You're in need of a great cigar bar for a seriously manly session of smoke and alcohol intake. However, you absolutely don't want to be surrounded by:

• Young, faux-rich jackasses who see the movie Boiler Room as an invaluable primer instead of a cautionary tale
• Old, truly rich jackasses, whose hobbies include "accidentally" tipping people like you to fetch their top hat from the coat-check

Try Hudson Bar and Books - upscale enough to suggest success, yet chilled out enough to discourage unbearable conversations about how tough it is to find a trustworthy yacht captain. The space is very smoky, very small, and often packed, but somehow getting a seat is rarely difficult. As a bonus, during warm months a few sidewalk tables appear, allowing your carcinogenic exhalations to drift away, clogging up the lungs of countless health obsessed West Villagers instead of clinging to your clothes.

Hudson's cigar selection is solid; and the BYO cutting fee is only $2*, the price of a bar of soap, or a personal appearance by Carrot Top. Most impressive, though, are the reasonably priced scotch and whiskey flights: For $16, you can choose a premium sextet from Hudson's boundless stock. Or, for a little more cash, you can cover the spectrum of Johnnie Walkers: from Regular Guy Red; to Blue, the super-premium sipped by men who could have Regular Guy shipped to a Lithuanian sulfur mine with one ominously one-sided phone conversation.

At Hudson Bar and Books, men can be men - without being surrounded by dicks. Of course, there might be more to being a man than inhaling scotch and Cuban contraband. But we really hope there isn't.

*Because smoking bars must draw a sizeable percentage of their business from tobacco, cutting charges usually exceed $5.