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This retro lounge lizard bar-restaurant jumps after work and on weekend nights with downtown execs. Cosmopolitan cocktails are top notch (see Good Life Downtown).

The name is no joke. Three’s company but four’s a crowd. There are just two taps, and one of them is Guinness. Like the beer, the crowd tends to be Irish – well, Boston Irish (see The Littlest Bar).

You can usually get a table at this large pub. Settle in for a night of live music and taste some of the 20 beers on tap.

How low can you go? The snazzy, gleaming Limbo bar is the Ladder District’s trendiest and most frenetic scene. There’s an upstairs dining section, too.

This surprisingly unpretentious, contemporary jazz bar and casual restaurant makes an excellent place to sip good value wine, kick back, and engage in intelligent conversation with your neighbors.

This well-mannered pool hall boasts a pair of full-service bars, 22 tables, and live music nightly. It is often frequented by pro athletes. No grungy dress.

The first floor of this trendy fish restaurant hosts a dynamic bar scene replete with preening singles. Appropriately, one of the house cocktails is a “flirtini”.

It’s posh, it’s civilized, and it’s expensive. Relax in a brocade chair, sip a single malt, and light up a cigar without the high-octane haze found elsewhere downtown.

Middle management guys loosen their ties and sip cocktails to mainstream rock upstairs. Downstairs, the polo-shirt crowd shoots pool and swigs Heineken.

This pub has all the good points of a bar in Dublin’s Temple Bar – Guinness, Harp, darts – along with the shortcomings (loud music and too many tourists).