Cracking the bar code

Ty Wenzel tended bar at Marion's, on the Bowery, for 10 years -- then turned it into a book.

By RACHEL FELSON

So a girl walks into a bar - and by the time she walks out again, a decade has passed, a neighborhood has changed and she has enough stories about drag queens, drunks, celebrity tippers and the Bowery's boom to write a book.

And so she does.

In "Behind Bars: The Straight-Up Tales of a Big-City Bartender" (Thomas Dunne Books, $23.95), Ty Wenzel recounts the 10 years she spent tending bar at Marion's in the East Village.

It's a world that trades daylight for night; where hiccups get cured with a lemon soaked in bitters; and where sex and booze are basic building blocks, akin to hydrogen and oxygen.

(Don't ask which Marion's booth Wenzel's had sex in - she'll cop to the event, but not the location.)

On a recent Tuesday night, Wenzel, 36, headed back behind the bar to mix drinks and catch up with the regulars.

"Oh, I remember so many nights like this," one man says.

"Miss, Miss, I want a drink," jokes another.

"They're all still here," she says. "It's a lot of the same people doing a lot of the same things. You want to think they've moved on, but they haven't."

Wenzel, who once traded a job at Cosmo for a gig mixing Cosmopolitans, still divides her regulars into types.

There's the Expert, the Name-Dropper and the Snacker, who nibbles on the olives and cherries out of the garnish tray.

The Babbler chats obliviously through a rush at the bar, while the Big Spender blows cash on everyone except the bartender.

"Wall Street types and frat boys," she says. "They act like they're made of money - until the tip."

"Then there's the Floorshows, my favorite," she says. "People always try to get them drunk to see what they'll do."

It's a strange place to find a Turkish-born Muslim girl who still prays daily - even one with blond, va-va-voom looks.

"The Moslem thing is weird," she admits. "You're not supposed to be serving liquor. I never told my parents I was a bartender."

These days, Wenzel lives in East Hampton full time with her husband, Kurt, a waiter she met at another bar (never date your own customers, she warns) and their 1-year-old son. She gardens, writes, takes care of her child - and is thrilled to have left bartending behind.

"I was [happy] in the beginning," she says. "Every new bartender will tell you, This is great! I'm meeting lots of people, I'm getting laid all the time!"

But the euphoria doesn't last, she says.

Four years into her Marion's gig, she began having panic attacks before she went to work.

More violent, aggressive customers had started mixing in with the crowd of regulars and Bowery bums. And by 1995, the neighborhood's gentrification was bringing in more high-living, heavy-drinking Wall Street types.

"We had a lot of wealthy, crazy people - along with the winos," she says. "I was cutting people off all the time."

When she complained about security, the owners gave her a bat. "What was I going to do?" she says. "I was making $300 to $400 a night."

But when the chips were down, she said, it was the community of regulars who took care of her.

"You become a family," she explains. "See that guy there? He used to drive me crazy for 10 years, but he's a really sweet guy."