I'm home...thanks to the Bleecker Street Bar

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of bars in New York City. I will never go to most of them. And while there may be a bar that better embodies the fun and fellowship that I love in a drinking establishment than the Bleecker Street Bar, I am doubtful such a place could exist.

Last Friday, thanks to the summer Fridays at my new job, I got out early and was committed to go to my favorite New York watering hole. (I discovered it before I lived here...it formerly served as the place I would go after a long day of walking and shopping through Greenwich Village with Kim.)(

There are a few keys to a great bar in the city. First, it should let you drink without breaking your budget. The BSB (for short) delivers by offering a 24 ounce Yuengling for $4. In other words, you get a bottle's worth of beer for $2.

But if that wasn't enough, the place has a battery of dart boards and a pool table in the back. In other words, it's not just a place to drink, but a place to play games and socialize. A good bar lets you meet other people and feel like, even for a moment, that you are connected to another person.

But no bar is worth the cost of a pint if it doesn't have a certain atmosphere, a certain sense of both comfort and energy. I don't know if it comes across in the picture to right, but the BSB has that in spades. The crowd is diverse and low-key, and the place fills with a light and energy that makes you feel like you're in a friend's house more than in a bar. When I was there last Friday, the bartender was asking me about where I was from, and a few other people chatted about sports or the news of the day.

That gets at something that's even bigger than a bar...New York is a lot more friendly than people want to admit. Just today, I had a 10 minute conversation with a woman on the train who used to own a Basque restaurant and recommends heading to the East Village for sushi and raw food. She could have sat and talked to her daughter, but she detected that I was new in the city (probably because I was flipping through Zagats) and thought she could give some good advice. For all the talk about the grumpy, self-absorbed New Yorker, I find them to be caring and personable. And there's no better place to experience it than the Bleecker Street Bar.