Valkyries fans find community at Rikki's, but not a win in Game 3 of WNBA Finals

There was no violet wave, no chants of "GSV GSV," and little to cheer for, except for a brief flurry of baskets that tied the game in the third quarter.

After that it was all Atlanta Dream, who blew out the Golden State Valkyries by 26 points in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals on Wednesday night.

Yet Rikki's on Market Street was packed and cacophonous, again living up to its growing reputation as the micro-Ballhalla satellite in the Castro, the San Francisco women's sports bar the city maybe didn't know it needed and now wonders why it took so long. 

Most sports bars develop gradually as sports teams catch the imagination of the fan base. Rikki's opened around the Valkyries first game, a low-key neighborhood expression of what would soon become the country's first women's professional sports team with a $1 billion valuation. It has been a pulse of the team's obsessive fans ever since.

On Wednesday some of those fans started lining up two hours before the game. While the contest was a blowout - Golden State tied the game twice but never had the lead - fans seemed upbeat and hopeful until the fourth quarter.

First in line at Rikki's on Wednesday afternoon were Kevin Smith, Bruna Burns and Adrea Suess, who arrived at 2 p.m., 90 minutes before the bar opened to make sure they got a good table. The trio had been there for the previous game in the series, when Golden State team officials were there to hand out T-shirts to everyone who showed up.

"The ambiance is incredible here - it feels so electric - we had to come back," said Smith. "Every Valkyries basket is like a goal in soccer."

Rikki's opened in June of last year, about three weeks after the Valkyries played their first game. Co-owners Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich met playing for the San Francisco Spikes, an LGBTQ+ soccer team, and both found it unfortunate now hard it was to get sports bars and restaurants to show professional women's soccer and basketball games. 

Before opening  Rikki's - the bar is named for Elizabeth "Rikki" Streicher, a lesbian bar owner, LGBTQ+ activist and advocate for queer sports - they would host watch parties at other venues. They raised $425,000 through crowdfunding and another $390,000 in private investment.

Thoe said she could not have imagined that the team would make the playoffs in its first year and the WNBA Finals in its second. Lines have been down the block for most of the playoff games, although Wednesday was a bit more subdued.

"The weekend games are smashed. People are standing in the street, crowded at the door to watch the game from outside," she said. "The crowds have just gotten bigger and bigger as the season progressed. We are just trying to thrive amid the chaos."

The biggest crowd of the season was on Sunday the weekend of the Pride parade, a testament to the fact that the Valkyries have been embraced by the LGBTQ community even as the San Francisco Giants earned criticism for their handling of several players who refused to wear or defaced their Pride hats for the Giants' celebration of Pride.  

Mikey Boothe, who works as a bartender at Chase Center, said he was never much of a sports fan until he discovered the Valkyries, which he called "incredibly inclusive."

"I like the Valkyries fans better than the Warriors fans," he said. "They tip better and they are nicer."

Molly Lori, a Spanish teacher in San Francisco at International School, has become a regular at the sports bar, stopping by to watch women's soccer and basketball. She said the Valkyries have taken off at school with more students recently sporting Valkyries gear than Warriors.

"Someone is doing a really good job with the marketing," she said. "The fashion is unbelievable. Definitely a lot more sequins than you would see at a typical sporting event. The excitement for the Valkyries, you can feel it."

Several of those in attendance said they wished that professional women's sports had not taken so long to develop. 

"When my daughter was playing sports in middle school and high school there was never a option of ‘maybe I'll go pro someday.' It was ‘maybe I'll coach, maybe I'll teach gym,'" said Oakland resident Kay Sirota. "It would have been nice to have. Someday maybe my grandkids will go pro and I'll be the Nana up in the stands, yelling my head off."

Anu Bhat, who grew up in India, said she wanted to play basketball as a school-aged girl "but they said there was nobody to coach us."

"There was a lack of encouragement and nobody seemed interested in letting girls play," she said. 

While there may be more demand to watch the games in a bar when the Valkyries are on the road, the atmosphere may be even more passionate at home playoff games, Thoe said. The team will be back at the Chase Center on Monday for Game 5. Rikki's will likely be pulsating with energy - and hopefully the team will get its groove back, she said.

"During home games it's more people who choose not to pay the ticket prices or can't afford to pay," she said. "It's a little more of a special, a little more of a community feeling."

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This article originally published at Valkyries fans find community at Rikki's, but not a win in Game 3 of WNBA Finals.