Everywhere Social Club: Queer Sober Bar Opening in Uptown

A queer-led sober social club is headed to the 12th floor rooftop at 5050 N. Broadway in Uptown, with founders targeting a late-July 2026 opening for what they’re calling Everywhere Social Club.

The space sits inside the Draper, a building that Cedar Street converted from offices into apartments back in 2019. Twelve floors above Broadway, the rooftop offers clear sightlines across the Chicago skyline. That view was no accident. Co-founder Zach Walz said the listing stopped him cold when he first saw it.

“We saw this listing, and it was perfect for what we wanted to create,” Walz said. “By being in Uptown, we are purposely a destination away from the Northalsted bars. And the sunsets are going to be insane.”

Everywhere won’t be another bar. Days there start as a coffee shop. Nights go mocktail-forward, with DJ sets, live entertainment, yoga workshops, and lectures rounding out the programming calendar. The club launched a Kickstarter campaign on Kickstarter Tuesday with a $100,000 goal to complete the buildout.

That Northalsted distance Walz mentioned isn’t a liability. It’s the whole point. Halsted Street’s bar corridor has long been the backbone of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ nightlife, but Everywhere isn’t trying to compete with it. The idea is to build something that doesn’t depend on alcohol to bring queer people and their allies into the same room.

“Making this a community effort is important,” Walz said.

The founding team’s personal histories shape the project in ways that go beyond marketing. Co-founder Morgan Higgins has a hospitality background and stopped drinking three years ago. Co-founder Dan Quinn put in two decades working nightlife before stepping back from drinking. Walz himself grew up watching his mother fight alcoholism. When she got sober, she didn’t just put down the bottle. She watched her social world disappear along with it. That loss is what Everywhere is designed to address.

“I want to create a space where people can find their kin and don’t have to give up what they love just because they want to drink less,” he said.

Co-founder Rachel Ablavi brings a yoga teacher’s perspective to the club, and her reasons for joining the project weren’t abstract. After she cut back on drinking, going out became a different kind of problem. The bars that had been her scene suddenly felt hostile to who she was trying to be.

“As a queer person who more recently stopped drinking, I lost the joy of going out, dancing and being uninhibited,” Ablavi said. “Finding a place that focuses on meeting people, with low lights and heavy bass, but without alcohol, was super enticing.”

Ablavi’s point lands harder when you look at what the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has documented about shifting drinking patterns nationwide. Sober bars and alcohol-free spaces have been opening across the country as more people, especially younger adults, reconsider their relationship with drinking. Chicago hasn’t been immune to that trend. But a queer-specific sober space on a rooftop in Uptown is something different from the dry restaurant pop-ups and wellness-focused event nights that have cropped up elsewhere in the city.

Block Club Chicago first reported on Everywhere’s launch, noting the club’s role in a wider conversation about what community-building looks like for LGBTQ+ Chicagoans who don’t drink or who can’t find themselves reflected in mainstream nightlife.

Walz’s framing is deliberate. He’s not selling sobriety as a lifestyle brand or positioning Everywhere as a recovery resource. He’s positioning it as a place where connection is the point, full stop.

“Everywhere is a place where people can connect instead of trying to drown out the world,” Walz said.

The $100,000 Kickstarter goal covers the remaining buildout costs for the 12th floor space. If the campaign hits its mark, the club opens in July. The Draper’s rooftop address at 5050 N. Broadway puts Everywhere squarely in Uptown, a neighborhood that’s seen its share of redevelopment since Cedar Street completed that office-to-apartment conversion in 2019. Whether a sober rooftop social club can hold its footing there is the question the next few months will answer.