Drink in a place where tricks were once turned

The more sordid your past, the tougher it is to move on -- just look at Tommy Chong, whose history of glorifying drug abuse undermined a perfectly legitimate water pipe business. Cleaning up its past so respectable folks can get down & dirty, Volstead Lounge and Hotel Vegas. Taking over a former East 6th flophouse & brothel (now that's room service!), V&V has been transformed by an ATX art curator and a pair of N'awlins transplants into a vintage-style LA-TX cocktail den, plus, for those too busy drinking cocktails to settle down, an accompanying month-to-month boarding house -- so unlike a Pacific Sunwear shop, it's not just offering board shorts. The lounge is partially outfitted with '60s furnishings imported from Louisiana (plush red leather couch, chess table, brass chandeliers, circular light fixtures from an old school house, olive paisley wallpaper), with homegrown touches including a bartop made from a 100-year-old long-leaf pine, a throwback tobacco cabinet crafted by the owner, and, found in the back of a North Loop thrift shop, the taxidermied heads of warthogs and aardvarks (though is it really wise to fill your bar with AA members?). Pours include taps (Abita, Fireman's 4, Brooklyn Lager, Pecan Porter, Blue Moon), throwback cocktails like Sidecars, Moscow Mules, and Pimm's Cups, and liquors infused with everything from basil, to bleu cheese, to olive oil, which Mediterranean peoples actually consume to prevent hangovers -- though they take a spoonful before drinking, so...you'd better have a bunch of drinks afterward. The hotel half of the equation's romantically sparse, with a shared kitchen and bathroom servicing 12 unfurnished rooms -- so you'll literally have to bring your own bed if you plan on having Nice Dreams.