When Janie and Stephanie Ellingwood went to an area brewery one evening to look at a U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Crew soccer recreation with some mates, they didn’t assume it might be a giant deal to ask the workers to activate the sound.
The bartenders had all the time been pleasant to the married couple, who frequented the bar no less than a couple of instances every week. And so they have been the one patrons within the small room, located away from the principle viewing space the place the quantity was on full blast. So that they have been stunned when the workers curtly shot down their request with none clarification.
Opened in early June to coincide with Pleasure Month, Untamed Spirits is the primary girls’s sports activities bar within the metropolis of Los Angeles.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
The Ellingwoods continued watching the nail-biting recreation with subtitles, however because it obtained increasingly more thrilling, clients started spilling over to their aspect of the bar. Earlier than lengthy, the small room was packed.
“We were all cheering,” says Janie. “We all gave each other high-fives.”
The wife-and-wife duo took over one other sports activities bar in Silver Lake and turned it into Untamed Spirits, the primary girls’s sports activities bar in L.A.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
Nonetheless, the workers refused to show up the quantity.
The expertise left the Ellingwoods, who’re diehard followers of the L.A. Sparks and season-ticket holders for Angel Metropolis Soccer Membership, questioning why there weren’t any bars in Los Angeles the place they may comfortably watch girls’s sports activities with out feeling ostracized. So that they determined to create their very own.
After months of looking for a location, the wife-and-wife duo took over one other sports activities bar in Silver Lake — previously often known as Trophy Spouse — and turned it into Untamed Spirits, the primary girls’s sports activities bar within the metropolis of L.A.
Opened in early June to coincide with Pleasure Month, Untamed Spirits joins a brief checklist of bars within the U.S. devoted to girls’s sports activities, together with Portland’s Sports activities Bra, which is increasing to 4 new cities together with Las Vegas and Boston; Tough & Tumble in Seattle; Minnesota’s A Bar of Their Personal; and Rikki’s in San Francisco. Lengthy Seaside’s Watch Me! Sports activities Bar, which opened its doorways final July, was the primary in California.
Stephanie, 37, who performed skilled golf for a couple of years, felt that L.A. wanted one thing like this. “Something that’s a little bit classier, that isn’t sticky when you put your arms on the bar,” she describes.
“For once, I want to watch a game at the bar with sound on instead of some random spot in the corner,” Janie, 34, provides.
The bar is glossy and fashionable — a neon pink signal reads “Welcome to the Untamed Era,” and kooky black and white illustrations cowl a couple of of the partitions.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
On a current Tuesday evening, Janie was behind the counter pouring drinks, together with their signature Angel Metropolis pink punch, for patrons sitting on the bar, which was adorned with rainbow flags and an Angel Metropolis Soccer Membership flag. In the meantime, Stephanie was floating across the area, checking on clients. The couple, who met whereas taking part in volleyball collectively at La Quinta Excessive College, additionally run a made-to-order croissant bakery primarily based in Orange County and rework and handle residential properties all through Southern California.
The bar is glossy and fashionable — a neon pink signal reads “Welcome to the Untamed Era,” and kooky black and white illustrations cowl a couple of of the partitions. Menstrual merchandise are displayed on the lavatory counter. The spacious patio is crammed with vegetation and an indication that claims “Watch Women’s Sports Here.” (There’s a TV in practically each nook, so there’s no unhealthy seat.) Though Untamed Spirits makes a speciality of girls’s sports activities of all types — even the extra area of interest ones like kayaking, Janie says — the bar additionally performs males’s sports activities.
“Some people might call it a trend, but it’s not a trend,” Janie says. “I believe it’s a movement.”
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
Sitting at a desk with a date and two mates, Marina Sobreviñas, 31, says she’s discovered that queer bars like Hello Tops in Los Feliz usually tend to play girls’s sports activities, however she felt that “it’s about time” there’s a spot devoted to them. She recollects her expertise attempting to look at the FIFA Girls’s World Cup at a bar.
Untamed Spirits gives bar meals with a global twist with dishes like kimchi fried rice.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
Untamed Spirits sells nonalcoholic and alcoholic drinks together with margaritas and a signature Angel Metropolis pink punch.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
“There was like, one World Cup TV out of the 10 TVs they had going, and it was sort of fascinating,” she says. “Like, ‘Am I’m the only one wearing a jersey today? OK, no problem.’”
Sobreviñas says that girls’s sports activities are simply as thrilling as males’s sports activities.
Lisa Marie Ornelas, 30, agrees. “Women [athletes], in a way, have a little bit more to prove,” she says.
Untamed Spirits arrives in L.A. at a time when curiosity in girls’s sports activities is increasing at a “meteoric pace” throughout the globe, based on Nielsen. The 2024 NCAA girls’s basketball event averaged practically 19 million viewers (with a peak of 24 million viewers for the ultimate recreation between Iowa and South Carolina), an 89% bump from the earlier yr. The WNBA draft viewers jumped 511%, and total curiosity within the league grew 29% between 2023 and 2024. The Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League noticed a 17% enhance in curiosity between 2023 and 2024. With the heightened curiosity, advert spending additionally elevated: In 2024, TV advertisers spent $244 million on girls’s sports activities, a year-over-year enhance of 139%, based on TV advertising agency EDO.
Untamed Spirits has indoor seating and a spacious patio the place patrons can get pleasure from sports activities of all types.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
“Women in general have been playing great sports for a long time,” says Stephanie. “I just think the right people who have the ability to put them in the spotlight are finally noticing.”
Extra girls’s sports activities bars are anticipated to open all through the nation. Jax Diener, who opened Watch Me! Sports activities Bar in Lengthy Seaside along with her spouse a few yr in the past, recollects when girls’s sports activities weren’t aired on TV in any respect. She went to the primary WNBA recreation on the Discussion board in 1997.
Untamed Spirits not too long ago grew to become an official bar accomplice of the Angel Metropolis Soccer Membership.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
“We used to come home after those games that were so exciting and turn on the sports that night to see the replays, and they weren’t even mentioned,” says Diener. “It was as if the league didn’t even exist.”
Diener says she was excited when she heard about one other girls’s sports activities bar opening in Southern California. “To me, it was really important for them to know that we’re in this together,” she says, including that she has a textual content thread with different girls’s sports activities bar house owners the place they share recommendation. “This is not a competition. This is women supporting women.”
Untamed Spirits not too long ago grew to become an official bar accomplice of the Angel Metropolis Soccer Membership, which has a majority female-led possession group that features Natalie Portman, Abby Wambach and America Ferrera. The Ellingwoods will host their first watch get together on Sept. 7 when the ACFC takes on Gotham FC.
Janie and Stephanie, who’ve been on the bar each day because it opened, say they’re excited to finally distill their very own spirits, host extra occasions and watch events within the area and foster group amongst girls’s sports activities lovers.
“Some people might call it a trend, but it’s not a trend,” Janie says. “I believe it’s a movement.”
Janie, left, and Stephanie Ellingwood say they’re excited to finally distill their very own spirits, host extra occasions and watch events within the area and foster group amongst girls’s sports activities lovers.
(Alyson Aliano / For The Instances)
