We’re celebrating Best of the Bay 2026 with a multitude of Editors’ Picks of things we love. Please join us at our 13th Annual Gala on October 27 to celebrate even more!
The Bay is buzzing right now with news that our first big league women’s basketball team is headed to the WNBA finals. It’s been an astronomical rise. In 2025, the same year the Oakland Athletics moved into the 15,000-capacity Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, home of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, the Golden State Valkyries made their highly anticipated debut at San Francisco’s Chase Center. The team defied typical expansion-team struggles, finishing 23-21 and becoming the first expansion franchise in WNBA history to make the playoffs in its debut season.
But that transmittable energy, the effect they had immediately on Bay Area fans, was electric. Anyone who commutes on BART in the early and late parts of the evening that inaugural season witnessed something a bit different. That Valkyrie Violet kept popping up, appearing in droves of fans, boarding the train either after another Golden State Valkyrie win or still quite excited despite a close loss. Either way, Valkyrie Fever took over the city and never relinquished its grip. But to change the vibe during the evening’s BART commute?
That’s sacred. Filling that ride, which at times can be a bit of a snog, with pride and enthusiasm. The Valkyries have invigorated the professional women’s basketball fan base ever since. Adding more success to the Bay Area sports landscape. Rikki’s, San Francisco’s first women’s sports bar, located right in the Castro district—and winner of Best of the Bay 2025 Best Sports Bar—opened in June 2025 and has not looked back.
Bay Area promoters Noise Pop and Do The Bay have engineered downtown evening events around watching those Valkyries. Valkyries Pride fills the streets. Chase Cater has been unofficially renamed “Ballhalla.” Women’s basketball is the hottest ticket in the city from June to October, and we’re all the better for it.
