What Tony DeMaro is doing in a dimly lit part of Murphy's Pub and Grill is perfectly legal.

It's just more fun to pretend that it's not.

DeMaro is the general manager of the longtime Rapid City restaurant who recently created a speakeasy in the historic 1911 rock-walled, wooden-timbered building. The intimate space is infused with jazz music, handcrafted cocktails and a hodgepodge of vintage furniture that pays homage to America's Prohibition era.

Few of Murphy's customers know it's there and even fewer are admitted if they do. That's the whole point of a speakeasy, after all: It's a secret.

A decade or so ago, speakeasies began popping up as the hot new bar trend. Designed to be difficult to find, no one knows exactly how many are in operation today. There are famous ones in New York and Boston, and successful speakeasies in Denver, Omaha and Kansas City, too. DeMaro guesses perhaps 100 nationwide, but says he is sure of one thing: Rapid City is likely the smallest town to have one.

As many as 700 people can be dining and drinking at Murphy's bar and outdoor patio, where the big-screen TVs are loud and the music louder.

"Upstairs, our canvas is pretty big. We put a lot of effort into entertaining you," DeMaro told the Rapid City Journal (http://bit.ly/18ZjMAg ).

In the speakeasy, DeMaro paints a smaller, quieter picture.

"Downstairs, your company is your entertainment," DeMaro notes. It's all about slowing down, turning off your cellphone, connecting with friends and chilling out with a cocktail and conversation, or maybe a game of chess.

But first, you have to get in.

The speakeasy experience begins at an unmarked entrance. There is no sign, and that's the point. Down a dingy hallway, a passcode-encrypted door, painted to look like a bank vault, opens only with a prearranged safe code. Once inside, you need a secret password to get past the barkeep. The codes change daily and are issued to customers once DeMaro and his staff pre-qualify your reservation.

In other words, you have to be "cool" enough to get in, and the gatekeeper of cool is DeMaro.

He wants people who appreciate the concept, and who want to have fun with it.

"We need to filter the 'right' people down here, and keep the 'wrong' people out," he said. It is not a place for the Bud Lite crowd — nothing invented after Prohibition began is served — or for bridal shower parties. "If you order Lemon Drop shots ... our bartenders just lose it," he said.

Neither is it for the "hoity-toity nor the uptight," DeMaro says. By that, he seems to mean "old and boring."

Speakeasies date from Prohibition, the U.S. government's famously failed experiment in outlawing alcohol that began in January 1920 and finally ended in December 1933. It would usher in the "Dark Ages of Liquor," where rotgut moonshine replaced fine single-malt Scotch and American distilleries and breweries fell from 3,000 to 30. DeMaro wants to put the premium mixed drink back on its pedestal by re-creating the Golden Age of the Cocktail.

"This is my passion project," admits DeMaro, a liquor history buff who reads 19th-century bartender guides for fun. "This is where I do my really cool food, my really innovative cocktails."

Fresh-squeezed fruit juices, house-made syrups and variously flavored bitters are standard here. In addition to jazz music and Frank Sinatra records, the background music is the tink-tink of bartenders gently tapping blocks of ice into custom-fit sizes for the cocktails, which have such names as the Lavender Star, the Brazilian Monk and the Burnt Apple.

A small menu of appetizers and desserts is available, including DeMaro's favorite: Salted Carmel Vanilla Cake.

But be patient and be prepared for a sizable bar tab: The drinks can take up to 10 minutes each to make and they are expensive.

You can also order an absinthe drip, while the waitstaff gives you a complete history lesson on the anise-flavored liquor, should you desire one with your cocktail.

They'll tell you about its mythical hallucinogenic properties (for the record, you'd have to drink four bottles of the stuff to experience it).

They'll explain the special spoon that holds a slowly dissolving sugar cube and the four-spout $600 Art Deco decanter that drips water slowly on to the cube.

But what they won't tell you is how to get in to the speakeasy.

For that, you have to ask around.

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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com

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