Ladies: Ask for some ID before agreeing to a "breast exam" at a bar, okay?

Are you familiar with the patriotic new trend of carrying your favorite gun to your local bar? Four states now have laws that explicitly allow people to carry loaded firearms in establishments that serve alcohol. Can you guess which ones?

The New York Times found a Rockaway Beach man who personifies the annoying local barfly.

You have probably been thinking to yourself lately: "What are the best practices for selling Jell-O shots to drunk young men at bars?" What a coincidence! Because The Wall Street Journal can tell you exactly that.

A 29-year-old Californian named Travis Kevie was recently arrested after he broke into a closed-down bar and reopened it using six-packs he bought at the store. The best part? The police found out after the local paper published a profile.

It's been a while since we've had a depressing look at John Edwards' depressing life. So thanks to the New Republic for this hot update, about how Edwards just wanders to bars every night, dancin' with grad students.

Albert Trummer, co-owner of the Chinatown bar Apotheke, was arrested by fire marshals Sunday for setting liquor aflame on his bar. Flaming bars outlawed in New York? If only there were some humor to be found here. [NYT. Pic via]

Restaurateurs of New York, beware: Do not open a late-night spot anywhere near Georgette Fleischer. The downtown scold, a Barnard professor, has just successfully had hotspot La Esquina closed down because of code violations. And this isn't her first victory.

• The Tavern on the Green auction kicked off today and continues through Friday. Expect long lines if you plan on checking it out yourself. (But forget about meeting Regis Philbin if you go; he was already there today.) [Crain's]
• Four Seasons chef Fabio Trabocchi is out after only three months. [NYP]
• The critics: Sam Sifton of the Times gives one star to the Breslin; Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton also weighs in on the Breslin, as does the Village Voice's Robert Sietsema; Adam Platt of New York takes on Maialino, giving it three out of five stars; Time Out awards four stars to Purple Yam; and the Post's Steve Cuozzo makes the case that Robert in Columbus Circle offers the best views in town.

George Will wrote about the Atlantic Yards mess! Which we learned about in an email blast from beloved Prospect Heights dive Freddy's! All of this is weird, to us. Especially the "agreeing with George Will" part!

Restaurants, bars, and clubs don't just shut down these days. They "close for renovations" for a few weeks or months. Then they announce that they are not, in fact, planning to reopen and they've been shuttered for good. Below: a few recent examples of what is sometimes the result of a series of unexpected events, but is often a face-saving public relations technique.

The Way We Live Now: Gap-toothed. Too poor to get a falsie to complete our smile. Lawyers aren't making it! Kitschy yuppie bars on skid row are losing ambiance! Nine trillion dollars in debt is a lot. A lot.

• The hot dog vendor in front of the Metropolitan Museum has been given the boot. Why, you ask? Shockingly, it seems he's been having some trouble coming up with the $53,558 he has to pay the city in rent each month. [NYDN]
• A roundup of restaurants that just opened, or will be open this week. [TONY]
• Frederick's Downtown closed last week; now Frederick Lesort's Eurotrashy Madison Avenue location has suffered the same fate, alas. [Eater]
• A former assistant to Tavern on the Green owner Jennifer LeRoy claims she was fired from the restaurant after she revealed she was pregnant. [NYP]
• The Wicked Wolf on First Avenue is closing to make way for a second 2nd Avenue Deli, which, once again, won't be on Second Ave. [Eater]
• Want to start your own food truck? It's not as easy as it looks. [GS]
• A few months ago, Gordon Ramsay's food empire was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy; now he reports he's in expansion mode once again. [WSJ]
• The favorite burger chain of leading chefs? In-N-Out, by a landslide. [GS]

Zagat's new nightlife survey has some details on how the city's bars and clubs have been faring amid the downturn. Roughly half of the 6,000 New Yorkers surveyed reported going out less often because of the economy, although 67 percent said the nightlife scene was "the same as it ever was," which is nice to hear, of course, but may come as news to people who remember the days when no one knew what HIV was, the idea of a smoking ban would have been laughable, and clubgoers had yet to figure out that the obsessive use of cocaine can kind of screw up your life. According to the survey, the Lower East Side is NYC's "hottest nightlife neighborhood," while the meatpacking district was named "most over-rated/or over-hyped." As for "the growing trend of bars with master mixologists," more than half of the people surveyed said it was "an excuse to charge more for drinks." You've been warned, Sasha Petraske.

Did you know that any bar worth drinking in is now a speakeasy that would never tell the likes of you its secret location? If you didn't already know, then how do you ever expect to get into one?

• The Beatrice Inn will probably reopen next week. [P6]
• Emporio officially opens tomorrow, but it's taking walk-ins this eve. [TSB, GS]
• It looks like the end is near for Soho's Café Noir. [GS]
• Details on the latest unmarked bar, not that you're going to find it. [GS]
• Shake Shack's summer schedule has arrived. [Eater]

New York City's dirtiest bars, according to one blogger: 1. Mars Bar in the East Village; 2. American Trash on the UES, 3. Billymark's West on 29th Street; 4. Rawhide in Chelsea; 5. Welcome to the Johnson's. The full top 10 list is here. [Meet Live Now via EVG]

Because Angels & Kings didn't quite drive the knife of inanity far enough into New York City's weakening heart, a new celebrity-backed bar is opening in Manhattan. I'm sorry, did I say celebrity? I meant Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, the tumbleweeds from MTV's high-gloss people-spoof The Hills. Don't worry, the planned "upscale sports lounge" isn't in your precious East Village like Pete Wentz's sadness factory.It's in Murray Hill (hills! the world is full of amazing connections!), whose state flower is the blue button-up shirt and official drink is the Totally Fucked Up, Man slinger. As Heidi is exactly as sexy as an unclothed Barbie doll, expect lots of hot girls and cool-as-Spencer dudes to frequent the joint. [W]

Be warned, ladies. If you want in on the once-great-now-sorta-fading Hudson Hotel bar scene, you better dye your damn hairs did. An irate (hopefully drunk) tipster wrote us last night (well, this morning) about a ridiculous injustice-worthy of the ACLU and inspirational films and the slow mourn of Barber's "Adagio for Strings"-that befell her at the midtown inn. She was denied entrance to the bar, threatened, and shamed. All because her hair was not flaxen.

Last week I did something I have not done in a long time: wait in line to get into a bar. (Hold the rotten tomatoes, that's the only perk this job has.) Actually, scratch that. I have NEVER waited in line to get into a bar. Clubs? Sure. But bars? Um, no. But this wasn't just any bar. This was Father's Office, the brand spanking new Culver City outpost of the Santa Monica hotspot. And as if to prove just how hot it was, there was not only a line, but also a velvet rope (!!!) and a doorman.