Saigon & 55 Grand Street, New York City
A wonderful Vietnamese restaurant run by Vinh Truong, onetime lover of novelist Timothy Underhill, and Maggie Lah, the extraordinarily beauteous and intelligent lover of Dr. Michael Poole, that lucky sod. Vinh now lives in an apartment behind the restaurant, Dr. Poole and Maggie Lah in a loft one floor up, Tim Underhill in a loft above theirs. These people spend a great deal of time together, and their mutual affection is to be treasured. We should all have friends like this.

The Green Woman Taproom
An old riverside bar located, according to which version you accept, in either Milwaukee, WI, or Millhaven, IL. A squalid dump. Also, a magnet for deranged violence. In December of 1947, an unidentified man strangled a Honduran woman named Orosco, a prostitute, on the frozen riverbank behind the tavern. In the early nineties, a period when the Green Woman was closed for business, a psychopathic killer murdered at least half a dozen women in its basement, as well as a drug dealer who could have exposed his crimes. In recent years, the taproom has reopened under new management, but rumors of drug trafficking, cult activities, and sinister goings-on of various kinds suggest that its evil character remains unchanged.

The St. Alwyn Hotel
A roomy, decaying old pile of red brick on Livermore Avenue, at the heart of Pigtown, a working-class precinct of Millhaven. Site of the infamous Blue Rose murders. Home to the Saracen Lounge, a popular watering hole. Its clientele includes or included a great many traveling jazz musicians, especially African-American musicians, traveling salesmen, and wandering cranks and madmen. A lunatic with bad aim once took a shot at President Theodore Roosevelt from the entrance of the St. Alwyn.