep your estimates con­servative. Ask a lot of questions. Take care of

your purveyors. It s a relationship business. What s the biggest mistake people make? "Underestimating the level of involve­ment," says Bodenheimer. "Pay smart people for advice. Get a good property agent and someone who can help you with labor laws. Hire a good attorney to do partnership agreements and review your lease. They will save you more money than they will cost you. If you've never worked in a bar or restaurant, go work in one. And keep your day job as long as you can. A lot

of white-collar people want to get into this business, but the reality is it's a blue-collar business." How do you come up with the money? "Talk to 10 friends, to family. Leave something on the table. Don't go all in. I took more risks in this project than I ever wanted to take in my life. Hire smart people to work for you. Make sure your people make money. Never put your hands in your staffs money. As owner, eyes are always on you. If you don't play up to the role of owner, it's noticed." What does it

feel like when your place finally opens? You re terrified. You've spent all your time and all your money. It's like getting on a high dive. At some point you either turn around and get off the ladder or grab your balls and jump."

Sean M cCusker quit his job as a journalist in Manhattan in 2009 and moved to New Orleans to open Sylvain, which in a short period of time has become a French Quarter destination for exquisite food and elegant drinking. It took McCusker a while to open (at 625 Chartres Street), but he is now reaping the benefits. What was his biggest surprise? "The amount of gov­ernment agencies involved, both on the state and city level," says McCusker one afternoon at his bar. "The number of permits, licenses, fire marshal clearances, health inspections and liquor board reviews is staggering. Unless you have the patience of Gandhi—and I'm assum­ing you don't since you have an itch to get into this business—find someone to prescribe you

meds, because you'll be doing a lot of waiting in government buildings or in your bar for someone to show up. Be sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Work your concept and business plan to death. Run your ideas by people in the business, people who will tell you the truth. Whatever you think your budget is, add 25 percent to it. Whatever date you think you're going to open, add three months to that. And be prepared for criti-

cism, even it the cnuc is way or