Score! Philly’s First Queer Women’s Sports Bar Set To Open This Summer
Marsha’s, honoring LGBTQ+ icon Marsha P. Johnson, aims to be a game-changing space for queer women and sports fans in Philly.
In a city that loves its sports, Philadelphia is finally getting a place where queer women and fans of women’s sports can cheer, relax, and be unapologetically themselves. Marsha’s, a new bar opening later this summer, will be the city’s first queer women’s sports bar.
For founder Chivonn Anderson, the vision for Marsha’s was born out of frustration. In 2019, she walked into a South Philly sports bar ready to watch the Women’s World Cup Final. The US was in the championship match. Megan Rapinoe, a powerhouse on and off the field, was making history. But the bartenders refused to put the game on. Anderson had to fight just to get a TV changed.
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“I thought that was a complete disgrace,” she told the Philadelphia Gay News. “I was like, ‘This is the FIFA World Cup. It’s the United States in the championship match, and we have to fight with you to get this on? We’re in a sports bar.’”
That moment planted the seed. It took a few years, but the result is a space unlike any other in the city: a sleek, stylish, two-story venue with women’s sports on the TVs and queer films playing in cozy corners.
“I want it to look like a sports bar you’ve never walked into in your life,” Anderson said.
Marsha’s takes its name from Marsha P. Johnson, the Black transgender activist who was a key figure in the Stonewall uprising and an icon of LGBTQ+ resistance and joy. Anderson is clear about that legacy.
“I’m buying this property as a queer woman of color — and I wouldn’t be at the table if it wasn’t for her and Sylvia Rivera and all of the other people that stood up and said, ‘No more,’” she told Philadelphia Gay News. “They gave me the opportunity to be doing what I’m doing right now.”
She puts it more bluntly, too: “In Philly, we’re all about honoring our founding fathers. Well, I’m supporting and loving my founding mother.”
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Owning the building outright also gives the business the kind of staying power that many queer venues lack. With rent hikes and real estate speculation displacing LGBTQ+ spaces across the country, Anderson’s choice to buy, not rent, sends a clear message: we’re here to stay.
“I want to make it an anchor for Philadelphia — for the queer community, for the sports community, and for anybody that just wants to go out and have fun and feel safe and be seen.”
Marsha’s is slated to open in mid-to-late August at 430 South Street. And come 2026, Philly sports fans will have even more to root for. Watch Party Philly’s Ora’s Watch Bar, named after athlete Ora Mae Washington, is set to become the city’s second bar dedicated entirely to women’s sports.
