Tonight is the last call for Dago Mary's bar and restaurant, one of San It is a place with a politically incorrect name, in an obscure corner of a rough neighborhood. "It is easy not to know about it,'' said Victoria Mauleon, who celebrated her wedding to Lars Nylander there in October, an occasion she describes as "perfect.'' It's the kind of place that friends tell friends about, a kind of secret Hudson Avenue, just inside the gate at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

The restaurant has sweeping views of ships anchored in the bay, the Bay Bridge and downtown San Francisco. Dago Mary's is no old-time hash house, either. There are white tablecloths, and the decor comes from a millionaire's mansion.

On the other hand, it is located in what is charitably known as a neighborhood in transition, a high-crime area that is on the edge of change. And change is what is doing the place in. Dago Mary's will be offered another site in an all-new Hunters Point.

That will happen, said owner Brian Molony. "In 2 1/2 to three years, maybe.'' The timing is a bit vague.

"Its place and name will not be lost,'' said Sam Singer, a spokesman for the Lennar Corp., the developer. When this will happen is not clear.

"It's a little while off,'' Singer said. What is certain is that Dago Mary's will close tonight, after a run of close to 77 years. "I love it here,'' said Erin Moy, the bartender.

"It's magic.'' "It's an old San Francisco place,'' said Guy Stilson, a lawyer who was taking pictures of the bar and the dining section of the establishment Monday. "You don't see many places like this any more.

What can you do? They are going away, and you have to remember them.'' Stilson, who first came to Dago Mary's with his father 40 or so years ago, was born and raised in San Francisco.

His companion, Michael Murray, grew up in Southern California, and got interested in San Francisco when he saw "The Maltese Falcon," a 1941 movie with Humphrey Bogart playing Sam Spade, the detective, and a dark and brooding San "I said, 'some day, I'll move there.' I had a picture in my head of what San Francisco was like.'' As it turned out, San Francisco to him was like Tadich's Grill or Sam's, famous places downtown, and Dago Mary's, out at Hunters Point.

The decor was all dark-paneled wood and old pictures of once-famous people, with an aura that Murray worries about these places. "Little by little, they are all going away,'' he said. Like all older places, Dago Mary's comes with a story.

It was established in 1930, and called the Venetian Villa, a high-class place, with seven-course meals for $1.25, even a floor show. Hunters Point was a civilian shipyard then, and a lively neighborhood was nearby with boatyards, a little beach, and a Chinese shrimp fishing camp.

The slaughterhouses of Butchertown were not far away, and when the wind was wrong and the tide was out, the area didn't smell so hot. The Venetian Villa was run by a woman named Mary Ghiozo, "San Francisco's version of Diamond Lil,'' the place's menu says. Soon, the patrons started calling it Dago Mary's.

"A term used in fondness, not disrespect,'' the official version has it. The Navy took over the shipyard just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it was a major ship-repair and construction facility during World War II. A submarine base was just outside the window of Dago Mary's.

"There must have been 20,000, 30,000 guys working here,'' said Tom McGarvey, who owned property around the neighborhood. "You couldn't even get in the door at Dago Mary's, I'm telling you.'' The shipyard stayed open after the war, and the politicians came to Dago downtown.

On Friday afternoons, they say, Mayor Joe Alioto came by to get away from City Hall. He sat right in the dining room, story goes, every Friday. You wanted something done in the city, well, there he was.

of declining activity. Dago Mary's stayed open, for lunch-only most days, dinner on Friday. People from the neighborhood came for birthday parties.

Church groups from the Mission and Bayview held dinners and lunches there. "I came here as a young priest,'' said the Rev. Dan Carter, the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes and All Hallows churches, not far away.

He was having a last lunch with friends there the other afternoon. "It's been a part of my life,'' he said, "I'll miss it." Today is the final day, though a private group rented the place for a Pedro tournament on Saturday.

Pedro -- pronounced pee-dro -- is an old-time The artifacts, including a huge back bar and wood trim that came from bonanza king James C. Flood's mansion in Atherton, will be saved for when an all-new Dago Mary's comes back to life. One of these days.

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