The holiday season means higher-than-usual tourist density in New York City, and naturally, that spike in traffic is due in no small part to your own eager friends and family, who descend on the city for an authentic, fairy-lighted experience of the Big Apple in winter. But after a day at Macy's, an evening at Rockefeller Center, and a dinner somewhere "New York-y," as per their request, where do you, their trusty tour guide by default, take them for a night on the town? Here are a few crowd-pleasers that will still earn you some street cred, whether that crowd involves your boyfriend's distant Uncle Larry, Mom and Dad, long-lost friends who've emerged from the woodwork, hard-to-impress rubberneckers, or your old high school mates. A comprehensive list of the best yuletide boîtes to celebrate the new year - and the best of NYC.

Bars should either be super old, like the Ear Inn, or super new, like that Swervewolf Pulpería spot down in Tribeca. Have you been? It's the bidness. Just opened a few weeks ago, and you should definitely go. Oh wait, it actually closed last week. Let's go drink mind erasers at Katrinau instead - you know, that new Cajun-Polynesian cocktail bar in Inwood. I think it opened 8 seconds ago, making it new and exciting. Shall we?

It’s hard to stand out in a city populated by naked cowboys, that screeching guy who wears bird feathers and bells in Union Square, and Mike Nelson. But when the ships dock in New York for Fleet Week and its annual Memorial Day celebration, the Coast Guard and Navy mariners dressed head-to-toe in their white, starched uniforms aren’t exactly subtle. That said, a handy how-to on nabbing seamen might be helpful. (Full disclosure: They’re everywhere!)

Happy birthday, Boss! BlackBook executive editor Chris Mohney is a cringeworthy 38 yearsold today! [You're certainly right on the cringing part. -CM] He spends his days supervising the efforts of trained monkeys (fellow blogger Ben Barna and myself), strenuously trying to avoid any events that would call for either of us to be shot dead. After work, Chris goes home to exert influence on The Littlest Mohney to be nothing like us. But we want to take him out to celebrate! So: where do you take your married, with-child 38 year-old boss out for his birthday? Answers after the jump.

Nightlife impresario Dirk Van Stockhom on his new venture at 98 Kenmare Street, being a 13-year-old English playboy, and why Sudan is the new global hotspot.

There's only one thing to do in a financial crisis-get shlammered

Glimpse the city as it was before fauxhawks, metrosexuality, and that internets thing.

Kinda nutty day, no? So much for bottle service at Cain. Corporate rounds at Tenjune? Forget it. Even a bottle of Pinot Noir at Pastis might be too much to handle for all the financial types who saw their immediate futures evaporate over the weekend. It's no secret that when the nightcrawlers of Wall Street go out, they go big. That won't be the case anymore, but they'll still need to drown their troubles somewhere. New Wall Street landscape means new nightlife landscape. So employees of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and others -- here's some on-the-cheap bars you might want to check out, and some extra-happy happy hours you might want to jot down in that company Blackberry you'll soon be turning over to regulators.

I was shocked to wake up this morning and discover that not everyone loves the Rusty Knot (yes, restaurant news trumps international headlines any day). Since opening in March, the faux-nautical bar has been a shipyard of celebrity cool (Jay-Z and LeBron James are frequenters) and drunken hipsters (because in New York, hipsters have money). My one experience there was during a party for David Schwimmer’s comedy Run Fatboy Run, where I shared cheese balls with Judah Friedlander, who was incredibly stoked about all the free (and delicious) hors d’oeuvres. But not everyone is keen on the Knot.