A new activity-based club is opening its doors Friday evening in an iconic location on Whyte Avenue.
Rally Social Room and Bar, at the corner of 105 Street and Whyte Avenue, features ping-pong tables, shuffleboard, and a dance floor complete with a five-foot disco ball.
“Rally is a very fun interactive activity-based bar that’s soon to blow the doors off an iconic Whyte Avenue,” said Chad Murphy, partner at Rally.
“Everything for us needs to be about sociability,” he added. “Coming out of COVID we really want people to recharge and reengage each other, high-five, hug, and dance. That’s what’s really going to make our concept fly.”
On opening night, Murphy said Rally will host a charity ping-pong tournament supporting the Edmonton Food Bank.
“This is about having fun,” he said. “We want people to rally for a fun night out.”
Murphy added that it was important for the new attraction to honor the former iconic club housed in the same space for 27 years.
“We’ve paid homage to The Billiard Club,” Murphy said. “We kept one pool table over in the corner to honor them.”
“You have to respect the heritage nature of the business,” he added. “We’ve paid homage as much as we could to the original building. We’ve kept the floors, we’ve repurposed them.
“If you look at the ceiling, we’ve kept the coffers there and added some gold leaf to it. We’ve taken the beer cooler that was the vault from 1911 and repurposed that.”