On Cloud Nine Cheering for Gotham FC

There wasn’t a single seat available when I stepped out of the wind on Bowery and into Wilka’s Bar on Sunday afternoon, about 15 minutes before Gotham FC was scheduled to kick off against the defending champion Orlando Pride in the NWSL semifinals. The crowd gathered to watch their home team at the recently opened first official women’s-sports bar in New York City was indeed mostly women, save for a few men appropriately dressed in sky-blue-and-black gear. As a relatively new Gotham FC fan myself, I asked the women around me what newcomers should know. “If someone is a Gotham fan, that is a safe person,” one woman told me.

As the game kicked off and what was left of the standing room filled up, I headed to the back of the bar to mingle with a mix of longtime Gotham fans and newer converts. Many of them were “expanding from the WNBA bandwagon,” as one woman put it, and joining the soccer community. Their shared excitement about having Wilka’s as a space to convene was palpable. “Prior to this kind of bar, the only place you could really find this community was at a game,” said Natasha, a 29-year-old fan of the home team.

With the game scoreless at halftime, I joined a cluster of women outside the bar who had just exchanged introductions over a shared joint and asked them what had drawn them to watching Gotham. “On the field, you have reigning World Cup champions, reigning Olympic champions, stellar talent,” said Sophia, a passionate 32-year-old soccer fan. “If the sports don’t get you, the drama will, and if the sports and the drama don’t get you in, the hot women will.” Sophia, her wife, and her sister had come out to support Wilka’s during the game after seeing the bar on Instagram. “I told my wife earlier that if 14-year-old me knew that I was going to be here, watching sports, eating delicious food, kissing my wife, she would say I did a great job,” she added. “I don’t like sports bars because it’s a lot of men yelling,” her sister chimed in. “But when I walked in here, I was like, Hell yeah.”

Back inside, a 34-year-old fan named Jamie said she’d commuted to Wilka’s from Queens to watch Gotham play. She plans to return weekly through the winter because “this is the kind of place we need to support and preserve.” The excited bar chatter around us was replaced by a nervous quiet as time began to run out in the second half with the score still tied at zero. The crowd let out collective gasps and sighs of relief as Orlando players got closer to Gotham’s goal, then the ball was sent away.

Suddenly, in practically the last play of the game in the seventh minute of stoppage time, Gotham’s Jaedyn Shaw angled a free kick into Orlando’s goal. The crowd at Wilka’s erupted in cheers as the bartender danced around with a bubble gun. The high-fiving and whooping didn’t stop until the final minutes of stoppage time ran out, the 1-0 score on the screen confirming that Gotham was advancing to the finals against the Washington Spirit. On my way out, I chatted briefly with two women who had told me earlier in the afternoon that this was the first time they’d ever watched soccer at a bar. “We already texted the group chat,” one said. “‘We’ll see you back here next week!’”