VENUE INFO

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• Nicky Blaine's

Ron Conroy, 38, sits at the bar. Click on the link to Nicky Blaine's profile, under "Venue info" for several Nicky Blaine's Party Crasher galleries. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

The entrance to Nicky Blaine's. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

Nicky Blaine's sits on Monument Circle. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

Nicky Blaine's cigar selection. (Neal Taflinger for The Star)

9:50 p.m.

Nicky Blaine's does not invite accidental visits. It's not nestled among a half-dozen other bars, with partygoers hopping from one club to the next. Indianapolis' premier martini and cigar bar is buried in the earth behind two vault-heavy doors at the bottom of one very long staircase. One does not arrive here by chance.

Every bar is a den of iniquity, but Nicky Blaine's transforms vice into high art. Plush seating spreads out across the carpeted floor, and the large space is carved up into semi-private seating areas. The faint odor of cigar smoke lingers in the air, and the bar would be pitch-black save for red accent lights and a few subtle fixtures on the bar. I wouldn't be surprised if the devil himself were sitting next to me, sipping cognac.

10:07 p.m.

Many ultra-modern ultra-lounges struggle to draw in and keep a regular clientele, but Nicky Blaine's, in all of its anachronistic glory, never has had that problem. It turns out that the bar's timelessness is its charm. "It's always been here," says one man.

The bar actually used to be located across the street in a much smaller space, but I understand his point. His female companion likes the diverse, sophisticated clientele. Both 30-ish African-Americans, the couple came for the live jazz, "but on the wrong day," she says with a giggle. Attracted to the dark anonymity of the bar, neither wants to be quoted by name or photographed.

10:17 p.m.

Binh Phan, 35, is Nicky Blaine's cigar man, overseeing almost 100 labels from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras. The bar even has a selection of pre-embargo Cubans. A cigar dealer bought them before the embargo and kept them in storage. When he died, the executor of the estate "started selling it because they were afraid the embargo would be lifted."

I look up at the framed portrait of President Kennedy, a Cuban-cigar fan, behind the bar and chuckle.

10:28 p.m.

This bar is an exercise in understatement, and its most loyal customers talk about it in an appropriately understated manner. "It's a quiet place to relax," says Ron Conroy. The 38-year-old IT consultant spends four days a week in Indianapolis as part of a rotation that takes him all over the country. The traveling technician smokes two cigars a day, and it didn't take him long to find Nicky Blaine's. Tonight he's smoking a Rocky Patel. Talk quickly turns to scotch -- 12-year, 17-year and 25-year. Conroy wants a glass of Macallan 125, but it's $93.

"I'm gonna do it one night," he says.

10:35 p.m.

In this bar, it's hard for me to do what I usually do. People come here to be left alone, and most didn't want to be quoted. If they were OK with being quoted, they didn't want a picture taken. And frankly, it's hard for me to get up the gumption to pester people when I want to recede into the shadows myself. It seems that what happens at Nicky Blaine's stays at Nicky Blaine's, and the bar staff knows that it's in the best interest of business to keep it that way.