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There’s a small house on Wabansia Avenue that has outlived factories, rail yards, changing neighborhoods and more late nights than any of us can count. For 150 years, people have walked through its door looking for music, mischief, refuge, kindness — and somehow, this little place has always kept the light on.
For nearly 30 of those years, we’ve had the joy and responsibility of being its caretakers.
Today, with full hearts and deep gratitude, we’re sharing that we have sold The Hideout.
We didn’t make this decision quickly or lightly. This place has shaped our lives — and the lives of so many of you — in ways too big and too personal to fit in a single note. What guided us above all else was making sure the Hideout would remain The Hideout: small, independent, community-built, fiercely itself.
That’s why we chose someone who already knows this place from the inside.
The Hideout’s new owner is Teri O’Brien, a friend, former Hideout employee and performer.
She knows the room, the people, the history, the scrappiness, the humor and the heart. She’s part of the lineage that has kept this house alive through every era.
And because of that, the things that matter aren’t changing.
The staff you know and love remain central.
The rooms will look and feel like they always have.
The spirit stays intact.
The community stays intact.
The Hideout remains independent, weird, welcoming and rooted in Chicago grit — as it’s been since long before any of us stepped behind the bar.
We are endlessly grateful for the musicians, staff, volunteers, neighbors, artists, activists and regulars who built this place with us. Everything The Hideout has become is because of the people who showed up — with guitars, with ideas, with laughter, with love.
This is not a goodbye.
You’ll still see us at the shows — only now, we might be standing in the audience beside you.
Thank you, truly, for 30 years of memories and for being the heart that keeps this little house beating and being, “the smallest big club in Chicago.”
With love and gratitude,
Tim, Katie, Mike and Jim
The Hideout (1996–2026)
