Anybody ever been to this place? The story of the bar and it's 83 year old owner in the Sunday Tribune kind of makes me want to go.

It's Saturday night at Marie's Rip Tide Lounge, and the bar is quiet. Patsy Cline's "Crazy" wafts from the jukebox. A few drinkers sip beers. Every now and then, someone asks where Marie is. She'll be down soon, they're told.

At close to midnight, when the bar starts to fill up, Marie Wuczynski leaves her apartment, walks down one flight of stairs and comes through the door. When he spots her, one of the bartenders points Wuczynski out to a customer. It's not necessary. With her black fleece jacket, canvas sneakers and poof of white hair that adds an inch or two to her 5-3 frame, Wuczynski, 84, is hard to miss.

"Oh, Mr. Tender Bar," Wuczynski sings and takes a seat on a stool. Leo Zak, 32, answers his boss by pouring her a shot of Jagermeister and filling a small glass with Pepsi.

"You're a good kid," she says with a wink and turns her attention to the two twentysomethings dancing to Don McLean's "American Pie." When the song finishes, the Queen of the Rip Tide Lounge claps and the couple takes a bow.

Wuczynski has been holding court from a barstool since she bought her place at 1745 W. Armitage Ave. in 1961--the year John F. Kennedy was inaugurated and, not incidentally, two years after Hawaii became a state. When the wife and mother bought the bar, she wanted to give it a Hawaiian theme. She was planning on flowered shirts, leis and drinks with umbrellas. But there ended up being nothing tropical about the bar named for a wave. "I went Polish instead," laughs Wuczynski.

In the beginning, polka bands played several times a week for regulars from the neighborhood. (A large beer cooler now occupies the former stage.) The live music, which lasted for decades, was just one of the ways Wuczynski entertained. She would sing, tell bawdy jokes and perform magic tricks too.

"We do everything we can to make them happy because if they're miserable, they'll leave," she says.

She also--thanks to a 4 a.m. (5 a.m. on the weekends) liquor license--gabs with her customers until the wee hours every day of the week. The late-night scene is so beloved by Chicago night owls that it has even inspired songs.

Country-rock band The Juleps dubbed Wuczynski "the Mistress of Mixology" in a tune they wrote and named for the bar. Singer Michael McDermott titled one album "Last Chance Lounge" in honor of Marie's. Flattered but surprised by the attention, Wuczynski says she's just doing the job she loves.

Wuczynski was born in 1922 and grew up in Chicago with her parents and four sisters. She inherited a strong work ethic from her father, a Polish immigrant who knew little English and who worked hard to support his family. ("He was top shelf," she remembers fondly. From a bartender, there is no higher compliment.)

After two years of high school, she worked at a candy factory, Schwinn Bicycle Co. and her uncle's bar on Division Street. She met her late husband, Mike, when she was "out with the girls" after a long day. He was several things his wife was not: tall, quiet and serious; she loved to make him laugh.

Wuczynski, who has three daughters, spent years as a stay-at-home mother. Eventually, she worked in the bar that predates the Rip Tide and bought the building when it went up for sale.

"I worked there. I knew all the customers. Why not?" she says.

Forty-five years later, Wuczynski still knows them. During the week, after midnight, many of the customers are musicians, bartenders, actors, waiters and waitresses stopping by on their way home from work. Over the years, some of Chicago's comedy greats have shot the bull with Wuczynski. Bill Murray and John Belushi were regulars in the '70s. Andy Richter showed off Marie's Rip Tide Lounge on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in 1997.

In a field piece, Richter and O'Brien yukked it up with Wuczynski in her bar at Christmastime. Wuczynksi even told a joke about Santa Claus, a chimney and a woman in a negligee that somehow made it past the NBC censors.

The weekends are another story. That's when the folks who aren't ready for the other bars' last calls come to visit. In the middle of the night, they hop into cabs and head to Armitage and Hermitage Avenues, just off the Kennedy Expressway.

On this particular Saturday night, as most Chicago bars serve their last Miller Lites and whiskey sours, the Rip Tide begins buzzing. By 2:30 a.m. it's crowded, loud and warm. The barstools and booths are all occupied; the long, narrow aisle between them is packed. The door to the back room is open. No one is dressed up. Almost everyone wears jeans.

Bill Vass, 30, is in the front room, chatting with a friend on the edge of a booth. He says he prefers the Rip Tide's casual atmosphere to almost all of the city's trendier nightspots: "Walking in is a comfortable feeling. You go to a lot of bars nowadays and people are not even smiling. They're looking up to see what the girl you walked in with is wearing."

Wuczynski has thrown off her jacket to reveal a blue short-sleeved shirt, and a new shot of Jagermeister sits beside her. A customer kisses Marie on the cheek and introduces her friend. "Welcome to my house. Rrrrrrrrrr," Wuczynski rolls her tongue and purrs at her newest acquaintance. Right now, she's channeling Eartha Kitt. Sometimes it's Mae West. Or Phyllis Diller.

Tina Congenie, the bar's manager and one of Wuczynski's daughters, approaches her mother's stool. Congenie, 42, is dressed in a denim shirt with rhinestones. She sings along with Sam Cooke, throwing out her arms and serenading Wuczynski: "Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody. I have some money 'cause I just got paid."

"Well, tell him I'm free!" Wuczynski yells out.

Song after song, Congenie sings while making drinks, collecting money and wiping down tables. Her voice is loud, clear and infectious--inspiring other customers to break into song.

"Isn't she a beautiful canary?" asks Wuczynksi. "She does what I used to do."

At 5 a.m., the jukebox plays Frank Sinatra's "My Way." It's the last song of the night, and the bar is still packed. The lights come on. Bouncers and bartenders start herding customers toward the door. Wuczynski has added a white boa to her outfit that she took from a bachelorette party attendee, and a cigarette is tucked behind her ear. She sings along to Sinatra as she gives out hugs to her guests.

I've lived a life that's full,

I've traveled each and every highway.

And more, much more than this,

I did it my way.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/featur...,7649313.story