Make mine a Manhattan

Philip Delves Broughton takes us on a bar crawl through New York

BURIED in most imaginations is a classic New York dive: smoky, sleazy, a little funkysmelling; full of drunks, sluts and wits — fugitives from sunlight and ambition. Maybe there's a Cary Grant figure, waiting in a trench coat for the barman to summon him to the telephone. For him, and as far as his wife knows, the bar is the 'office'.

Sitting by the window is a woman in a jacket, skirt and pearls, far too smart for this place, drinking gimlets and waiting for a married man who never comes. An ageing novelist, once a regular on those Most Promising Young Writers' lists, now crippled by envy and writer's block, eyes her up. A group of Irish cops turns wistful in a corner, chatting with their old friends from the Mob.

I've never found all of these elements in one bar, but they are dotted around different joints in Manhattan. In one long night you can probably hit them all.

Start after work in Grand Central Station, as commuters take one last draught of city life before heading home to the suburbs, The bar at Michael Jordan's Steak House is an almond of shiny brass and wood on a balcony overlooking the station concourse.

By 5 p.m. it is elbow to elbow, with briefcases littering the floor and cheesy chat-up lines barely audible in the rush-hour hubbub. It is the lecherous uncle to the fancier hotel bars nearby — the Blue Room at the Algonquin, the Royalton Bar, and 57 57 at the Four Seasons.

Wrinkled hands gravitate to stockinged knees and get brushed away. Women arch their necks at men with loosened ties and wedding rings. Poky hotel rooms, morning breath and messy divorce suits beckon. Vodka martinis are the drink here, taken in an outsized glass with two giant olives — one for you, one for a friend. as Frank Sinatra used to say. It will loosen you up like a Swedish massage, readying you for the night to come.

When you're done, turn right out of the door, take a taxi from the rank, and head downtown towards SoHo, the corner of Mercer and Prince. There you will find Fanelli, black, squat and inviting, 130 years of old Italian New York.

The walls are hung with boxing posters, the tables covered in red-and-white checked cloths. The crowd is an odd bunch: young movie stars, such as Stephen Dorff and Clare Danes, who live close by; geriatric artists two fags short of a tracheotomy; sickly models kicking back after days of being turned away by agencies; hacks.

I was brought here by an older, senior colleague shortly before moving to New York in 1998. The barmen knew him and never charged him more than $20 for lunch and bladder-bursting quantities of booze. Eager to impress, I went mano a mano for three hours of Bass Ale, Marlboro Reds and greasy chips. The beer came in clear, plastic glasses, the kind used in school canteens, and went down easily on a hot day. Beautiful shoppers passed by outside, but inside it was turning ugly.

By 3.30 p.m. I was feeling rough. By four I was hogwhimpering, steadying myself at the bar, the sound of conversation reduced to a blur amid the inner voices telling me to stop, hold on, concentrate, not spill my drink. I remember resting my head on the cool wall in the gents, between two graffiti messages: 'Mother, father, brother sister, they're all strangers to me' and 'I just ate some delicious chocolate cake'.

The men of Fanelli, it seemed to me, were missing the point of graffiti. My favourite piece of graffito, incidentally, was scratched into the wall of the Dolly, a filthy basement pub in Oxford. It read, '667. Neighbour of the Beast'.

Not far from here are scores of bars popular with out-of-towners, the Bridge and Tunnel crowd who drive in from New Jersey and Long Island for weekend nights in the city. More boozy and less inhibited than Manhattan's artful natives, they can provide exhilarating or obnoxious company, depending on your mood. Their arrival in a place marks its sell-by date for the fashion crowd. But if you're here for a night or so, and want to make friends, fly Pravda, the Bowery Bar and Bar 89.

Further downtown are the old bars of Tribeca. Nancy's Whiskey Pub on Lispenard is where I watched Bill Clinton admit his affair with Monica Lewinsky, surrounded by a bunch of New York Rangers icehockey fans, who seemed ready to use the President's head for a puck. On North Moore Street is Walker's, a venerable place with a tin roof from the 1870s. where John Kennedy Jr used to go for quiet drinks with friends.

A warning in this area: the Baby Doll Lounge may look like just another drinking hole, but unless your taste is for naked black women thrusting away at a silver pole, stay away.

This should bring you to 10 p.m., a good time for Lansky Lounge on Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side. A former speakeasy named after the gangster Meyer Lansky, it has what is probably the best entrance of any bar in New York.

A red L' marks an alleyway. You walk down to the end, where an iron staircase leads up to an unmarked door. Inside, it could be any trendy New York bar, but the palaver of finding it makes it fun. Or, to use a Tina Brown term, it feels `insiderly'.

Another occasional pleasure is Madame X on Houston Street. At weekends it is jammed with black people crammed on to red-velvet sofas mooching to Stevie Wonder and Prince. Unlike trendier places, no one here seems to mind dorky white men joining in.

After midnight, knowledge is power in Manhattan. In the West Village there are several bars that used to be popular with coke-fiend Brits. who could find dealers at the bar. In the East Village there are all kinds of dank pits, where a knock on the door gets you a lock-in till dawn, a pool table if you're lucky, and a fist fight if you're not.

My old flatmate often took visiting English bankers to a transvestite nightclub. La Nueva Escuelita on 39th Street, where the walls are pasted with gay magazine covers, and Nora Molina, a busty brunette, flings out condoms like confetti. He assured me that public schoolboys loved it.