It didn’t make sense to Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich: Girls’s sports activities are exploding, however why are there no ladies’s sports activities bars?
The 2 associates had met enjoying soccer with the San Francisco Spikes and have been usually on the lookout for a spot to look at Bay FC after their very own video games on Saturdays.
“We’d call places days in advance, and they’d say, ‘We don’t have the channel,’ but it was on regular TV,’” Yergovich stated. “It was a struggle. We realized there wasn’t anywhere in SF to watch.”
This Could, that’s going to alter.
Thoe and Yergovich are opening Rikki’s, believed to be the Bay Space’s first ladies’s sports activities bar and restaurant, within the metropolis’s Castro district.
Rikki’s is called after Rikki Streicher, a neighborhood activist who based the Homosexual Video games in 1982 and began two queer ladies’s bars, Maud’s and Amelia’s, earlier than her loss of life in 1994.
“She was known for making community spaces that were really accepting,” Yergovich stated. “We wanted to emulate that and bring some attention to her and her community.”
Rikki’s will open within the area previously occupied by Copas, a Mexican restaurant that closed final April.
“It’s super important for us to be in the Castro,” Yergovich stated. “It’s not a lesbian bar but it’s queer-owned and women-focused. That space hasn’t existed in the Castro. It’s a really male-dominated neighborhood. That was important to us.”
The area suits 162 individuals and can be crammed with TVs tuned in to ladies’s sports activities, notably Bay FC, the ladies’s soccer staff that performs dwelling video games at PayPal Park, and the Golden State Valkyries, the WNBA staff about to kick off its inaugural season at Chase Heart this Could. Rikki’s has already teamed up with each groups who’ve helped get the phrase out on social media.
They’ve already hosted some ladies’s sports activities watch events at Normal Deviant Brewing, the place they observed one thing concerning the friends: There have been loads of households.
With that in thoughts, they’re teaming up with JD Voss, the previous proprietor of SOMA’s Jamber Wine Pub, to create a family-friendly menu with choices for everybody. (Keep tuned for extra details about the kind of meals they count on to serve.)
San Francisco mixologist Christian “Suzu” Suzuki will construct the cocktail menu, although Rikki’s expects to additionally serve all kinds of beers and wines.
“It’s been so fun planning it, meeting everyone, different people from different sports organizations, the professional teams and local communities,” Yergovich stated. “It felt very validating.
“We really wanted this space to exist. We wanted to make sure it was a cool space and not a corporate thing where someone from outside the community is capitalizing on women’s sports and their fanbase. Part of our brand is we are people in the community for women’s sports, working with other community members to build the space.”
Particulars: Opening in Could at 2223 Market St. in San Francisco; rikkisbarsf.com.
