Nobody should blame Gus Paraskevoulakos for trying to turn back the clock. Gus - and everyone knows him as just Gus - is 64 now, irrepressible as ever. His memory is good and what he has been remembering lately is the years in the '70s and '80s when he ran the Athens Restaurant at the corner of State and Gilman streets.

"That was the place," Gus was saying this week. "That was my dream."

Gus is as colorful a restaurateur as Madison has seen in the last 50 years. The Athens was one of the city's first Greek restaurants and Gus subscribed to the smart restaurant theory that if you let someone else run your place pretty soon it's their place, and you're on the phone trying to get a reservation.

Everyone came to the Athens to see Gus and he delivered. There was good food, laughter, belly dancers and one day Jimmy Carter, running for president.

Gus's Athens memories are directly related to his current venture. He just bought The Pub, the storied bar at 552 State Street, and he has big dreams of putting up a new building that will be limestone and have arched doors just like the Athens.

"I spent the best years of my life half a block away from here," he said.

It would be a fitting last act for a man who came to the United States from Greece in 1966. He had a sister who lived in Chicago, so that's where he landed. It might have been another planet.

"I came from a little village with no electricity or running water," he said.

Chicago opened his eyes, and hard work took care of the rest.

"When I started in Chicago I was saving every dime," Gus said. "I was working seven days a week. Three jobs."

After six years he had $60,000 and a couple of partners willing to help him open the Athens in Madison.

His run at the Athens - a dozen years - ended in 1984. At the time Gus grumbled about Downtown construction and parking concerns driving him out. Today he says it was that he didn't own the building, and couldn't secure a long-term lease.

In any case, he wasn't out of the game long. In 1985, Gus and his new wife, Mary, opened Kosta's at 117 State Street. This time he owned the building, and once again he owned the night, at least among the political crowd. Kosta's, a block from the Capitol, was the place for political gossip and fundraisers.

In 1988, Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, was at the Civic Center for a fundraiser and before the event, found his way to Kosta's. "Thank you for opening early for a group of hungry and thirsty Democrats," Clinton wrote later in a personal note to Gus.

"I never took sides," Gus recalled this week, explaining his success in attracting politicos to the restaurant. In this, Gus was reminiscent of the venerable lobbyist Bill Gerrard, of whom it was said, "Bill is a member of the incumbent party."

Kosta's had only been open a year or so when Mary gave birth to a daughter, Eve. Gus joked that her first words were "Master Card." It seems impossible that Eve is now a college graduate and running The Comedy Club, the venture across State Street from Kosta's that Gus started on again leaving the restaurant business a few years ago.

He'd had his eyes on The Pub for several years, and when it recently became available and Gus could secure financing, he jumped.

Gus envisions a new, taller structure, with apartments upstairs, but that will require further financing and city approval. For now he will make improvements and continue to operate it as The Pub, while hoping for the chance to create something more, to summon some of the magic of the old Athens.

"I'd like to make a mark on State Street like I did with my old building," he said.

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