Latest news with #Rikki's
San Francisco Chronicle
16 hours ago
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco's first women's sports bar, Rikki's, to open in the Castro on June 11
San Francisco is finally set to welcome its first women's sports bar next week. Rikki's will officially open its doors on June 11, co-founders Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich told the Chronicle. The bar and restaurant, located at 2223 Market Streeet, will operate six days a week from mid-afternoon until 10:00 p.m. on all weeknights except Mondays and midnight on weekends. Rikki's is the latest tenant at the location after five other restaurants have closed there since 2012. Thoe and Yergovich met playing soccer together for the San Francisco Spikes, an LGBTQ+ soccer club. They bonded over their frustrations in finding bars that would play NWSL and WNBA games. They went from joking about opening a women's sports bar to seriously investigating the possibility. The duo signed a lease in November after announcing they were fundraising to open the bar last August. 'It's kind of a relief, honestly, it feels like this is a moment that we've been waiting for,' Thoe said. 'Seeing the expressions on people's faces when they see the pictures on the walls, and they walk around the space and see all women's sports everywhere, it feels overwhelming.' The bar's name honors Rikki Streicher, who was one of the co-founders of the Gay Games Federation in 1982 and two queer women's bars in San Francisco, Maud's and Amelia's, which sponsored several recreation sports leagues and teams in San Francisco. She died in 1994 at 72. Inside, Rikki's is a vibrant tribute to the history of women's sports. Interior designer Wendy Trotter created walls cascaded by colorful outlines of basketball courts, soccer fields and softball diamonds. A framed Bay FC jersey autographed by every member of the 2025 team hangs next to a San Francisco Falcons ultimate frisbee jersey. A lounge area by the bar displays vintage magazine covers and photographs of women's sports icons, while the back wall is dedicated to Streicher, showcasing images of her former rec league teams. There are 15 televisions across the bar. Originally hoping to open by mid-May, the new bar owners were delayed by what Thoe called 'city hiccups.' 'Demolition was a challenge, because the original construction was really well done, so some of the demolition took a little bit longer than we thought,' Thoe said. 'Then getting inspections scheduled was a challenge, it took a little longer than we had hoped, but it all got done in the end. In the months leading up to the opening, Thoe and Yergovich hosted Valkyries and Bay FC watch parties at other San Francisco venues, drawing around 150 fans per event, according to Yergovich. She is hopeful that having a dedicated space showing every game will increase their patrons. Thoe, who works in real estate, and Yergovich, who is in marketing, fundraised over the past year. Through WeFunder, a crowdfunding website, they raised $425,000 in addition to collecting $390,000 in private investments. Rikki's is the latest addition to a growing number of women's sports bars opening across the country. In 2025, six women's sports bars have already opened in Phoenix, Omaha, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Austin and Houston. At least eight more (Kansas City, Seattle, Atlanta, San Diego, Des Moines, Columbus and two in New York) are expected by year's end. The Sports Bra, the first women's sports bar to open in Portland in 2022, recently announced it would expand with franchises in Boston, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Las Vegas. Yergovich said the founders of these bars stay connected in a group chat, sharing everything from licensing tips for streaming games to marketing strategies. Many women's sports events are on newer streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Peacock and league-specific services like WNBA League Pass, which pose challenges for public venues. Unlike just purchasing a cable package, the bar owners have to contact the leagues to get permission to publicly air games spread across multiple streaming partners. For Thoe and Yergovich, that only reinforced their feeling of a need for Rikki's. After months of work to get to an opening day, the hard part begins: keeping a bar and restaurant open. 'Diving into this world has felt like a risk,' Yergovich said. 'Seeing how excited people are just makes me know that everything's for the right reasons, and it's all gonna work out.'
Axios
6 days ago
- Business
- Axios
Rikki's to open in San Francisco amid women's sports bar boom
Bars dedicated to women's sports are having a moment — including in San Francisco. Why it matters: With viewership and attendance for women's sports soaring — including with the debut of the city's first WNBA team — fans are building new hubs that are about more than simply watching games. Driving the news: Six women's sports bars have opened nationally this year, with as many as 17 on the way in various stages of funding and construction. At least eight have announced plans to open by the end of this year. Others have indicated 2026 or haven't specified a timeline. Zoom in: Rikki's, San Francisco's first bar dedicated to playing all women's sports, is expected to open in mid-June in the Castro. The bar is named after Rikki Streicher, a community leader who owned several lesbian bars in San Francisco for many decades — including the historic Maud's, the city's first, which operated for 23 years and inspired a documentary after it closed in 1989. Streicher's bars served as cultural beacons that were especially meaningful in a time when lesbians were often unable to openly express their sexuality and women were legally prohibited from bartending. What they're saying: Rikki's aims to honor the late gay rights activist's legacy by serving as an inclusive space to find community and convene to cheer on women's sports, its co-founder Sara Yergovich told Axios. "People are so excited — the response has been phenomenal," she said. "It's the perfect time with the Bay FC, the Valkyries and this increased professional-level interest in women's sports in San Francisco. It felt like all the stars were aligning." Zoom out: Beyond San Francisco, The Sports Bra in Portland opened in April 2022, followed by Rough and Tumble Pub in Seattle and Whiskey Girl Tavern in Chicago later that year. By the end of 2024, three more had opened: A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis; Watch Me! Sports Bar in Long Beach, California; and The 99ers Sports Bar in Denver. What to expect: The fun and camaraderie of team sports with an atmosphere that's welcoming to everyone, including non-traditional sports fans and the LGBTQ+ community. The bottom line:"They've become centers of social, economic and political power in the communities where they exist," said Kaitlyn Laabs, who is making a documentary about women's sports bars called "Untapped."
CBS News
08-02-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
San Francisco to get new women's sports bar possibly in spring
As hundreds of sports bars in San Francisco prepare for big crowds this Super Bowl weekend, one is preparing to cater to a demographic that has long been neglected. "The bar is not only going to be for women who want to watch sports. It's for everyone who wants to watch women's sports," said Sara Yergovich. Sara Yergovich and Danielle Thoe are the co-founders of Rikki's, a new Women's Sports Bar that's slated to open this Spring. "We want it to feel comfortable like a living room and like not too pretentious. A place that you want to come to watch a game but also just to hang out when there's not a game on," said Thoe. Women's leagues like the NWSL and WNBA have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. At the same time, so have women's sports bars, with new locations popping up around the country. Yergovich and Thoe said they got the idea to open one here in San Francisco two years ago. "We play soccer together, and we had just finished a soccer game. And I overheard Danielle walking ahead of me talking to a friend saying something like I wish I could open a women's sports bar and I rudely ran up and interrupted her and was like I want to do that too," said Yergovich. The first order of business was picking a name, something that would reflect the local history of San Francisco. "So started looking into previous female-oriented bars, queer women's bars, and what the names of those were and discovered the same owner of a few of them and that was Rikki," said Thoe. Rikki Streicher owned several queer and lesbian bars in San Francisco from the 1960s to the 1990s. Yergovich said Rikki was also a huge supporter of local women's sports. "And so it seemed like a perfect fit. We kind of freaked out when we were sitting on the phone together," said Yergovich. Thus, Rikki's was born. The bar, located off Market Street in the Castro, is a perfect location for fans hoping to make a tradition of stopping by before Golden State Valkyries games. "That is a big part of why we chose this location, absolutely, and also it's accessible to people outside of the city and throughout the city as well. We're close to a bunch of different MUNI lines and we're walking distance to BART as well," said Yergovich. They said there's no firm grand opening date yet, but they're targeting May, hoping to open their doors just as the Valkyrie take to the court in their inaugural season.
