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NOTHING unusual about this scene: A harried waitress in a Manhattan sports bar deposits a pitcher at a table occupied by two men whose attentions are fixed upon a row of television screens above them. With one exception: The pitcher is filled with something ... pink. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

AT L'Ecole, the student-run restaurant at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo, they're mixing drinks with a light saber. Well, not really. But something close. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ON a recent Thursday night, the bartender at 67 Orange Street -- which is not on Orange Street, but rather in Harlem (more on that shortly) -- couldn't get the music quite right. She kept switching songs midstream, cutting off Stevie Wonder at the height of a chorus to play Snoop Dogg, then giving Snoop Dogg the hook, too, and so on and so forth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

THE Anchor, a discreetly marked bar on a far-flung block of Spring Street that styles itself as a celebrity hangout, flaunts on its Web site a curious come-on: ''We might even name a drink for you.'' Well, maybe not you. The Anchor, whose dive-bar-with-nautical-trimmings design evokes a yacht club as reimagined by Charles Bukowski, prides itself on its democratic door policy and on its eschewal of roped-off V.I.P. sections and other zoolike tactics for separating boldface names from the hoi polloi. (It's more like a petting zoo.) On the other hand, its cocktail menu, which is listed on an expansive chalkboard beside the bar, is a far more exclusive party. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]