one year of babe’s
March 13, 2024 is the date that Torra and I officially filed “Babe’s Sports Bar, LLC” with the IL Secretary of State. We’d of course been working on the idea of Babe’s and doing research on what it would take to actually open this bar for months leading up to that day, but I really see this filing anniversary (sexy) as our Official Business Birthday. It’s wild how a year can simultaneously feel so short and so long - so many things have fallen into place and felt like they were moving effortlessly, and yet I’m still having to remind myself to take deep breaths when I think about the work (and time) standing between us and opening day. That work is really exciting though!! We’re at the stage where we’re choosing upholstery for the barstools and which bathroom tiles we want (I told the designers I plan to get the pattern from our final choice tattooed on me, I love it so much), The vibe is "vintage women's sports bar from the future" and we’re doing very scientific (not joking) sightline mapping to make sure everyone has a good TV view. And the bathrooms have disco balls, duhhhh. I’ll show you a few tiny screenshots from recent design and schematic meetings with Siren Betty, but we want to keep an air of mystery and also I want you to be as wowed as possible the first time you see it IRL:
We’ve also been testing out potential signature cocktail recipes. We’re going to be handing out samples at the bar when people are dropping off their memorabilia to do some (delicious) market research. As if you needed any more incentive to submit your artifacts!! I asked everyone to share the story of the memorabilia they submitted and there have been many submissions of “here I am as the only girl on my team.” As one of the only girls on a boy’s soccer team in high school it feels very powerful to make a space where those histories are celebrated! Also as a Cancer, looking at pictures of people’s childhood is a real treat. As is reliving the 90’s hairstyles. Some of the recent amazing memorabilia submissions:
other updates
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other updates 〰️
🏀 BFF BEER PARTY // MARCH MADNESS WOMEN’S SPORTS BAR COLLECTIVE COMP 🍻
We’re having a party on Wednesday, March 19th at Life on Marz Community Club to get together and drink our BFF Beer, a hibiscus pale ale designed by our Bar Manager, Margaux, and brewed in collaboration with Marz Brewing. Tickets are free but grab one so we have a headcount and you have a calendar invite!
We’ll also be filling out brackets for March Madness at the party - even if you can’t make it in person, join our March Madness Pool! We’ve made a pool for a bunch of the women’s sports bars in the country, and there will be special prizes for weekly winners! Make sure your bracket includes “Babe’s” in the name!
🛠️ DEMOLITION COMING UP SOON // RENOVATION NEXT // OPENING UPDATES 📆
We’re beginning our renovation in the next few weeks, so everyone who emailed saying they can support with demolition, THANK YOU! It’s finally time to start planning that, expect an email in the next week or so. The idea of swinging a sledgehammer sounds really cathartic in this political hellscape.
Our official liquor license likely won’t happen until late May or early June, after we pass the inspections (we’ve finally finished the required paperwork, it really is a filing anniversary miracle!). We’re anticipating running some soft opens/private events to get people in the space and work out our systems while we wait for the official stamp of approval to come through. It feels illegal to have access to our patio and not have it used when it’s sunny in Chicago.
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There’s so much I could say about the last year of Babe’s, but honestly I feel like I’m too in it to be reflective, and there’s so much I need to go work on (I have like 30 corduroy hats I have to pack into cute pink boxes with even cuter tissue paper/tape, I really take pride in Babe’s gear arriving looking cute, but wow is it time consuming!). The last year has been filled with learning so much (and being humbled by not knowing things), constantly hustling/scheming, and meeting so many good people who have helped push Babe’s closer to becoming a reality (not that it’s not yet a reality - there’s been really cool community building among the people who have come together and met through Babe’s). NOT TO BE CHEESY BUT it honestly feels like the one year anniversary of being really lucky to be working on this! Babe’s has changed the course of my life for the better just in this one baby year of being, and it really is just getting started.
