One for the road: Drink here and this bar will pay for your cab

At a time when people would rather stay home than spend money, bars and restaurants have to get creative to draw the crowds. One bar near Columbia University, on Manhattan's Upper West Side, has hit upon a novel inducement to draw revelers from trendier parts of town: It will pay for your transportation.

If you take a yellow taxi to the Village Pourhouse and show your receipt, the bar will start you a bar tab equal to what you paid as a fare, up to $25. Simple as that. Readers of the Feedbag blog have tried it, and it works. The idea was launched in November, and it helped get the bar, which is in a pleasant but unfashionable part of town, make it through the hard economic winter and collect a new batch of regulars.