COLORADO
The Cruise Room
Denver
Original art deco bar where the curving, vaguely nautical lines of the bar and walls and stools suggest Fred and Ginger and Capt. Stubbing and Julie, all at the same time.

FLORIDA
The Bahi Hut
Sarasota
A tiki bar where you can drink mai tais till you see iguanas on the ceiling -- or walk into the oncoming traffic out on the Tamiami Trail.

Linger Lodge
Bradenton
A 1930s era hunting camp turned RV lodge. Kick back with a Bud and be afraid of the walls of taxidermied endangered species.

LOUISIANA
Napoleon House
New Orleans
This ain't some French Quarter tourist trap. Locals go here. Try the Sazerac.





Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop (above)
New Orleans
The most romantic bar in New Orleans. I was once sat in the cold gloom of the 300-year-old place with a boyfriend, both of us warming our hands on a candle on a table in a broken down corner of the broken down building. We were arty rebels against the world, too creative to go to a bar with central heat.

MASSACHUSETTS

Doyle's Cafe
Jamaica Plain
Irish bar in an Irish neighborhood. There's Guinness on tap, fish and chips, and lots of politicians out trying to be seen in a bar where the politicians are supposed to be seen doing their deal making and fixing.

NEW MEXICO

Tiny's Restaurant and Lounge
Santa Fe
Screw the faux adobe. Tiny's is in a mundane strip mall on Santa Fe's busiest suburban street.

The 49er Lounge
Gallup
Housed in the uber-retro El Rancho Hotel where John Wayne and other stars stayed in the 1940s when they were filming westerns in the surrounding New Mexican desert.

Silva's Saloon
Bernalillo
True New Mexico. It's no wonder Sam Shepherd set his play "True West" in Bernalillo. The locals are tough, and they come to Silva's to drink Tecate beneath the cowboy hats of their dead ancestors.



ue
Burt's Tiki Lounge
Albuquerque
Retro kitsch rules in this Route 66 tiki lounge. You gotta go.

Los Ojos
Jemez Springs
Roadhouse in the Jemez Mountains just north of 'Burque in a town where there's no stoplight but one rehab center for priests who, um, stray. And lots of bikers. I had a bowl of green chile stew here once with Ron Howard. He was in Jemez shooting his movie The Missing.

There are scads of bars I'd add to this list: The Florabama in Orange Beach, Ala.; the The Old Salty Dog on City Island, Fla.; The Buckhorn Saloon & Opera House in Pinos Altos, NM. (below) and Manci's in Daphne, Ala.



How about you? What bars would you put on the Best list and why?