![]() Slutzky struck up a friendship with Cunneen and even got the bar owner to carry the coffee brand for which he did sales. After pay phones went out of vogue, Cunneen would banish cellphone talkers to the phone booth, Colin-Cunneen said. ![]() A woodworker and craftsman, Cunneen built the bar’s tables, the light over its pool table and the stained glass above the front entrance.Ĭunneen even made a phone booth and placed it toward the rear of the bar. His immense collection of jazz records was moved to Cunneen’s and played frequently. “That was a function of Steve’s values.”Ĭunneen infused the humble corner bar with his personality. “Everyone was welcome there,” Savage said. Cunneen’s was welcoming of all types, from crusty neighborhood guys to college students. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago ‘People At Cunneen’s Count Their Tenure In Decades’Ĭunneen was a graduate student at University of Illinois Chicago when he decided to buy a Devon Avenue bar called Down the Street and open Cunneen’s Bar in March 1972.īack then, Devon Avenue was filled with bars, said Bill Savage, a former bartender at Cunneen’s, an author and a literature professor at Northwestern University. I’m hoping I can keep it going for a couple more generations.” Belinda Colin-Cunneen holds a photo of the late Stephen Cunneen at Cunneen’s, 1424 W. “I know it means a lot to so many people. “The bar has been a neighborhood staple for so many years,” Colin-Cunneen said. But the bar is sticking around under the ownership of Colin-Cunneen, with her and the employees trying to keep its community thriving long into the future.
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