Chicago's Wicker Park is where Brooklyn's Williamsburg and LA's Silver Lake once were. And Catching up fast. Milwaukee Avenue meets Damen Avenue just north of the tiny triangle of green that gives the area its name. And now, north and south-east of this junction, the low-rise landscape of shabby storefronts is growing sharp edges and fresh glazing. Fashion and design emporia, like Hejfina, and bare-concrete bars serving Asian/Argentinian fusion, such as Rodan, are replacing liquor stores and other essential services. On a February morning earlier this year, with temperature a long way south of zero, the most welcoming of Wicker park's recent arrivals is a café-cum-lounge-cum-bar (and much more, as it turns out) called Marshall McGearty. It is open for coffee and pastries, both excellent, and the woody and welcoming lounge is scattered with junk-store, but well maintained, mid-century furniture from the poppier end of the spectrum. The ceiling is an elaborately wrought shiny tin, and the walls are shingle or a black wallpaper with an elegant, silver tree motif. There is a feature fireplace, clever out-of-context leather club chairs, Louis XV sofas. The odd desk, standing lamps and Scrabble and Faulkner on the bookshelves. There is, of course, free Wi-Fi. Starbucks it is not.

Winner: Marshall McGearty Tobacco Artisans (Wi-Fi equipped, Open past 9pm, later on weekends) 1553 N Milwaukee Ave (773-772-8410)

This cozy spot has a strong Ralph Lauren vibe: Clusters of antique lamps and distressed leather couches and chairs provide private, peaceful sitting areas. But we found it nearly empty probably because people mistake this newcomer as a place to smoke (it is) and drink (ditto), not as a spot to sip on top-notch, exotic blends of java.

With old-fashioned cigarette sales a thing of the past, Big Tobacco has turned the spotlight on high-tech substitutes it's calling safe. But critics are calling it a sham. By Mike Beirne

It's not unusual to see limousines pull up in front of davidburke & donatella, a fine-dining restaurant located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. But there's one set of wheels that truly stands out. It's a Ford Excursion with a chassis stretched to fit 24 people, and it never leaves the curb. That's just fine for the restaurant's patrons who happen to be smokers: The limo, paid for by the management, serves as a lounge where diners are free to abandon their halibut T-bone au poivre, dash across the sidewalk, then light up inside the SUV. Celeb chef and co-owner David Burke came up with the smoking-limo idea shortly after New York City passed its sweeping smoking ban in March 2003. Since then, the limo's proven so popular that it's become a kind of VIP seating area; even nonsmokers are seen hoping in.

Rumors have been swirling around downtown during the past month, and now it's official. The new tenant at the site of the former Kababs Indian Bar & Grill will be - R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

The company has signed a five-year lease to open a Marshall McGearty Tobacco Lounge at 321 W. Fourth St. (at the corner of Fourth and Marshall streets)

With Marshall McGearty, RJ. Reynolds probes whether the high-end tobacco lounge might be the future of public smoking.

Anyone who ever charges that there are no creative thinkers left ought to study the people who make up today's cigarette industry. Just when it appeared that there was no place left for their product to penetrate, they may be pioneering a new concept. Late last year, retail tobacco giant Reynolds American, known for such mass-market brands as Camel and Kool, opened Marshall McGearty tobacco lounge in Chicago's Wicker Park through its RJ. Reynolds Tobacco unit. Classifying it as an "age-restricted venue," the upscale cigarette lounge billed as the country's first only sells the compa ny's new premium Marshall McGearty Tobacco Artisans ciga rette brand and is aimed at the adult smoker seeking super-premium products and their accompanying lifestyle.

Starbucks turned the purchase of a coffee and a doughnut into a gourmet event. But will upscaling work for sellers of other staples like chocolate, cigarettes and cereal? A swarm of new cafe concepts have taken Starbucks' model and tried to make it their own.

The leather-lined Marshall McGearty Lounge, just opened in Chicago by cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds, highlights the company's handmade cigarettes. At $8 a pack, the rolled-to-order smokes are available only at the lounge.