CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The King of the Flats is ready to abdicate the throne.

Vlado "Wally" Pisorn has run the Harbor Inn, a dingy bar on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River, for more than 40 years. Now he's trying to sell the well-known Cleveland watering hole, where prosecutors, salt-mine workers, judges and pipefitters mingle while drinking their beer and whiskey.

So how much is a piece of history worth?

The Cuyahoga County Fiscal Office puts the value of the three-story building - the real estate, not the business - at $258,200. Real estate agent Bob O'Connor, who is marketing the property, says he started out with an asking price of $1 million. Now Pisorn's down to $750,000, and he doesn't plan to budge.

"I always thought somebody famous would want to attach their name to it," O'Connor says. "Keep it the Harbor Inn, but attach their name to it. I don't think there are too many people that haven't had a beer in this place."

Little-changed over the decades, the Harbor Inn is notorious as Cleveland's oldest continuously operating bar. That might or might not be true, like most stories about the place. It's tough to separate fact from fiction in the Flats.

Property records related to the building, 1219 Main Ave., are muddled before the mid-1970s. Pisorn says he actually acquired the Harbor Inn in the late 1960s, paying $110,000.

An immigrant from Slovenia, Pisorn had training in the restaurant and bar business. After taking over the Harbor Inn, he brought in bands, hosted dancing on the second floor and made few changes to the decor. During the 1970s, huge crowds gathered on the sidewalks outside as motorcyclists raced in the streets.

"The place was shoulder to shoulder with bikers and their molls," recalls Dan Coughlin, a former Plain Dealer sportswriter, a TV reporter and a longtime customer.

"Wally had a virtual armory behind the bar," Coughlin adds. "He had shotguns. Pistols. One night, when the bars could be open until 3:30, in the middle of the summer, we stacked up cases of beer bottles and fired at them from the hip, with shotguns blasting away. ... I put a hole in the stop sign in front of his bar. They've since replaced the stop sign."

By some accounts, the building has been a bar since 1895. Newspaper articles offer varied, often conflicting, chronicles of its history. Popular with globe-trotting sailors, the Harbor Inn became known for its a broad range of beers and liquors. Pisorn still carries hundreds of products today. Bud Light and Miller Lite are his top sellers, but he gets occasional requests for Argentinian beer or Croatian booze.

Upstairs, darts devotees still gather to compete, throwing feathered missiles at round boards ringing the room. Players and fans have chalked their names on the brick walls over the years, reaching to the ceilings when they ran out of space.

At 72, Pisorn still shows up for work most days, making the trip downtown from his house in Westlake. But he's slowing down.

A Seattle T-shirt company that capitalizes on nostalgia recently replicated the Harbor Inn logo on apparel. Since then, Harbor Inn shirts have popped up at Nordstrom.

This week, he sported a Harbor Inn sweatshirt, proclaiming the bar's location - Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. - and its other name, "Wally World." Across the country, people recognize the logo and recall hazy evenings spent at the bar.

A Seattle T-shirt company that capitalizes on nostalgia recently replicated that design. Since then, Harbor Inn shirts have popped up at Nordstrom, in a bizarre jump from dive bar to high-end department store.

So far, the name recognition hasn't helped Pisorn make his last big sale.

O'Connor says he's fielded plenty of inquiries, but potential buyers often are daunted by the size of the building - roughly 16,000 square feet- and the possible costs of renovations. A few customers have asked about buying the business. But they want Pisorn to finance the transaction, to get around the challenges of finding bank loans for bars and restaurants.

That's not an option, O'Connor says. "We want to get Wally all the way out. We want to be aggressive and just cash it out and let him move on."

Pisorn isn't sentimental about selling. His customers likely will be.

"They know that I've got problems with my health," he says. "They say, make sure you sell to a good guy."

He has a crew of family members who help out, cooking comfort food in the kitchen and managing the floor in the evenings. And he has four daughters. "It's not for ladies to run the bar," he says, explaining why he won't keep the Harbor Inn in the family.

"I think when Wally is no longer behind the bar, we'll have lost something about the Flats," says Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman, who hails from a Slovenian family. "He legitimately is the mayor of the Flats. From stevedores to construction workers to people coming home from an Indians game, he has been, in so many ways, the master of the house for the Flats."

On Tuesday, Bob Hoff and Michael Parker were warming two bar stools at the Harbor Inn just after 5 o'clock. Hoff, who sells commercial roofing products, rents an apartment across the street from the bar and stops in once or twice a week.

"I actually fund Wally's retirement myself," he jokes. "I own half of Wally's house, with as much as I've drank in this bar."

Hoff and other patrons met a crew from New Zealand there a few years ago, when an overseas company was developing the Greater Cleveland Aquarium in the Flats. After the project was finished, the friendship continued. The Harbor Inn group later traveled to New Zealand for a visit.

Parker, a pipefitter, has been a customer at the bar since the late 1980s. He says the crowd varies dramatically, depending on the day and the hour. On Saturday afternoons, there's the self-proclaimed "Mensa society," a group of regulars who bring snacks from the West Side Market and hold court. In the evenings, a party bus might show up, carrying a bachelor party and the promise of entertainment.

"You can always come in here and, if there's nobody here, you can just hang out and talk to Wally," Parker says. "And then, eventually, someone is going to come in, and you're going to stay late."

Hoff adds, "Then your head hurts the next day. ... You see a lot of people, because most people come and go. We just stay put."