Ruby's Elixir

This is the increasingly rare kind of bar that runs on live music and cigar smoke rather than a bottle-service list. There's a band every single night — jazz, blues, classic rock — a full bar, and a humidor connected to Central Cigars next door, which means the whole room smells like tobacco and sounds like a horn section. Come for a low-lit, unpretentious night of drinks and live music; skip it entirely if secondhand smoke is a dealbreaker, because here it's the whole point.

A weeknight around 9 p.m. — late enough that the band has found its groove and the after-work crowd has thinned, early enough to grab a seat near the players before the last-call rush toward 3 a.m.

Pop into Central Cigars next door first, buy a stick from the humidor, then bring it back to Ruby's — this is one of the last downtown rooms where you can actually smoke it while the band plays.

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