If you’re in Chicago, I hope to see you at the party on Wednesday! And if you’re not, cheers from afar and start looking at flights for late May.
xoxoxo
Nora
babe’s behind the scenes: “see yourself” in the bar
We want to display your sports awards and artifacts in the bar! And a peek behind the curtain at the process to get our liquor license.
Hello and happy winter solstice! My early xmas gift to you is two exciting updates about our opening (I’m in frugal startup mode over here, sorry this gift isn’t wrapped beautifully). The first update is more of a call-to-action than an update - we want to decorate the bar with artifacts from your athletic past! The second update is my attempt to channel AOC and explain how city policy is playing a big part in the process to open our doors. Let’s see how I do at describing a city zoning hearing in an interesting way!! If you’re rushing around for the holidays and need just the headline: fill out this form ASAP if you have any cool artifacts from your athletic history (or present) that could be displayed at Babe’s! If you’re not rushing around and/or needing a distraction from the holidays (I feel you), keep reading!
update 1: co-create Babe’s with us!
We’re replacing the current dark granite of the bar top in our space with a beautiful wood top designed specially for Babe’s by a local queer woodworker. The wood was salvaged from a ballet studio, and we are designing it to create a strip in the bar that we can fill with epoxy and sports memorabilia. The goal is to fill this part of the bar with items donated by the community that celebrate the vastness of the history of women’s sports. It would be our honor to enshrine your accomplishments or celebrations at Babe’s, so that you can literally see yourself in the bar.
The items need to be mostly flat to work in this setting. A varsity patch or medal would work, but something thicker than that would not.
Our designer created this rendering of how the inlaid items would look. Imagine this with your roller derby trading card, the bib from the marathon you ran while pregnant, a vintage pennant from your aunt’s gay softball league… can you tell I’m excited about the possibilities here!
Additionally, we plan to display trophies and awards from local teams and athletes around the bar. We would love to be the home of the communal Chicago women’s trophy case 🏆 I will obnoxiously be arranging all trophies around the UChicago Womxn’s Rugby Team 2022 natty’s, naturally!
These trophies can have a permanent home at Babe’s, or can be on temporary loan - either way, we'd love to show you off! Go to babeschicago.com/about to submit your item.
update 2: one step closer to pouring you an espresso martini
We’ve been having to remind ourselves that getting a license to sell booze in Chicago is intended to be hard, As a quick rundown of the order of operations, in order for us to get the licenses to open, we need:
Approval from the City of Chicago’s Zoning Board of Appeals
An ordinance to lift the liquor license moratorium on our block to be passed by City Council
In early December, Alderman Fuentes introduced the ordinance at City Council, and it was sent to committee. They will meet in January (they didn’t have quorum for their December meeting) and refer the ordinance to be passed by City Council.
City Council will vote on the ordinance at their January meeting - there’s no indication that there will be any issues in it getting passed. Schoolhouse Rock really prepared us for this moment!
While waiting for City Council to vote in January, we made it onto the agenda for the December Zoning Board of Appeals meeting (which required applying for a Tavern License, getting rejected, and then applying for the appeals hearing, which required numerous back-and-forths with the city planner assigned to our case and many billable hours for our licensing lawyers).
The ZBA hearing was thankfully uneventful - we waited in the adjacent room on the 10th floor of City Hall, and when it was our turn we went in and swore into the record that our application was truthful. I had been practicing raising my right hand, and do think I nailed it. You can see in the pic above - we were really deep inside the workings of City Hall. The board didn’t ask us any questions, which our lawyers told us is a good sign. I left them some Babe’s stickers - not as a bribe but as evidence of how cute our brand is and how we deserve their approval!!! [UPDATE: I wrote this on Sunday night, and just now, on Monday morning, we got word from the lawyers that our matter passed! LFGGGGG]
Once the official approval comes from the ZBA, and the moratorium is lifted by City Council, we’ll be able to pay the licensing fees ($4,400 for the tavern license to serve alcohol, $770 for our Public Place of Amusement license to have events, and $1,760 for being able to drink on the patio), file all of the paperwork, and wait 30-60 days for our license to be processed. We’ve needed several espresso martinis just to get this far in the process, but we are very excited by reaching this zoning milestone (we’ve been working on this application since June!) and our batch espresso martinis (which we’ve been R&Ding the recipe for) are going to taste that much sweeter with all of the love we’ve put into this.
