The foot traffic through the corner entrance of the North Side shrine they call the Rosa Villa has been a little too brisk this week. A little too urgent.

"They keep comin' in, sayin' 'Is it true?' " bartender Jimmy Zwick said from behind his cigar one night this week. "I'm getting' tired o' tellin' 'em, 'Yeah, it's true!' "

Oh it's read-it-and-weep true all right. They're closin' the place.

Friday. This Friday.

"You gonna be here?" is the most asked question around the ancient rectangular bar, a ratty whiskey-stained track where Jimmy has been pacing the infield for more than 30 years. In the final hours for a city landmark that opened in 1932, he's spent too much of its evaporation remembering the faces, the voices, their pain and their pleasure.

Mean Joe Greene?

"He'd come in after practice and get a 40-ounce Budweiser to go," Jimmy said. "Then he'd give me a cigar."

Bill Burns, Art Rooney, Michael Keaton, Dennis Hopper, he knew their orders, too. World renowned operatic bass-baritone Kevin Glavin, well, just ask him.

"I've been singing in Philadelphia at the Academy of Music for the past two months, so I didn't know," Glavin said. "I heard about it on the phone the other day. I've been telling opera singers all over the world. The Rosa Villa is closing. They can't believe it. I'm shocked. There's so much history in this place. I'm coming here every day this week."

Glavin's been coming here since he was 17. His dad, a union boss, brought him around. Introduced him to the great fighter Patsy Scanlon right there in that corner.

"Dennis Hopper sat right there," Jimmy said. "My wife was here that night. She told him, 'Hey, get outta my seat!' "

But no, this ain't Toots Shore's. Athletes, entertainers and celebs of dubious pedigree are but a mixer in the Villa's historic Pittsburgh cocktail. The hard spirits come from the neighborhood, the people with whom Jimmy Zwick has forged a life's story.

"June Whyte," said the lady in the baseball cap behind a Seagram's 7 and soda (twist of lemon). "I've been comin' here since I'm 18, which was 1938. I'll be 84. Used to have a friend who lived upstairs."

And what happened to him?

"He died upstairs."

June went to Allegheny High with one of the Rosa Villa's original owners, the brothers Cancelliere, John and Angelo. Angelo died in 1992, five years to the day after John passed. Their sister Frances, now 87 and still stirring soup in the kitchen, gave Jimmy the bad news two weeks ago.

"I want to show you somethin'," Jimmy said, fetching a cigar box from another corner of the tap room. "Look at this."

He flipped it open, this cardboard box that had to be 40 years old. He jammed his thick fingers in there and started flipping through checks. Dozens of outdated checks, some paper-clipped into bunches, others loose.

"I saved all these," he said. "This is the kind of people Johnny and Angie were. All these checks people in the neighborhood wrote them to cover drinks, dinners, whatever. They never cashed them. Here's one for $500."

The Rosa Villa is not going under from a cigar box full of uncashed checks. The reasons are better left for some more accomplished socio-economic postmortem, likely having to do with the fact that its management has grown old and a half-dozen trendier spots (what isn't?) have opened between the Rosa Villa and the ballparks down the street in the past five years.

There just isn't time to talk about that. Friday's comin' way too fast. "Friday's gonna be a hard one," said Amy Sokolowski, "it'll be like losing part of your family. Jimmy's been like a father to me. I'm 30, and I've been comin' here since I'm, uh, 17. It was the only place my mother would let me come by myself."

There's no difficulty in figuring out who it's gonna be hardest for, because when Jimmy stops tellin' you about all the famous, near-famous, and nowhere-near-famous people who walked in here off the corner of General Robinson and Sandusky streets, "your haves and have-nots" he says, he starts thinking about Friday. For a millisecond, it punctures Jimmy's stoicism, leaves a hurtful little dent in the famous unflappability.

"I raised all my children out of this place," he said. "The oldest is 44; I've got twin girls 34."

That's where he stops for that millisecond.

"I heard they're going to knock the building down," he said. "Boy, it's heartbreaking."

What'll ya do Monday, Jimmy?

"I'll find somethin'," he said, picking up the cigar. "I'm only 70."