Salem doesn’t go to bed early.

You do.

That’s the conclusion I came to recently after conducting a mid-week experiment to test the pulse of Salem’s nightlife.

After months of hearing the phrase “Salem goes to bed early” repeated like a mantra, I was starting to believe it myself.

This is what mantras can do: They can self-edify or they can self-defeat.

Since I, too, am prone to collapsing on the couch after a long day of work, I was starting to see myself as part of the problem.

So the challenge was this: Find rock-your-face-off activities in Salem from 7 p.m. until 2 a.m. – and don’t come home until well-past bedtime. And do it on a Tuesday. And try not to make it too expensive.

Mission Face Rocked Off: Accomplished!

First, my husband and I headed to dinner at La Capitale, David Rosale’s casual French brasserie. On our way there, we beheld a giant tree strewn with blue streamers for National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

Whatever the purpose of these streamers in Salem, this tree does what all good art does. It stopped us fast in our tracks and interrupted our evening — in the best of ways.

At La Capitale, my husband had the bavette steak (we don’t have any new foods, just new ways to cut up cows) and I devoured the goat cheese bread pudding.

For dessert, we munched on a cylinder of La Capitale’s addictive shoestring French fries.

Well-fed, we decided to dance off dinner at R.J.’s romantically-lit Dance Studio and closed out the event waltzing to “You Light Up My Life.” R.J.’s been serving up about 400 dance CD’s EVERY WEEK for the past 25 years (he’s only misses his Tuesday event at Christmas).

It struck us that millions of people were watching Dancing with the Stars at the same time we were dancing in Salem.

“What a waste of body heat that is,” R.J. said.

We met a friend for beer at Venti’s – Bison Brewing Company’s India Pale Ale for me – and quibbled over the recent proposed legislation to reward pubs that pour “honest pints.”

Venti’s is quickly becoming my must-stop place for crunchy hippie food and fantastic beer selections, but the bar announced last call at about 10:15 – just a few moments after we arrived. In fact, the whole night we felt a little like Indiana Jones slipping under a closing gate, grabbing his hat at the last second. Everywhere we went seemed just about to close up for the night.

Luckily, people in Salem go to bed at different times.

At The Space – a live music venue – they are up very late indeed. In fact, I’m not convinced the patrons there ever do go to bed.

When we arrived, Chance Wiesman – a 25-year-old member the now-defunct Salem band Nodding Tree Remedies, was dancing near the bar in a room of six people.

Within minutes, the singer-songwriter, who is tall and lanky, like Gumby with a Fu Manchu, was performing a haunting acoustic set that included a song about “working at a plastic flower factory.”

Unpaid, impromptu, and brilliant.

I’ve heard Chance does this most Tuesdays at the Space.

When we finally made it at 1:45 a.m. to Daynight Donuts on S. Commercial – which looks very much like a Dunkin Donuts, with orange and magenta corporate identity to boot – the bakers had just dumped a few dozen, steaming, chocolate glazed cakes into a bin.

We were humbled by the obvious signs of how a city, even one as small as Salem, actually works – that there are people who get up to go to their jobs just as we are getting ready for bed.

So when people say Salem goes to bed early, I challenge them to discover – at all hours of the day – the places where its eyes are wide awake and open. And where its pulse races still.

Hey, I did it – and I’m a morning person.