Our next update should include a timeline about our renovation and hopeful opening dates - we’re still aiming for late March! With how unreal college women’s basketball has already been, we’re going to need Babe’s to be open for March Madness 🏀🏀🏀
Thanks for your continued support on this journey! ALSO we are in the process of sending out the treats for your donations to our crowdfunding campaign! Some shirts have been sent out already, and if you ordered a pennant or hat those are being shipped out soon! Everything will be in the mail by the end of January, if not before :) I hope everyone gets a little break to rest over the holidays - see you in 2025!
xoxoxo
nora
hi from nora!
updates on our crowdfunding campaign, news coverage, and our opening timeline!
I’m here with some Babe’s news - a lot has been happening behind the scenes! In this post you’ll find updates about our crowdfunding campaign, recent press coverage, and info on our opening timeline! Most importantly: We've passed the $50,000 mark for our crowdfunding campaign! We are hoping to raise $20,000 more in the next few weeks. You can help us get there by sharing the campaign with your networks and telling them why a space like Babe’s is important to you!Read on for more, or click below to be taken directly to our crowdfunding page!be our bff
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be our bff ✨
Update #1: Crowdfunding Campaign Extended through November + Closing Party!
Our crowdfunding campaign had been scheduled for a four week sprint, ending on Halloween. Turns out there’s nothing spookier than the city of Chicago’s zoning policies (more on that below). We’ve had to unexpectedly focus on that this month, making it hard to run our campaign at the same time. We’ve been so in awe that, despite our distraction, we’ve still received over $50,000 in donations! Seeing Babe’s resonate with so many people has been really special. I’m picking up the Limited Edition BFF Tees this week and they are going to be goooood (and could be yours for $100!!!!). We’re extending the closing date for our campaign into late November to make sure we have time to do proper outreach and spread the word even more. Stay tuned for details on the closing party and our *official closing date* to make sure you don't miss out!Update #2: Babe’s in the News
Choose your medium: radio, newspaper, television! The highlight of this media blitz was successfully participating in an interview with Sasha-Ann Simons live on WBEZ and not saying one single swear word!! Jk, the highlight was sharing the space with the co-owner of Whiskey Girl Tavern, Heather Roberts:
The linked stories above give a peek into the vision we have for our space (vintage varsity! futurism! universal design!), and the donations to our crowdfunding campaign will go toward the renovation to make that vision a reality <3Update #3: Timeline for Opening
I’ve been crafting my mental op-ed about how Chicago city services disproportionately disadvantage small businesses (did you know if you want your zoning or license application to be heard sooner than your assigned date, you can hire an “expediter” for thousands of dollars in the hopes they can sweet talk their buddies into shuffling your application around??), but you should know that the Babe’s Management Team (aka Torra, me, and the crew of lawyers working on this with us) is getting really fluent in city zoning ordinances. We are on the agenda (without paying an expensive “expediter” tyvm) for the December Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, which will hopefully result in our conditional liquor license, which will become official once the ordinance lifting the liquor moratorium on our block is lifted. Easy peasy!!! (Also WOW local elections are important - make sure you vote on Tuesday PLEASE!)
Renovation will start mid December (interested in lending some manual labor to our demolition? Email nora@babeschicago.com with subject “DEMO HELP”!) with the goal of being open by early March and fully operational by March Madness :) Watch our instagram and your inbox for crowdfunding updates (including date and location of closing party!). Thanks for sticking around through these updates, we love you!xoxoxo,noraps: please feel FREE to forward this post to anyone who loves women’s sports :):):)