Clint isn't sure where he stands tonight — a moment ago, he staggered and smacked into a parking meter. He can't find his ride. Probably met a girl and ditched him, he thinks.

And no one standing in a small cluster near the corner of 14th and O — the epicenter of late-night downtown Lincoln — is certain why he just threw back his head and screamed into the darkened sky. (Anger? Joy? Vodka?)

But Clint feels good about the foil-wrapped ground beef and lamb concoction in his right hand. He's positive he should've bought it where he did, and he's sure he's gonna love it as he takes a first, huge bite at 12:13 a.m.

"George's is the best, maybe in the entire universe."

The overstatement makes sense if you, like Clint, have ever spent an entire Wednesday night drinking pitchers of Elk Creek Water, a signature mixed drink at Sandy's.

It also makes sense if you know anything of Lincoln's greasiest rivalry, the decades-long competition in the midst of the Midwest between two gyro places separated only by a cucumber sauce and one wall.

On the corner of 14th and O Streets stands Gourmet Grill, run by the aforementioned George, who's real name is Mansour.

His hot and spicy gyros have drawn people from as far away as Canada, he says.

One door north stands Ali Baba Gyros, whose owner is often called Ali but is really named Naqib.

His secret cucumber sauce is valuable enough to sell when he retires, he says.

Both restaurants draw loyal lunch crowds, people who've eaten there for years and wouldn't think of patronizing the other gyro joint.

Both stay open late to serve the O Street rowdies heaping plates of 85 percent seasoned ground beef, 15 percent lamb, onion, tomato, lettuce and cucumber sauce on pita bread.

Ali Baba's sign proclaims it is, "#1 in town!"

The Gourmet Grill's signage is more grandiose: "Best Gyros Anywhere."

You see the problem.

"It's not like we are fighting," says Bactosh Attaie, Naqib's nephew and Ali Baba Gyros employee, during a mid-afternoon lull.

"We are friends. Kind of."

Rewind two decades to a simpler time when a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student had only one late-night dining option: George's Greek Gyros, where Ali Baba's is now, but then owned by George.

The Iranian immigrant whose given name is Mansour Kholousi moved to the city in 1978 to attend the UNL's engineering school and then its graduate business school.

He bought the business already named George's Greek Gyros from a Greek husband and wife in 1984 and decided to keep the restaurant name — Mansour's Iranian Gyros doesn't quite have the same ring, does it? — and assumed the honorary title of George.

George made one stellar business decision early in his career, he says, when he decided to keep his new restaurant open until at least 2 a.m.

That gave the new owner a monopoly on the young adults who pour out of O Street bars at 1 a.m. maybe looking for love, maybe looking to pick a fight and quite possibly wanting nothing more than food.

"The line sometimes stretched around the block."

Excited by his business school education and buoyed by his early success, George made one poor business decision, he says. He decided to expand to six locations, including the 14th and O corner store.

The new businesses made him one of the city's largest restaurant owners, but stretched his time and money thinner than pita bread.

"(UNL professors) were always talking about the good things, how much money you can make from the Pepsi, the profits.

"I got too excited . . . they didn't explain all the trouble you can get into."

George eventually sold all but one of the restaurants and briefly disappeared from the downtown scene.

One man bought George's store at the corner, which previously sold popcorn, and transformed it into a chicken-and-burgers joint called The Gourmet Grill.

Another man bought the gyro shop and named it Ali Baba's.

The two new owners didn't get along at all, and the spat prompted the corner store owner to invite George back to downtown Lincoln.

This, in turn, prompted the then-owners of Ali Baba Gyros to do some mean things George would rather not talk about.

"It just got nasty," he says.

Peace came downtown when Naqib Attaie bought Ali Baba in 1990, setting up the gyro dynamic that exists to this day.

Naqib had honed his skills cutting gyro meat in Frankfurt, Germany, and then at a restaurant near UNL's campus.

He expanded Ali Baba, added to the menu and started to pull in his own loyal lunch crowd and late-night following to rival George's.

He doesn't want to talk much about any of this, dodging questions about where he's from and how he got interested in the gyro business.

At one point during the interview, he stands up from a corner table in his restaurant and asks, "Are we done yet?"

One subject he will discuss: Ali Baba's superiority to all other Greek restaurants in Lincoln.

Ali Baba's buys top-quality gyro meat, he says. They take the time to cook real Greek fries. His Indian-style tandoori chicken is a lunch-time favorite.

And his cucumber sauce nears perfection.

"We're not going to give away the recipe," he says. "It's a secret. I don't want anybody to know."

He smiles.

"Maybe, someday, I will sell it."

Christopher Garner, a friend of Clint's and a frequent late-night visitor to Ali Baba Gyros, says the decision is simple, more about quality then taste.

"Sorta' like Coke and Pepsi, but more clear, I think," he says. "I'll always go to Ali Baba's unless it's closed."

The Gourmet Grill is often open later than Ali Baba Gyros, giving bar-goers a chance to loiter on O Street before eating.

And George himself is a late-night draw, with Lincolnites of all ages and backgrounds dropping in to say hello.

"I set out to be rich and famous," he says after he greets several customers and just before he carries in a shipment of chicken kabobs. "I didn't get rich, but I got famous."

There is no feud between the two gyro barons these days, just a healthy competition to convince customers to come in, both say.

They often stop by each other's stores to chat. George even occasionally eats an Ali Baba dinner.

The pair is united by the common threat of more and more downtown restaurants extending their hours and catering to a clientele that was once exclusively theirs.

Now, a hungry Lincolnite can get a 1 a.m. slice of pizza, a giant burrito, a turkey sandwich, a pita wrap or a hot dog simply by weaving their way up or down O Street.

But business is still good, both say, despite the competition and despite the oddity of having two gyro restaurants side by side in a state known for steak and corn, not lamb and cucumber.

The Ali Baba's owner and his nephew see a mystical connection between beer and their most famous menu item, which drawing staggering moths to a familiar flame.

"I don't know why, they love it," Naqib says. "Ask the drunks why."

George has a theory that the greasy gyro sops up the alcohol, sobering up Clint and the untold thousands who have come before him.

"It is a very helpful sandwich."

So maybe it's the half-eaten gyro in Clint's hand that's caused his ride to reappear, keys in hand.

And maybe it's the gyro's sobering powers that have quieted Clint as he turns to walk to the car.

Of course, it's hard to scream with your mouth full.

Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or mhansen@journalstar.com.