11 p.m.

Irvington has changed quite a bit since 1933. The Butler Inn has not.

Housed in the same building since Prohibition ended, the Inn is the only liquor license holder in the historic neighborhood that lies along East Washington Street. Bartender Kim Harlow, 47, greets me with a smile as I enter the nearly empty bar. It seems that the Monday night bowling league regulars packed up not 30 minutes before my arrival.

The Inn is decorated haphazardly. NFL, NASCAR and beer signage adorn the walls, and bowling trophies and knickknacks are tucked away on shelves in darkened corners. A vintage bowling game sits ready to amuse across the room. Two televisions play Monday Night Football, but the game is muted.

I tell Harlow what I am doing, and she's eager to talk, but not so eager to have her picture taken. She paces behind the bar chatting about the neighborhood and her extended family. She's an Irvington lifer and proud of it. The bartender pulls a sketchpad out from beneath the bar and shows me her drawings. I ask her if she draws behind the bar and she smiles. "I'm not supposed to," Harlow says.

It must not be that big a deal because Harlow tells me the owner is sitting right behind me.

11:39 p.m.

Jane Harris has owned the Butler Inn with her husband for more than 20 years. Smack in the middle of the one remaining nasty stretch of Irvington, Harris is pleased that residents are taking better care of the area, but she still has to deal with flophouses, rundown apartment buildings and the derelicts who occupy them. That isn't to say that the Butler Inn is a dangerous place to be; far from it. There's just a lot of colorful street life surrounding it.

The 66-year-old Harris watched Irvington's decline and has measured optimism for its resurgence. Harris' niece Deanna Fahrenkamp, 47, and her husband, Jim Fahrenkamp, 60, are also at the table and the trio trades tales about bar patrons and the neighborhood. A gentleman walks in, makes a carryout purchase and leaves. He's a regular, and Harris notes that he hasn't been wearing oxygen tubes in his nose since he went gambling a couple of blocks east at the Our Lady of Lourdes festival last weekend. "He been healed," Fahrenkamp says.

Harris and the Fahrenkamps laugh. You have to have a sense of humor to love Irvington. It has historic homes, Hispanic families, gay couples and young artists dropped in among the working poor. Some people think that the Eastside will never be worth a damn, but at the Butler Inn, we know that miracles do happen on Washington Street.