If we were sitting in our bar today (Vol. 1)

If you’re reading this, it’s because you signed up somewhere along the way to follow along as I work to start a sports bar in SF centered on women’s sports. This is the first of some occasional dispatches about life in the future bar. It’s an experiment — but it’s all kind of a big experiment. Thanks for being on the ride.

If you just want a quick update on the state of the actual bar, scroll to the end.

If we were sitting in our bar today, I’d be over the moon because it’s one of my favorite sports days of the year: The NCAA gymnastics championships semifinals.

When I’ve told people how much I love this day, they’re usually like, wait: You love this prelim round more than the actual championship? I sure do. When it comes to sports, I’m all about volume. (My other favorite sports days are the March Madness round of 64.) I love upsets, I love consequences, I love tension, and I love lots of teams playing to win all at the same time.

So today, it’s that day for NCAA gymnastics. Two meets, eight teams, four advance to Saturday’s final. (PLUS a smattering of all-arounders and regional event winners competing solo, without their teams, which is always both sweet and heartbreaking, especially when it’s the last day of some senior/super-senior/6th year’s career. Cue the Instagram retirement post tears.)

This year, in the San Francisco women’s sports bar of the future, our local rooting interests would be focused on the afternoon semi. In that one we have BOTH Bay Area gymnastics teams, Cal and Stanford. Cal sat at #2 or #3 nearly all season and lived up to expectations at regionals. Stanford pulled the biggest upset of regional weekend to advance and then got a bunch of new sassy tree gear to celebrate. These bright lights of the dying Pac12 will take on Arkansas, which is obviously not on the west coast but still sometimes gets called UCLA East because that’s their coaching staff’s origin story, and LSU, the other #2/#3 floater this season, who have been so close so many times and never won the natty. I’m a Cal gal this year, so this is the semi where I expect to be stressed out of my skull.

Then tonight, we roll into the Traditional Powers semi. Only seven schools have EVER won a national title in gymnastics; four of them are here. There’s Utah, who’s been making Nationals since before NCAA gymnastics existed. (It’s a whole thing.) Alabama, with six titles of its own, making it back after a narrow miss last year. Florida, which maybe could have / should have won last year, remaking its lineups with a boatload of freshman and being right up there again. And Oklahoma, which is … Oklahoma, the team that’s won six championships since 2014, the team that hasn’t been below third in more than a decade. Two dynasties will advance out of this one and … well, two won’t.

So yeah, it’s a big day in the San Francisco women’s sports bar of the future. Saturday’s final will be great too (and on ABC, we love to see it) but today’s the one where some dreams live and some dreams die. Wish we were watching it together. Here’s to 2025.

In actual bar news

If you’re reading this today you might have heard me announce this project during the women’s final four in Alameda. Almost immediately after that, I got on a plane to London for my daughter’s spring break trip, which led to great moments/core memories in future sports bar history like redoing a 24-month financial projection on the Eurostar.

Anyway, now we’re back and the hunt for a space is really on. My brain is an alphabet soup of zoning regulations and occupancy codes and lease types. I’m squinting over real estate flyers, mentally placing the TVs, googling regulations about outdoor amplified sound, and stressing about neighborhoods. Where are you, future bar that is more square than narrow rectangle, in a transit-accessible neighborhood, with good foot traffic, with all the right zoning and permitting, oh and maybe with a patio too? You exist, right? (Right?) If you’re reading this, and you’re like “oh yes, I know her, she’s in my neighborhood with a For Lease sign up” — shoot me a note, would you?

Thanks for reading, thanks for being on the ride. Join me next time for another dispatch. In the meantime — feel free to forward this to the friend you see yourself sitting with at the San Francisco women’s sports bar of the future.