The Brief

Opening a sports bar for women used to be much harder than it is today — and Jax Diener can tell you that from experience.

"About 30-plus years ago, I wanted to open a sports bar," Diener said. "The friends that I still have in my circle know that I've been talking about this for all of these years."

And while Diener would have loved for this bar to show women's sports, that wasn't even a possibility at the time.

"Back then, you couldn't catch women's sports on TV anywhere — I mean, that just wasn't a thing," she said. "So it wasn't about that. It was just about having a space where we could all be together and watch any sort of sporting event and feel comfortable."

And her dream is finally coming close to fruition, with the bar Watch Me set to open in Long Beach later this year, according to Diener and her co-owner and wife Emme Eddy. It would be the only bar for women's sports in Long Beach and in Greater Los Angeles, not to mention one of a small but quickly growing number of women's sports bars.

Women's sports bars nationwide

If you didn't get it right away, "Watch Me" is a reference to how women athletes often have to prove themselves by showing doubters what they can do — not to mention the act of watching sports, of course.

Watch Me is part of a growing movement of sports bars that exclusively (or at least primarily) show women's sports. The Sports Bra in Portland and Rough & Tumble in Seattle served their first drinks in 2022. Icarus Wings and Things opened last year in Salem, Oregon, and A Bar of Their Own opened in Minneapolis earlier this month — and even more bars are in the works.

Interest in women's sports in the United States isn't new — stars like Lisa Leslie and Mia Hamm drew in big crowds decades ago, to say nothing of Venus and Serena Williams — but the audience has grown in the last 10 years. About 27 million people in the U.S. tuned in to see the U.S. take home the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2015, and nearly 20 million watched the team defend their title in 2019, according to figures from FIFA.

Meanwhile, the 2023 WNBA season has been seeing increased attendance and viewership, which is expected to continue as college superstar Caitlin Clark prepares to go professional, breaking longstanding NCAA scoring records and drawing bigger audiences than her men's basketball counterparts along the way.

And it's much easier now to watch women playing all sorts of games: The Women's Sports Network, which started in 2022, streams women's sports 24/7.

How Watch Me's owners got the ball rolling

Diener said seeing The Sports Bra open in Portland — and do well — was the final push the couple needed to pursue opening a sports bar.

Originally, Diener and Eddy had planned to open a franchised Sports Bra location in Long Beach, even consulting with that bar's owner Jenny Nguyen. But when it came down to it, the two decided starting their own brand was the way to go.

"We spoke to a gentleman who is a franchisor and a franchisee, so it was really great to get that perspective of both sides," Diener said. "He basically said, 'Why are you doing that? Go out and do it on your own.'"

With that said, Diener and Eddy have found some key allies in the L.A. women's sports community: They've struck up partnerships with Angel City F.C. and the L.A. Sparks, and they hope to continue the partnership by becoming the designated place to be for those teams' watch parties and even draft events.

What to expect at Watch Me

First things first: It wouldn't be a proper sports bar without food. Watch Me has already hired a chef, Charlie Ray, who's been working on building out food offerings for the bar's future visitors.

"Some of it is similar to a typical bar menu, but elevated," Eddy said. "Fresh, sustainable, locally grown products and also vegan and vegetarian options in the spirit of inclusivity, and gluten free — there's no barriers for someone who wants to come in and eat."

Watch Me's owners want the bar's inclusivity to go way beyond the menu: They anticipate a big portion of their crowd will be LGBTQ, filling a gap for public spaces for queer women in Long Beach and Orange County.

"The access to those places has really, really gone away, so there's a real need for that, I think, in the community here now," Eddy said.

But even though it's a bar, Diener and Eddy say that they want Watch Me to be a gathering space for people of all ages, from girls' teams coming in after games to collegiate athletes to casual sports fans.

And yes, you can still watch big men's games like the Super Bowl at Watch Me, though this is very much an exception to the rule.

"We're very big NFL fans over here," Diener said. "But we are flipping it — probably 95% of the time you would catch us with women's sports in our space."

When the bar will open

Eddy and Diener are working toward finalizing an opening date: They said they're in advanced negotiations with the owner of one location, and they've started the process of hiring staff and applying for a liquor license.

"We're setting things in place so that when we sign the lease docs, it's a finite amount of time [before opening]," Eddy said.

And Watch Me's owners have set a pretty big deadline for themselves.

"We desperately want to be open by the Olympics," Eddy said. "And we want to be actually open as much before that as we can to have a soft opening and iron out the things that we need to get settled."

The couple has also started a crowdfunding campaign to help kick things off, though they say that they've been slow to see results.

"Our business model is based on the other women's sports bars ahead of us that had very successful crowdfunding campaigns, whether or not they announced their location," Diener said. "We are not experiencing that same thing."

But Eddy and Diener said they hope they'll catch more eyes when their location is announced, and they're still moving forward with the bar opening regardless — just watch them.

"It seems like a slam dunk that there's going to be a crowd for this, a group of people that it's going to fill needs for," Eddy said.

Alysa Liu’s comeback at this year’s Olympics — and her stunning gold medal win — has rocked the world of figure skating, making headlines due to her joy while performing and her commitment to mental health on and off the ice.

Though she primarily trained in Oakland, Liu, who’s also a psychology student at the UCLA, has used a facility in Lakewood as one of her home bases away from home. The 20-year-old started training there as she came back from retirement and prepared to take the gold medal (not that that was necessarily her goal, to hear her tell it).

It’s part of a long history for the Rinks-Lakewood ICE, which has also hosted many champions and Olympians over the years, including Mariah Bell, Nathan Chen, Ashley Wagner and Adam Rippon, and counts prominent figure skaters among their staff.

