Take a look inside Rikki’s, San Francisco’s first and only women’s sports bar

The Castro might be the most famous gayborhood in the world, but it’s long been a boys’ club, with few spaces geared toward lesbians. Well, that changes Wednesday with the opening of Rikki’s, a women’s sports bar and one of the very few establishments in the neighborhood owned and operated by queer women.

As it happens, Rikki’s is on the same block of Market Street as Hi Tops, a gym-themed sports bar that opened more than a decade ago and later expanded to L.A. Hi Tops screens professional games on its TVs, but it’s also a party spot with occasionally thumping music. Rikki’s, by contrast, exists to capitalize on the growing momentum behind women’s sports, which are positively booming in the Bay Area. Soccer club Bay FC’s inaugural season began in March 2024, and the newly minted basketball team Golden State Valkyries played their first games last month at Chase Center.

It hasn’t been easy for fans to keep up, though. “It should not be this hard to watch women’s sports,” Rikki’s co-owner Sara Yergovich said at a preview event Tuesday evening, adding that she and business partner Danielle Thoe decided to do something about it after playing in an amateur soccer game two years ago. Fast-forward to the present, and all four of the Bay Area’s pro and semi-pro women’s teams — Bay FC, the Valkyries, the Bay Breakers (rugby), and the Falcons (Ultimate Frisbee) — scored big wins during the first weekend in June, a fact that was not lost on Yergovich. “So there’s no better time to open a women’s sports bar than right here and right now,” she said. 

Or, as Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who is gay and represents the Castro, said Tuesday: “I can’t think of any better way to screw with patriarchy than to open a queer-owned women’s sports bar in the Castro.”

The result of Thoe and Yergovich’s efforts is a proper cocktail bar and fast-casual restaurant, the city’s third lesbian-centric venue, after Jolene’s in the Mission and Wild Side West in Bernal Heights. At the same time, it’s part of a resurgence in women’s sports bars, with approximately 10 opening nationwide in recent years, Yergovich estimated, plus one in Marin Country crowdfunding itself to life. (Those numbers may sound small, but there may be fewer than three dozen lesbian bars in America.)

Much of the food is elevated pub fare, including smashburgers, beer-battered fish and chips, and wings slow-cooked in duck fat, alongside a conspicuous array of vegetarian options, such as a pear grilled cheese sandwich and a quinoa bowl. There are some curveballs, too, like a halved, roasted cabbage gussied up with whipped turmeric tofu, crispy quinoa, cilantro chimichurri, and pickled Fresno chile. You’d never know it was vegan. Notably, every item is $20 or less. 

Of Rikki’s six signature drinks — each $16 and sporting a name that nods to women’s athletics — the light pink Ballhalla (white rum, plum brandy, cacao, guava, mint, and cava, clarified with a soy-milk wash) is likely the most potent. But the effervescent, lavender-hued Queen Is King, with vodka or gin plus white peach, lime leaf, blue spirulina, lemon, and soda, is not to be missed.

Lavender appears throughout the bar, in fact. Apart from a row of basketball hoop light fixtures above the kitchen ordering window, Rikki’s pale-purple decor is largely free of goofy, rah-rah tchotchkes. But there is plenty of memorabilia, including framed medals from the Gay Games and Sports Illustrated covers of the World Cup-winning 2015 U.S. women’s national soccer team and Olympic gold medalist figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, a Bay Area native. A lounge in front offers a respite for patrons whose necks won’t be craned toward the many TVs.

Rikki’s is named after Rikki Streicher, a pioneering figure in San Francisco LGBTQ+ history. In 1966, she opened Maud’s, a lesbian bar in the Haight. Twelve years later, she followed it with Amelia’s in the Mission. Both were icons of their day, with Streicher hiring women bartenders when that was still illegal under state law (until 1971, to be exact). And, of course, she was a strong advocate for women’s sports.

In attendance at the opening was Nancy Dito, who was a driving force behind the move to rename the field at nearby Eureka Valley Recreation Center in Streicher’s honor. She was also a player in the short-lived Warrior Girls Basketball League, which fielded four Bay Area teams in 1969 — only to fold after its first season. “When I was in my 20s and 30s, there were a lot of these bars that we could go to. Then they disappeared, so this is great,” Dito said. “I’m going to be 77 this month. I’m still playing bocce!”