Best after-hours spot
No need to stop the presses for this year's readers' pick for the best place to dilate the night. Kneeland Street's News, around the corner from South Station, takes this category for the second year running. Open from 5 p.m. to 4 a.m., this shape shifter morphs from diner to coffee shop to bar to sleek lounge, and can embody all the establishments at once. You can order anything from pancakes to grilled swordfish, apple pie à la mode to puffy fried shrimp, and there's never a shortage of reading material. Wednesday night is ladies' night at News: from 5 to 11 p.m., women can enjoy a three-course meal for free. That might not be late-night, but it's certainly a newsworthy deal.

If there's ever a time when Bostonians are aware that they're not, in fact, in New York, it's 'round about 1:30 in the morning. The bouncers have cleared the bars, last-call light-blinks seem hours ago, the subway tracks have long since hushed. In this city, after a certain time of night, our social lives consist of Store 24s and 7-Elevens. If you're looking for nachos with cheese from a pump, you're in luck. Otherwise, Phoenix readers pick the sultry and sophisticated Noir as their Cambridge-side spot for one last nightcap. Here on the ground floor of the Charles Hotel, you can linger with a cocktail until 2 a.m. any night of the week. "Designed to reflect the intense, decadent atmosphere of 1940s nightlife," according the lounge, Noir is not the type of hotel bar you'll find at Howard Johnson's.

News, 150 Kneeland Street, Boston, (617) 426-NEWS, www.newsboston.com; Noir, 1 Bennett Street, Cambridge, (617) 661-8010, www.noir-bar.com.