Nestled on the corner of Cermak and Hoyne, New Rose, Pilsen’s new family-owned bar, is aiming to carve out a niche for itself in the community it calls home.
Little Village local Benny Hernandez, 50, and his uncle, Jesse Hernandez, had been toying with the idea to open a bar on the South Side for years, and initially considered other neighborhoods such as Bridgeport and Brighton Park.
After the gears were put in motion in 2023 to open the space in Pilsen, New Rose went through a slew of soft openings for family and friends in the fall of 2025 and January of this year. The bar officially opened on February 6, and to Hernandez, the opening night was “bonkers.”
“We haven’t looked back,” he said. “We’ve been very lucky and fortunate that weekends have been pretty packed and pretty busy.”
New Rose features a carefully curated food and drink menu featuring a range of botanas, spirits, and small business-sourced, additive-free tragos. The atmosphere is low key—cozy brick walls, a simple light brown wooden bar, rows and rows of alcohol and wall-mounted TVs- with an edge of alternative DIY punk.
Though the bar is not a music venue, Hernandez said that his aim for New Rose is to be the community’s “neighborhood bar with really cool different music” for everyone to enjoy.
“I wanted a space for all the South Side freaks and rockers and weirdos who like other types of music,” he said.
Hernandez comes from the sprawling world of Chicago DIY culture, and said that he was “childhood friends” with some of the members of Los Crudos, the influential 1990s Pilsen hardcore band. Since then, he’s done everything that a DIY kid could dream off: toured with his hardcore band No Slogan throughout the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Japan, and Puerto Rico, organized shows on the South Side, helped run an independent record label, Southkore Records, that put out a compilation of Pilsen, Little Village and Back of the Yards hardcore bands, and more.
“It’s where I cut my teeth and where I came up from in the DIY scene in Chicago and the South side,” Hernandez said.
His background in the alternative music sphere, as well as his DJ experiences, comes through in the overall aesthetic of New Rose. DJ sets are a mainstay of the bar and the main source of live entertainment. Hernandez said that he is adamant about not having live bands perform at New Rose—the extra licensing is a headache, and the space isn’t really suitable for live music.
Instead, Hernandez is looking to create a “rock and roll vibe” through the DJs that he books, all of whom specialize in different genres, like post-punk, goth, new-wave, house, and free-style.
“I’m kind of just leaning into my background and what I grew up listening to,” he said. “There’s a lot of people like me that come from that foundation.”
The crowd at New Rose is notably diverse. “I get a lot of people, a lot of Black and Brown folks from the entire South Side to come, and they’re happy that there’s something like that,” Hernandez said. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Stephanie Herrera and Yeshi Regalado, both members of the Latin American and POC artist collective Ruidosa, curated a DJ set at New Rose on April 9. Regalado said that Hernandez reached out to the collective over social media to set up a DJ set at the bar.
Regalado, who DJ’d that night, said that the show had a great turnout for a Thursday and that she was excited to see the crowd dancing to cumbia, post-punk, and dark wave.
“There’s nothing more that makes me happy than to see people having fun and produce that type of energy,” she said. “It’s an honor to be a small part of all of this.”
The opening of New Rose comes at a time when other local businesses and grassroots DIY operations like Ruidosa, Casa Cafe, and The Confessional are flourishing across the South and West Sides. According to Hernandez, other bars in the area don’t feel like competition, but a tight knit community that New Rose is happy to join.
Regalado said that Latino-owned spaces like New Rose contribute to a feeling of safety in the community. She also said that she’s able to be “around her people” and listen to the sounds she enjoys when she’s at Hernandez’s bar.
“I love that New Rose exists,” she said. “As soon as they opened, I was like, ‘I have to go. I have to find out how we’re gonna integrate with them and work with them somehow, someway,’ and I’m so glad we did. I’m obsessed.”
It’s “really inspiring” to see the growth of new businesses in the community,” Herrera said.
“I love the DIY venues like Casa Cafe and The Confessional, but I think it’s cool to have a bar and have that dancing aspect as well. Not just hardcore punk and post-punk, but it’s also the integration of cumbia and reggaeton that everyone can truly enjoy.”
Through opening New Rose, Hernandez hopes that the business will bring more people into the area, and not just to his establishment but neighboring local businesses as well. He said that a large mix of clientele come from all over the city, but that the neighborhood locals have become the backbone of the business.
“Locals are keeping us afloat and keeping the doors open,” he said. “We’re resonating with people.”
Matt Brady is a freelance journalist from the Chicago area. He has written for The Daily Herald, the Evanston Roundtable, South Side Weekly, The Fulcrum and Illinois Latino News. He is the Copy Desk Chief of the Columbia Chronicle, the student newspaper at Columbia College Chicago. He is also the co-founder of Brain Graffiti Zine, a physical music zine all about Chicago DIY music.