The LGBT sports bar Crew Bar + Grill, on July 5, announced that it will be closing its Uptown location at Lawrence Avenue and Broadway on July 15 and will be searching for a new home elsewhere on the North Side.
Crew posted the news on its Facebook page. "Crew is seeking to relocate in Uptown, Andersonville, Edgewater or Rogers park but has not yet found the right space to continue Crew's legacy," read the posting. "We want to thank Uptown for many memorable years and, most of all, we want to thank all our dedicated team members and amazing customers who have made Crew Chicago's best LGBTQ sports bar."
The bar will be closing just four days shy of its 13th anniversary; Crew opened July 19, 2004. The original owners were Brian Wells and Steve Milford, who met at Roscoe's Tavern in Lakeview in the late '90s. They spent about five years in the planning stages, they told Windy City Times in 2014, just as the bar celebrated its 10th anniversary.
"I shared the plan I was working on [with Milford] and we decided to team up," Wells said. "It is scary to make that jump from dream to reality."