Tiga

1465 NE Prescott St., 288-5534, tigabar.com. 5 pm-late Monday-Saturday.

Just across the parking lot from Sam Adams' favorite cafe, Tiga is an oddly makeshift indie-crowd social hour: Rather than horseshoe the bar around the drinks, the box of a building is itself horseshoed around the restrooms and back room, leaving a tight squeeze for the DJ spinning Takamba dance music from Mali or the farther-afield fantasies of Giorgio Moroder's children. The parking-lot patio spills over even in the winter with bartenders from other bars or impeccably pedigreed musicians, busy ruining their voices with cigarettes while sipping from improvised rosemary-gin cocktails. It is a paved garden affair, a house party in a box of a building where no one lives. And yet it's perfect. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

Happy Hour: 5-8 pm Monday-Saturday. $1 off drafts, wells and house cocktails; cheap food.
Entertainment: DJs.