A circular bar centered around plenty of tables, ice-cold drinks and food specials, dozens of sports fans with their eyes glued to TV screens — it may be a familiar scene at sports bars. But this isn’t your average establishment.
Hundreds packed “Watch Me!,” Long Beach’s newest sports bar, at its grand opening and ribbon-cutting event on Friday.
“We watch women’s sports with the sound on!” an Instagram post said.
The Watch Me! Sports Bar — located at the Marketplace Long Beach along Pacific Coast Highway, and across from the 2ND & PCH shopping center — celebrates the determination and spirit of women athletes and their fans, its co-owners said. The new establishment is California’s first bar to broadcast primarily women’s sports, and one of just a handful in the country like it.
Wives and co-owners Jackie Diener and Megan Eddy — who go by “Jax” and “Emme” — said that their bar’s mission is to “celebrate achievements by women who continuously break barriers in the sports world and beyond.” Their goal of creating an inclusive, welcoming community for all sports fans, women included, was a “priority.”
“Around 95%” of what the bar’s 26 flat-screen TVs will be playing will be women’s sports games, Diener said. The couple also confessed to being big L.A. Dodgers and football fans, so men’s sports will be broadcast, too.
While the space aims to celebrate women, support fellow athletes, and generally be a place for “all things women’s sports,” all are welcome. The co-owners were inspired after seeing the success and inclusive communities within similar women-focused sports bars in Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis.
“It was important to me to hurry up and be the first in California, because it felt so monumental,” Diener, 57, said. “I think that was really part of my driving force… some might think this would be a competitive thing, and it’s not. Women do support women, and that’s been amazing to…
Read the full article here
