Above: KGB Bar, where the Soviet Union meets the East Village

With so much recent activity on the East Village nightlife front, the timing seemed right to revisit the best bars and clubs that live in the great expanse of space between 14th Street and Houston Street, from the East River to the Bowery.

From local favorites like Black & White and Angel's Share, to the best of AlphaBar City, and the 'hood's top dives, gay bars and wine bars, we've broken down East Village nightlife block by block--behold our new and improved East Village roundup, in all its glory.

(Photo courtesy of Ontheinside.info/david-hochbaum)

If you're one of the poor schmucks who has to work today, by 6pm you're going to need to freebase a bottle of scotch--and not just because it's Monday. Today is that holiest of all holidays: March 17, aka, St. Patrick's Day, and we've compiled a list of the city's best Irish bars so you can toast the patron saint until the wee hours of the morn and worry about the hangover later (just like a true Irishman). And if you don't own any festive St. Paddy's Day clothing, don't worry--chase a few shots of Guinness with a few pints of Jameson and you'll turn green anyway.

Click through to read our complete guide to St. Patrick's Day in NYC.

(Image courtesy of MyTVLife.com)

It's nearly mid-March, which means that if you're a college student, you're probably getting ready to spend a week with 10 other hoodlums, holed up in some beachside shanty, soaking up moderate quantities of sun and lethal quantities of booze, in honor of that great American pastime known as spring break.

Well, guess what: Even if your undergraduate years are over, you needn't dip to Tijuana to partake in the sort of lewd, depraved behavior pictured above. There are plenty of bars where even the most respectable professionals you can experience the thrills of spring break--from the alcohol poisoning to the scantily clad girls--right here on the Isle of Manhattan.

Click through to read our latest roundup, Party Like It's Spring Break.

And for those of you who are too old for body shots but still long to reconnect with your collegiate days, check out Gigantic Cocktails (one of our new and improved photo roundups)--trust me, after a few mixed drinks served by the pint, no one will notice you're balding, least of all you.

(Photo courtesy of the Big Easy)

It's Valentine's Day, and while I'll be on a plane to Palm Beach (because that's just how I roll), we've put together some things that might help the rest of you avoid taking your own lives. Let the annoying public displays of affection commence ...

Best places to play tonsil hockey

Seal the deal with a fancy romantic dinner

Flowers: Because nothing says "I care" like a plant that will die tomorrow

Screw love--all you need is booze

(Image borrowed from the Pisstakers)

Do you think chocolate and flowers are gifts that should be reserved for the terminally ill?

So do we. That's why we're protesting the most useless Hallmark holiday of them all with a special anti-Valentine's Day feature that pays tribute to all things un-romantic.

So, if you're just looking for a bar to get drunk (like any other Thursday night) try Scores--where the only Valentine you'll meet is a stripper with a poorly chosen stage-name. Or, if you're looking to party with other bitter, lonely and desperate singles, head to the Screw Valentine's Day Party, or the Second Annual Anti-Valentine's Day Ball, where strangers in the night will become friends until morning. 

And no matter how you choose to spend Valentine's Day, remember: All you need is love--of booze. Click through to read the complete Anti-Valentine's Day Planner, or if you're one half of a couple that makes me sick, maybe this is more your bag.

(Photo borrowed from Stuck in The '80s)

In this era of top-shelf bottle service and lilliputian $13 cocktails, NYC can be unfriendly terrain for parched working stiffs like us. Thankfully, the Lord hath saveth a few humble watering holes where even a meager $20 budget can fund an evening expedition guaranteed to leave you thoroughly shnockered. Let's begin--and for those of you who are too hammered to bother with our fancy new booze map, check out the plain-text version of Get Drunk for $20 ...

	Continental 25 3rd Ave		Cooper 35 35 Cooper Square		151 151 Rivington St.
	St. Jerome's 155 Rivington St.		Turkey's Nest 94 Bedford Ave

Between the holidays, the election, the war in Iraq and the other stories that are constantly hogging the media spotlight, you may have missed it when absinthe--a distilled, extremely alcoholic, anise-flavored booze--was legalized in the United States last month after a near century-long ban.

For those of you who aren't familiar with absinthe, think of it as the mother of all liquor; the closest thing we have to a drinkable psychotropic drug.

In fact, it may even be quantified in terms of doses rather than servings--i.e., "Waiter, may I please have a dose of Absinthe and some Xanax with my tea and crumpets?"

Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for a variety of New York bars to begin capitalizing on the drink's new legal status, adding absinthe-based concoctions to their specialty cocktail repertoires.

We sent one of our crack reporters on what is arguably the best mission anyone in history has ever been paid to carry out: Find out what bars are serving the best absinthe cocktails, go to those bars and drink those absinthe cocktails, try not to die in the process.

Lucky for her (and our legal department), she survived. To find out where you, too, can try to cheat death, or at least get really, really hammered off absinthe, go read the complete article, Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.

(Photo credits: Above, left: The step-by-step process by which absinthe is prepared, courtesy of Wikipedia; above, right: an absinthe cocktail at PDT)

After their stunning victory in Green Bay last week, the New York Giants will be facing off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, just four days from now.

Now, to be fair, I wholeheartedly support the Super Bowl--or any event that promotes the excessive consumption of beer and chicken wings. But believe it or not, there are some people who simply couldn't care less about football, much less Super Bowl Sunday.

Unlike your friends and family, we understand that just because you may be un-American, doesn't mean you don't want to get drunk on Sunday like every other self-respecting member of society. And that's why we put together a little something called "Just Say No to the Super Bowl," our official list of spots where you can spend Super Bowl Sunday boozing and schmoozing without any Super Bowl-related nonsense coming between you and your weird football-hating friends.

But back on planet Earth, the rest of us will be watching the game, most likely at one of these sports bars. 

The only thing better than booze is cheap booze, and the only thing better than cheap booze is free booze--even if you have to spend money to get it. Check out my cleverly entitled Free Booze roundup for the scoop on spots where you can get, um, free booze--from cosmos with every manicure to a bottomless glass of Franzia with every meal.

(Photo by Melissa J. McDaniel, via Flickr)

Lady Liberty is just one of the New York City landmarks that takes a beating in the highly anticipated new monster movie, "Cloverfield," which hits theaters today. From what I can surmise, the premise goes something like this: Young, fun-loving crowd of New Yorkers are at one of those cheesy parties where the hosts videotape their guests talking about how totally awesome the party is, when all hell breaks loose. Suddenly New York is under attack by a savage, futuristic-Godzilla-style monster. Chaos and massive destruction ensue as said monster proceeds to obliterate everything (and everyone) in its path, all but leveling the city. But every movie has a hero (although judging from the "Cloverfield" cast, that hero needn't be a celebrity), and ours turns out to be one of the dudes who was at that party before all the madness began. Ultimately, that guy, whoever he is, leads a mission to defeat the monster, thereby restoring order and saving the city.

With any luck, "Cloverfield" will deliver at least one good old-fashioned impaling--perhaps one that involves the Empire State Building needle, for example--but suffice it to say that there will be blood. So, at the risk of offending a broad spectrum of our audience, we're paying tribute to this epic movie with a little hit list of our own: Places We'd Like to See Squashed by the "Cloverfield" Monster.

Duane Reade (any and all locations)
Sorry, "Cloverfield," but we've already got a monster that's hell-bent on destroying this town!

Manhattan Mall
This unfortunate attempt at an urban strip mall has only one redeeming characteristic: Keeping property values down in Herald Square--and to be fair, some of the credit for that also goes to Penn Station, Madison Square Garden and Macy's.

Southern Hospitality
JT, JT, JT... Like we said a few weeks ago when your restaurant snagged the No. 1 spot on our list of the 10 Worst Restaurants of 2007: Just because you can do everything, doesn't mean you should.

Dave and Buster's
A D&B is just fine in a suburban mall--or a suburban anything--but if this is the "new" Times Square, we'll take the seedy strip joints, panhandlers, and meth-heads of yesteryear.

MacDougal Street (Between West 3rd and Bleecker)
Ever wondered what it would look like if a drunken fraternity convention plopped itself down in the West Village and refused to leave? Well, this is what that would look like.

Mars 2112
I'd sooner volunteer to be mangled by a rabid pit bull than spend five minutes at this space-themed travesty of a restaurant.

Staten Island
Relax, we don't literally want to see S.I. crushed by a monster, it's more of a figurative thing. Like, if the five boroughs were stranded on a desert island, and they had to eat one of the boroughs to ensure the survival of the other four ...

Agree? Disagree? Send us your beef via email, or leave a comment here and tell everyone what places you'd like the see squashed by the "Cloverfield" monster.