If we were sitting in our bar today (Vol. 4)

If you’re reading this, it’s because you signed up to follow along as I work to start a sports bar in SF centered on women’s sports. Thanks for being on the ride.

News first: Tomorrow, Thursday 10/10, at 5 PM, The Changeup will be back in the Rainbow Room at Willkommen (2198 Market St) for a watch party for Game 1 of the WNBA finals. Last Friday’s semis party brought out the Liberty fans. Are there Lynx fans among us? Will we be a Rainbow Room divided? Let Willkommen be your dinner and the foosball be your halftime entertainment. Kids and dogs all welcome!

It’s been about a month since The Changeup’s first IRL watch party. It’s been so fun connecting with many of you, talking about everything from the sports we loved as kids to the rise of flag football to our relative positions on the Valkyries season ticket waitlist.

One of the things that almost inevitably comes up is our collective experiences trying to watch women’s sports in bars over the years. It’s … not been great? I mean, I probably don’t need to tell this audience that. That may well be why you’re here reading this. But it’s still fascinating and frustrating to hear. Sometimes I encounter this idea in the world that women’s sports are mainstream now, they’re on at every bar, do we really need our own spaces? The stories I hear at our watch parties contradict that. Yes, there is more; yes, it is better, at least for the sports with the best media rights deals. But the uncertainty of trying to make plans and not really knowing that our game will be on — or worrying that it will be on the worst TV, or the one without sound, or the first one to get flipped off if someone else wants to watch something else — is very present.

(A moment to say, hey, my watch party partner bars have been very cool! And it’s been great to walk into Barebottle and Willkommen recently even when I don’t have an event planned and see the WNBA playoffs on their TVs.)

AND:

There’s still so much more we could be showing — so many sports with vital and growing fan bases. NCAA volleyball is so good right now, and I’ve never stumbled on a bar showing it. There’s a big women’s rugby tournament happening in Vancouver, but it’s not televised; to watch it in a bar, you need an app and special commercial permission, and that’s hard to pull off in a venue that’s not your own. And yes, it’s still hard to get screen space in a place that’s known for showing men’s sports: It’s rare for a place that regularly draws a Niners crowd to counterprogram a Niners game.

I can go to partners armed with data that a particular event has interest from this community. (The fall watch party survey is still open, btw!) And, for the most part, I’ve been able to get the space and screens I ask for. But wow, yes, I still dream of the day when we don’t have to ask.

If we were sitting in our bar this week, of course we’d have our eye on the WNBA finals (Thursday, 5 PM, Willkommen!). Of course we’d be watching Bay FC vs. KC! But we’d be watching rugby too. We’d be watching USF volleyball vs. Oregon State (a conference matchup now!). We’d be watching Cal soccer host top 10 teams UNC and Duke (also conference matchups now!) practically back to back. We could watch fall Oklahoma softball, which I will admit I didn’t even know was a thing — and you know how I found out it was a thing? I found out because another women’s sports bar said they were showing it.

There’s so much we can watch when we don’t have to ask.

To sports!
-Kimra