“ We're not unfamiliar with Olympic ties,” Overett said, though he also clarified, “that does not in any way diminish the fun and the coolness [of Liu’s win].”

Lakewood ICE’s place in this year’s Olympics

Working with her coaches remotely, Liu started to drill down on perfecting her skating while also attending classes at UCLA. And though she moved on to her home base at Oakland Ice Center as the Olympic training started to ramp up, the staff who worked with her at Lakewood ICE kept cheering her on.

Braden Overett, the skating manager at Lakewood ICE, said that he loves highlighting the Olympic connections at the rink, which may not be obvious to everyone who skates there.

“It's always fun just to connect the dots, right?” Overett said. “It's like going to a restaurant and then you find out later it's your favorite actor's restaurant.”

Ashleigh Ellis runs the nonprofit Unity Ice Academy, which focuses on increasing access to figure skating for kids of all backgrounds at Lakewood ICE.

“ That's just very much how the skating world is. It's very small, you never know who you're going to run into at any time,” Ellis said. “ Could you imagine just being on the ice with a national champion and Olympic skater of any sort? It's just so inspiring for the kids to see that and be within the vicinity of that.”

And Liu wasn’t the only 2026 Olympic figure skater who's used the facility. Li Yu-Hsiang, the Taiwanese national champion who represented Chinese Taipei in Milan this year, also trains in Lakewood.

The rink’s coaches

The small world of skating means that even novice skaters can take classes from world-class skaters: 1976 Olympic silver medalist Dianne de Leeuw teaches there, as do national medalists (and future Olympic contenders) Starr Andrews and Josephine Lee.

 ”To get to see them and to get to share ice with them just has a layer of magic that you can't replace and you can't get anywhere else,” Overett said. “ You see the turnover of generations, and it brings in a huge element of history.”

What Liu’s win means for the skating world

Ellis is already using Liu’s example to stress the importance of mental health to the kids and families she works with, like one parent who was worrying about her child taking two weeks off skating due to pneumonia.

“I was like, ‘Alysa Liu took two plus years off and she just won the Olympic gold. Do not worry about it this two weeks,’” she said.

A bipartisan bill aimed at protecting pets during disasters has been introduced in Congress, with a Southern California representative citing the rescue efforts of local organizations during last year’s L.A.-area fires.

The PETSAFE Act of 2026 — which stands for Providing Essential Temporary Shelter Assistance For Emergencies — would expand the use of emergency management funds so local governments can plan for evacuations that move animals to safety, as well as provide veterinary care and rescue equipment during disasters.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) helped introduce the bill earlier this month with several House of Representatives colleagues, including Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida and Democrat Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada.

Chu, who represents Pasadena and Altadena in the 28th Congressional District, said when the Eaton Fire tore through her district, many families delayed evacuations because they couldn’t bear to leave their pets behind.

She told LAist she’ll never forget seeing the cats, dogs and other animals with burned feet and singed fur who were being cared for by Pasadena Humane in the aftermath.

“But to think, if there is even one more thing we could do to keep our precious pets safe, wouldn't we want to do that?” Chu said. “So this PETSAFE Act could go a long way towards making sure that our loved pets can indeed survive a disaster.”

About the bill

Pasadena Humane teams looked for pets and wildlife in Eaton burn zones, dropping off food and water along the way.

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Courtesy Pasadena Humane

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The PETSAFE Act now has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The bill would amend the Emergency Management Performance Grant program to increase the federal cost share for certain animal-related preparedness activities from 50% to 90%.

Supporters say this would lower barriers and make it more affordable for communities to roll out emergency protection plans for people and pets.

Specifically, the PETSAFE Act would allow state, local and tribal governments to use grant money awarded by FEMA toward pet supplies, crates, veterinary equipment, emergency generators and training, among others.

Pet owners whose homes are under disaster-related evacuation orders can be faced with an “impossible choice” — leaving their pets behind or staying home with them, which risks the owner’s own safety and complicates rescue efforts for first responders, according to Chu’s office.

The bill aims to address the challenges pet owners and first responders face without authorizing new federal spending, according to Mast’s office.

How we got here 

Chu said local shelters, including Pasadena Humane, and communities across California stepped up to care for all kinds of animals during the Eaton Fire, which ignited in January 2025.

Pasadena Humane helped more than 1,500 pets and wildlife during the fire and in the aftermath by providing shelter, medical care and emergency resources.

A horse was housed in the organization’s garage when Chris Ramon, Pasadena Humane’s president and CEO, ran into its owner walking down Raymond Avenue for miles.

“Part of me likes to think that this won’t happen again,” Ramon told LAist last month. “But the realist in me realizes … disaster preparedness is something that just is an ongoing conversation for us at Pasadena Humane.”

Chu also cited the work of the ASPCA, which helped more than 530 animals during the Eaton Fire, including goats, parakeets, pigs and a gecko, according to the organization.

She said local organizations did “tremendous” work and “lovingly cared for” the rush of animals affected by the fire.

“But what we would want to do is to make sure that there is an even better system for animal evacuation and ways to ensure that pets could be safe,” Chu said, adding that would relieve the burden on places like Pasadena Humane.

Other laws aiming to protect pets

This is not the first time last year’s fires have led to new legislation focused on protecting pets during emergencies.

A new state law known as the FOUND Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, was inspired by Oreo the Pomeranian, who reunited with its Pacific Palisades owner in an emotional, viral video during the Palisades Fire.

The law requires cities and counties to include procedures for rescuing pets during mandatory evacuations in their next emergency plans, which need to be updated every five years to qualify for FEMA assistance.