Could Sports Revive the Lesbian Bar Scene?
At the very back of Babe’s, a queer-owned women’s sports bar that opened in Chicago last year, hangs an old-school scoreboard above a set of metal bleachers. It’s hard not to imagine someone reliving (a much gayer version of) some stereotypical high school gymnasium makeout session while sitting there. Trophies line the walls, along with a sizable number of TVs streaming women’s gymnastics, a UConn women’s basketball game, and All Women’s Sports Network (AWSN), the Whoopi Goldberg-cofounded sports network.
According to an NBC News report, the number of women’s sports bars in the United States was set to quadruple in 2025. Portland’s The Sports Bra, founded by Jenny Nguyen in 2022, kickstarted the genre; in 2024, the bar announced its plans to franchise. According to Babe’s co-founder Nora McConnell-Johnson, the cohort that laid the blueprint tend to have smaller spaces, and lean more restaurant than bar. “Younger millennials are starting to open their bars now, and I think that’s going to be a fascinating second wave,” she says. “[They’re] showing what it looks like to be a women’s sports bar, but with a vibe.” Those vibes often mean a more modern aesthetic, elevated cocktails, and an undeniably queer energy.
In 2019, alarms signaling the perilous decline of lesbian bars in America reached a fever pitch. At its lowest point, the nationwide lesbian bar tally had reportedly dwindled to just 15. The culprits were familiar to any form of queer decay: gentrification, the wage gap, sexist financiers, the rise of dating apps. And while the COVID-19 pandemic spurned anxious reports wondering how these spaces could possibly survive yet another blow, something surprising happened in the aftermath instead. Lesbian bars started springing up (and sometimes, sadly, closing right back down) with a renewed vigor.
Right before my visit to Babe’s, two other queer-owned women’s sports bars opened in Brooklyn in the same week: Athena Keke’s in Clinton Hill and Blazers in Williamsburg. While both establishments identify as women’s sports bars first and foremost, “if someone calls us a queer bar, we don’t correct them, because we love our community and we want this to be a space for them,” says Chandler Robertson, one of Blazers’ trio of co-founders who met on Hinge.
Many of these bars rely on queer-coded details to telegraph that it’s a welcoming space, like a photo of The L Word cast from the infamous basketball episode that hangs in the entryway at Athena Keke’s. Blazer’s, meanwhile, displays a pride flag behind the bar.
“Women’s sports is a site of lesbian culture and gathering,” says McConnell-Johnson, “and also, women’s sports is greater than that, too.”