A Philadelphia bar that made history by airing women’s sports almost exclusively on its big screens is closing its doors for good after just over a year in business.
The establishment, Marsha's, was celebrated as the city's first queer women's sports bar when it opened on South Street in Queen Village last September.
The owners announced on social media Thursday that this weekend will be its last.
"It is with heavy hearts that we have decided to close Marsha’s doors for good. We have loved serving this community, and still believe that more than ever this city needs more women/queer/BIPOC- owned businesses," owner Chivonn Anderson wrote on Instagram.
"We sincerely hope that someone is able to step up and fill this void."
As you might suspect from their parting statement about filling "queer" and "BIPOC" (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) spaces, everything about this bar was designed to be uber-woke.
In an announcement of the bar's opening last year, Anderson described herself as a sports fan who attended the 2019 World Cup and was "photographed in the stands wearing Megan Rapinoe's #15 jersey and carrying the Pride flag."
Marsha's has a giant painting of Marsha P. Johnson, the late transgender sex worker who later became an LGBT activist, hanging behind the bar. And it was hailed as "making history as the city's first bar centered on women's sports."
Anderson explained that the idea for a sports bar focused on female athletes came about because she couldn't convince a Philly bar to turn off the Phillies game and play the FIFA final instead.
Anderson expressed extreme optimism when she first opened Marsha's, suggesting she planned to open up more locations "across the region and the nation."
And yet, a little more than a year later, here we are, watching them close up shop.
Where this truly gets interesting is one of the reasons, perhaps, Marsha's was forced to shut down. Although the Instagram announcement provides no specifics, the Philadelphia Inquirer offers some hints.
Turns out, despite making every effort to placate the LGBT community, to cater to the "queer" crowd, and to identify as being a BIPOC-owned business, it wasn't enough. At least for those very specifically targeted people.
The Inquirer reports that former employees insisted Marsha's wasn’t “a safe space for Black, trans, and queer people,” accusations the owner admits changed their business and how the community viewed them.
“Unfortunately, a former employee was spreading lies about myself and the company,” Anderson told the outlet. “It just really affected our business and how the community saw us, and business just never kind of rebounded from that.”
That's the very definition of "go woke, go broke."
Amazing.
Oh, by the way, the bar that wanted to focus on women's sports and was started by someone mad that the Phillies game was on at a local sports pub ... will be airing the Eagles’ game during its final weekend.
Granted, they'll also be airing the WNBA Finals, but nobody is going to watch that. It'll be interesting to see how many patrons watch NFL football and how many watch women's basketball.
Or how many even watch sports.
This reminds me of that joke Michael Che told on Saturday Night Live:
“A number of sports bars around the country are promising to only show women's basketball games during March Madness," Che quipped. "The bars are collectively known as the empty ones.”