The Hideout is holding a reunion celebration this Saturday, but you won’t need to trim your hair or suck in your gut to impress people you haven’t seen in decades—the party promises to be a laid-back affair, fit for friends and families. This anniversary marks 20 years that the Hideout, tucked away just off Clybourn on Wabansia by a Department of Streets & Sanitation fueling station, has been owned by brothers Jim and Mike Hinchsliff and married couple Tim and Katie Tuten.
Built as a residence in the late 19th century, the Hideout became a speakeasy during Prohibition and went legit in 1934. The Tutens and Hinchsliffs bought the bar in 1996. Inspired by another of Tim’s favorite watering holes, they set about making the Hideout a place that reflected the owners’ social and cultural concerns without sacrificing its neighborly vibe. “Weeds is the bar I hung at all through the 80s and 90s, and we were like Weeds West,” Tim recalls. “Sergio Mayora had poetry on Monday nights there. It was totally uncensored.”
Rizzo and Bean used to be a couple, and their son, Matt Rizzo, recently played the Hideout with his noise-metal duo, Horizon of Darkness. Says Bean, “As Tim pointed out in one of his intro-monologues, Matt has been coming to the Hideout since he was a very small child, and now he’s on the stage with his own band. That makes the Hideout not just a bar for me, but part of my family. In a nutshell, that’s what sets it apart.”
