Sixty minutes in a women's sports bar
Another round of focus aerobics
Readers of this newsletter know I occasionally spend sixty minutes somewhere with a notebook and pen, such as a bus stop, a McDonald’s, a grocery store. This week: an hour in a new bar in Los Angeles dedicated to showing women’s sports.
—I sit at the bar and order a spicy margarita. It is a good margarita, not too sweet, quite spicy. For the moment, I’m the only male among a dozen-plus customers and nearly as many staff. Then again it’s a little after four on a sunny weekday afternoon.
—Untamed Spirits, a new bar in Los Angeles, is the city’s first to dedicate itself to women’s sports. It also happens to be located not too far from my grocery shopping.
I read online the owners are a married pair who were inspired after a bartender at another establishment wouldn’t turn up the volume for a women’s soccer match. The bar is large and airy, with thirteen enormous televisions, maybe more. When I walk in, about half are showing a WNBA game between the Los Angeles Sparks and the Indiana Fever, and the play-by-play provides the soundtrack.
(The rest of the TVs are tuned silently to SportsCenter.)
We’re in the first half of the game and the score is close. Several tables of women watch raptly: an older woman by herself with a martini, several thirty-something women sitting with champagne flutes and a small dog on a leash.
—From what I can see, the bar staff is all female, kitchen staff is mostly male. The menu reads delicious, Tex-Mex-adjacent: nachos and quesadillas, plus standards like fries and wings.
—Two women arrive, twenties-ish, and sit next to me. Both of them order IPAs, “but not the hazy one,” one says.
A couple minutes later, the same woman asks, incredulously, “Wait, why’s Caitlin not playing?”
“I bet she’s injured or something,” her companion says.
A few minutes earlier, I’d been wondering the same thing, noticing Caitlin Clark riding the bench in street clothes, apparently the Fever star had suffered a groin injury.
“Well, fuck me,” the first woman says despondently.
—Half an hour in, at four-thirty, there are now at least two dozen customers, five of them guys, and they’re all clearly here for the game. And yes, heads turn anytime Clark is filmed on the sidelines, but these are local supporters for the most part, clapping and whooping when the Sparks make a rally.
I’ve never been to a women’s sports bar before, and it turns out to be just like any other sports bar, just less bro-y.
—I’m reminded of playing tennis earlier in the week with a friend, and how a group of teenage boys took the court next to ours to play doubles. Unfortunately, none of them could play doubles, they rarely got a ball across the net—instead they kept knocking their balls into our court, and between that and all their shouting, screaming and nonstop shit-talking, my friend and I wanted them murdered.
—In the categories of bars I love—sports bars, dive bars, hotel bars—I may love sports bars the most. The food is always tasty. Customers are inclined to camaraderie. There’s usually a sense of open-heartedness and cheer.
Of course, any bar can become a sports bar if there’s a TV, right? Though before television, were sports bars a thing? Did people gather to drink in pubs while listening to the radio?
—Remember when people smoked cigarettes in bars?
—Remember when you were young?
—In high school, I delivered pizza for an Italian restaurant, and I remember one of my older co-workers, a guy in his thirties, told me not to worry too much about trying to sneak into bars underage, I was going to spend my life in them anyway, drinking through time, I had plenty of time.
—It’s been sixty minutes in the women’s sports bar. The game is still close, the bar is packed. I get my check, ask after the business. The bartender says they’ve been open a couple months and are doing great. I tell her I remember it being some other bar previously, I only came in twice; it was the kind of bar that didn’t really know what it was, or who it was for.
(The bar was called Trophy Wife.)
“Honestly, we’re killing it right now,” the bartender says. “People here are really vibing to the whole idea.”
I ask what sports are proving most popular. Soccer and basketball, she says, due to local teams. I ask her if they’ll show Wimbledon next week, Coco Gauff et al, and she assures me they will.
“If it’s women’s sports, we play it,” she says. “Everybody just loves women’s sports.”
I’m glad to hear it. Because as someone who lately does a lot of reporting and research on why men are so unwell, is it any surprise that a women’s sports bar might be my new favorite place?
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What the what
“Meditations in an Emergency” is a weekly essay from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with three-plus things to love, plus a monthly travel-lust ballyhoo.
Rosecrans is a correspondent for GQ, a contributor at Travel + Leisure, and the bestselling author of Everything Now: Lessons From the City-State of Los Angeles, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.
For books, articles, bio, contact info: rosecransbaldwin.com.