Her voice, bright and sassy, cracks the air: “Butch, hey Butch. Heyyyyyyyyyy!”

Butch McGuire’s a mom-and-tot program? Say it isn’t so!

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »

“Instead of guys and girls coming here to meet, we’re seeing parents bringing their kids in to see the sight of their old haunts, the scene of their original courtship,” says McGuire. “The so-called ‘singles scene’ popularized by journalists doesn’t exist.

Taking note that I’ve ordered something nonalcoholic, McGuire says, “And people aren’t drinking as much. There’s no drinking at noon whatsoever. They drink Diet Coke. And light beer. If someone had told you 20 years ago to fill a glass half up with water and the other half with beer and sell it as light beer, you would have called them crazy.

McGuire took to throwing private parties for his buddies. “We’d have parties two, three nights a week. Bring-your-own-bottle parties, dinner parties. It got to be the parties were so big I thought I’d better open a saloon and relieve this pressure from my apartment.”

“You might see some parties where 20 people show up, but you don’t see where 200 people show up anymore.”