Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz Page A

commercial printing facility for years until her hands mysteriously broke out in a bad case of eczema. She was on disability when Guinan met her, drinking to fill the void in her life. Embarrassed by the unsightliness of her hands, she wore black leather gloves, which made her look exotic among the young men in torn leather jackets and the old-timers in frayed shirts.
    Guinan hadn’t been here for a number of years, but little has changed; the place is still owned by Michael Liacopoulos, who came over from southern Greece and purchased it from a Jewish man in 1982. As you walk in, there’s a liquor store to the left, and to the right, running the length of the seventy-foot store, is a narrow, handsome bar made of oak. A thirty-five-year-old Budweiser clock hangs over its center; a nineteen-inch television sits at one end. A pool table is in the rear. The clientele, at least during the week, is a melting pot of Ukrainians, Poles, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans; on weekends, the young professionals and artists—the recent arrivals—come to play pool. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, Liacopoulos serves his patrons a turkey dinner.
    Guinan and I take a seat at the bar. “Used to be packed with mailmen before they went to work,” Guinan tells me. The local post office is the bar’s neighbor, and while the postal workers come in less frequently, they still appear for the occasional shot and a beer. Guinan was reluctant to meet me here because in the early 1990s, a local weekly at Guinan’s suggestion had written about the bar, and what was written—that it was a dive—angered the tavern’s owners. This is the first time he’s been back since that article, but all seems to have been forgiven: Liacopoulos greets him warmly. Guinan orders a Zywiec, a Polish beer, and—although he says he’s stopped smoking—pulls out a pack of Marlboros. “I’m smoking now just ’cause I’m in a bar,” he explains.
    For nearly thirty years, Guinan drank and smoked and sketched at taverns around the city. He painted prostitutes and junkies, recent immigrants and blues singers. And he ventured out into the streets as well. He met an aging jazz piano player, Emile, who because of his musical prowess was known as the King of Clark Street; one of Guinan’s paintings is of Emile sitting in his home, shoulders hunched, stomach flabby, playing his piano naked. Another of his subjects was Sister Carrie, an evangelist, who could usually be found at the Maxwell Street Market on Sunday mornings, jumping and shaking as she sang and banged on her tambourine. He captured people riding the El, sleeping and gazing out the window. He painted two boys climbing out of Lake Michigan under the shimmering light of street lamps. There’s one painting in which, like voyeurs, we peek through the windows of the Fine Arts Building downtown, watching lithe young ballerinas in leotards and tutus practicing their routines. He drew a portrait of Mike, who ran a small dry cleaners that had become a neighborhood gathering spot, and he painted the women who used the back of Mike’s shop to clean vegetables. He sketched the regal-looking African-American poet Margaret Danner, and boxing night at the Union League Club, where men in white shirts and ties and women in evening gowns watch young black and Hispanic men pummel each other to the mat.
    Guinan does everything from small pencil sketches to large oils, some of which sell for as much as sixty thousand dollars. Taken together, his work, which has been compared to Edward Hopper’s, comprises an astonishing collective portrait of the city. Where Hopper painted with strong, luminous colors, Guinan’s work is muted and filled with extraordinary detail. In one portrait of Sister Carrie at her home, you can make out the mismatched, makeshift drapes covering the window and the ripped, layered linoleum on the floor. Dressed in her white