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Please Don't Insult Me With Your 'Female-Friendly' Pink Sports Bar
By
Nell Casey
Published Feb 13, 2014
Modified Feb 13, 2014
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By
Nell Casey
Published Feb 13, 2014
Modified Feb 13, 2014
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As a person with ovaries who's been not only a lifelong sports player but also an avid watcher of professional sports, I've been to my fair share of sports bars. You've got your divey variety with the peanut shell on the floor and a cruddy old flatscreen in the corner; the sleek contemporary interpretation where not a single inch of wall space doesn't have an LCD; and all the neighborhood joints in between where one stops by for a pint to catch the end of the Yankees game. All of these places are bars, all of these places show sports and I've never felt unwelcome or uncomfortable while I'm there; douchey assholes not withstanding.
And yet, there's this new Union Square Mexican sports bar that designed its pink-accented decor to attract similarly ovary-bearing human beings whose delicate sensibilities might be otherwise turned off by "manly" attributes like beer and dark colors and raucousness. In short, everything I like about sports bars. Meet Campeon.
“It’s highly stylized and geared towards women in that it’s not a typical Hooters-style bar that [is] overly masculine with the Guinness mirrors,” owner and penis-haver Ken Sturm explains to DNAinfo. True, Ken, I also find those Guinness mirrors frustrating because that big decal makes it so hard to adjust my lipstick! “We did a softer design." Soft like my luscious locks courtesy of Pantene Pro V? Go on. "We wanted to make it very inviting for women so that they don’t feel like they’re sitting in a men’s kind of club.” Oh Ken, silly goose, women are used to being in the men's club, it's called living on this planet. But thanks all the same, I do feel right at home surrounded by a cliched aesthetic ascribed to my gender by the patriarchy.
Look I get it. There's a rumor out there that women don't like sports and just can't be bothered to understand the minutia of football when there are sample sales and reruns of The Real Housewives Of Go Fuck Yourself to catch up on. But take it from somebody who worked at one of the biggest sports bar chains in the city and also happens to be proficient at differentiating between an offsides and a false start: women need pink walls to feel comfortable about as much as they need a man's permission to run for president.
So take your fuchsia color palate and your patronizing ideas about how to make women "comfortable" and take them back to whatever well-meaning pile of crap they came from because I'm trying to watch the game, goddamnit.
But leave the guacamole. Bitches bleed guacamole.
Tagged
campeon
rants
sports bars
Nell Casey
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