Manhattan Valley Manhattan Valley A dead and nippy ...

A dead and nippy Sunday night seemed like the perfect time to check out Manhattan Valley, the area of the Upper Upper West Side, so LisSsa and I set out to the Ding Dong Lounge, a reportedly punk bar on Columbus between 105th and 106th Sts. Nobody was out in what used to be a rough neighborhood, according to Bill, the owner of the Ding Dong and a former partner of Motor City. Now, he tells me, Columbia is buying up a lot of buildings and renovating them, and some students are staying in the neighborhood, which is still somewhat affordable. About 10 years ago, when they repaved the street, things got a lot quieter and the gunshots died down, according to one local.

Loretta, a 65-year-old black woman who'd been drinking all day, seemed right at home, perched on the edge of the bar with her skinny little yappy dog. After she confirmed that we weren't from the CIA?just a routine precaution?LisSsa asked her for the strangest thing she'd ever seen in the bar. To which she promptly replied, "No smoking!" She and LisSsa were warming up to each other, knocking 'em back and pretty soon she was working blue: "I'm acrobatic, I can get my head down there and lick my own pussy!" She was crowing in no time at all, a drunk with a repertoire, and I was glad she'd found a home at the Ding Dong. Khalil DJd some Fun Boy Three and a little Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Rachel, our barmaid, had the beautifully sad look of the New York Girl. She told me that the neighborhood, so far, has resisted your Starbucks and the like; businesses are still individually or family owned, including Los Mellizos, a bodega/restaurant with a superior pressed sandwich at 108th and Manhattan Ave. Of course, it was too late to check it out, about 1am, because we had to stop for pizza, batteries and a hairbrush before we really got going on the 1 train. LisSsa and Loretta traded numbers as they left, with Loretta promising to make it down to Otto's Shrunken Head one night, though I'd personally be disappointed if she ever made it off the block.

DJ Khalil doesn't like the Night Café, and nobody liked Soha, which they believe is trying to be something it is not, so I hurried off to check out the rival bars. Night Café is on Amsterdam between 106th and 107th, and is manned by Seamus, an Irishman so charming and so tough that the owner begged him to return when he briefly took a day job. The regulars were in the front having an existential brawl about evil. Does it exist? Yes, say most barflies, which is why they are lifers cocooned in these dark and friendly spaces.

The Night Café is owned by former Weather Underground member and Jeopardy champ Brian Flanagan, who brings the world to the bar inhabitants with two APA Pool tournaments on Mondays and Tuesdays, Trivia Sundays and poetry readings from college students on Wednesdays. I read there about 15 years ago and remember hurriedly launching into the anal sex portion of my story, seeing if I could keep the old codger at the end of the bar from fleeing. Most of the poetry was about dads, mythology, like that.

Seamus was so charming, so in love with his bar and so philosophical that I felt like Joseph Mitchell for a minute and wanted to move right in, under the gorgeous tin ceiling. Although we adored Seamus, I actually preferred the regulars at the Ding Dong?which does not impress our Irish darling, but which was more trend-appropriate for me, and I didn't know if foulmouthed barfly Loretta, probably still talking about how if God made anything better than pussy he kept it to himself, would get much purchase.

One thing Seamus shared with the Ding Dong crowd, however, was a dislike for Soha. "It's comfortable, but?" was all he could muster up; the sentence need never reach completion.

I ran right over to check the place out.

"Welcome to crazy town!" boomed the barmaid as I entered the infamous Soha, at 109th and Amsterdam, and indeed a lone guy was doing a wobbly little dance all by himself. But crazy? Four guys played pool and one promptly left money at the bar for whatever LisSsa was having. Getting hit on wasn't worth the free whiskey, so we sat on one of the many cushy couches, reminiscing about Loretta, who at that point was five blocks away. We left immediately. As Seamus said, it's comfortable, but?