Downtown’s revitalization begins with the Downtown Cocktail Room, the swanky speakeasy with fancy drinks and a smooth setting. First-time visitors might miss the front door with its indiscreet sign and even more difficult-to-find front door, but once inside, might just get cozy in velvet chairs to watch others try to find it. The cocktail menu will have any cocktail aficionado swooning.

See if you can get inside the secret speakeasy inside Commonweath, dubbed the Laundry Room. The intimate 22-seat room is marked with a laundry pin on the outside. Customers can find premium whiskies and rums as well as an entire menu of cocktails not found on the Commonwealth menu. The room is decorated with images of Hollywood sirens such as Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth as well doors on the ceiling. Text the phone number or look for the red light outside, indicating there’s space. Make sure to ask for a bowl of popcorn.

Inside the Downtown Container Park sits this tiny but formidable bar, Oak & Ivy, with its barrel-aged and specialty cocktails with whiskey as the star of the show. More than 30 make the menu.

Rum is the name of the game at Frankie’s Tiki Room, a kitschy bar decked out in Tiki galore. The Lava Letch combines demon rum, brandy, raspberry liqueur and ginger beer with a warning to lock up your daughters, while the Bearded Clam is a Tiki twist on the classic mojito, made with passion fruit. Be sure to spend some time just looking around the place.

The sommelier-owned wine bar is the first of its kind in the Las Vegas Art District. With a menu of 13 pages of wine options, both wine aficionados and those who are just getting into it can find something to love, often with a helpful recommendation behind the bar. Grab a seat on the patio and order a charcuterie bar if dining in, or get a bottle for half-off when you buy it to-go.

This crimson-enrobed lounge and supper club inside Red Rock Resort is a favorite among the Summerlin crowd — and for good reason. The vibe is sultry but casual, most nights have live music at the piano, the adjacent pool deck is just right for warmer months, and the botanical-focused cocktails go just right with plates of oysters, caviar, and croque madames.

Think of the Silver Stamp as stepping into a Midwest 1970s den replete with wood-paneled walls, low-slung ceilings, and vintage beer memorabilia lining the walls. The new 2,400-square-foot beer bar in the Gateway District comes from Rose Signor, the former manager at Atomic Liquors, and Andrew Smith. The 20 beers on tap include Andrew’s Hips Don’t Lie made exclusively for Silver Stamp by Juxta Nomad and Astronomy Aleworks and Funk Yeah Apricot from Beachwood Blendery, along with hard-to-find beers such as Dupont Avec Les Bon Voeux Saison from Belgium. Another 50 beers are available by the can or bottle.

Winner of the Best New Bar of the Year in the 2023 Eater Awards, this downtown bar is tricky to find, with an unmarked entrance off an alley in the Gateway District. But inside, find a bar decorated in witchy imagery and some of the city’s best cocktails. The menu rotates nightly, but if you’re lucky enough to pop in when the pico de gallo michelada is on the menu, order the delightfully refreshing drink with a salty cilantro rim.

To visit Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge is to go all in on ambiance, even if the food is your average diner food. When you enter, hang a left into the Fireside Lounge, and grab a seat either at the bar, a couple steps down in the fireside conversation pit, or at one of the purple neon-illuminated booths. Sure, you can order a martini. But, sitting beneath the mirrored ceilings and fake trees, why not give in and order a mudslide? Specialty cocktails here come in goblets the size of a soccer ball with straws so long that you could stand up and sip. It’s a must-visit.

Like stepping into a grown-up Disneyland, the Golden Tiki is a tiki bar turned up to 11. Sure, there’s your classic mai tais and painkillers and glowing lanterns. But there are also animatronic birds, water fountains, and a ceiling of LED stars that shoot over the bar, The tiki bar is open 24 hours, but if you’re visiting on a weekend, you should get a reservation.

Since the ‘70s, the Sand Dollar has been hosting local bands on its stage — as well as appearances from the likes of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Mick Jagger. An appearance on Bar Rescue and a short closure in the early 2000s threatened the bar’s legacy — but it couldn’t stay down. Today the expansive bar still pours classic cocktails and some signature music-themed ones. There’s live music most nights. And the pizza — don’t skip out on the pizza. If you can visit during its themed takeovers around Halloween and Christmas, even better.

Sure, there’s no shortage of speakeasies on the Las Vegas Strip. But Easy’s stands out among them. It’s delightfully tricky to find, with the entrance tucked away behind a doughnut counter. Inside, the small lounge has lush and super cozy seating, all facing the stage for nightly live entertainment. And the cocktails are as nice to look at as they are to sip, with shareable cocktails coming to the table dripping with dry ice fog and individual cocktails garnished with pretty flowers or even ice-mold teddy bears.

The preeminent dive bar, P. Moss’s Double Down Saloon, is all things loud music, cheap beer, sticker-covered walls, and a ”Shut Up and Drink” attitude. Open since 1992, the bar hosts live music practically nightly, just right for headbanging along to a shot of Ass Juice — rumored to be the collective bartop spillage of previously poured drinks.