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.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.