The best New York Liberty bars and watch parties in the city
'It also brings this social aspect. You can kind of flirt and meet someone.'
Caroline FitzGerald’s origin story as an organizer of New York Liberty watch parties across the city started with a moment of rejection in 2023.
She was in a Brooklyn bar toward the end of the WNBA season, when the Liberty were on a hot run that would lead to the finals. She asked the bartender to turn one of the many TVs to the Liberty game. He responded: “I don’t think anyone here wants to see that.”
“After that experience, I was determined to organize opportunities for fans to get together in the next season,” she told The Groove this week. She set out to book dedicated spots for Liberty fans to gather, but even planning ahead wasn’t easy. Bars would channel her into private event rental and try to charge her $3,000 for the day.
She felt ripped off, thinking: “OK, who’s paying for the Knicks to be on?” she said. “That’s crazy.”
Rejection didn’t last long, and the number of bars who think “no one wants to see that” are missing out on a huge and rapidly growing fan base at their own peril. Not only did the Liberty bring home New York City’s first basketball championship in 50 years last season, they returned when the season kicked off last month still hungry for blood, winning all nine of their games so far.
Last year, FitzGerald started Women’s Sports Rally, a hub for organizing watch parties and community around Liberty games (plus Gotham Football Club, the Sirens of the Professional Women's Hockey League, Unrivaled, college hoops and more) that have grown into wait-list events, new friendships and an increasingly vocal fanbase.
“Before we were hosting these, a lot of the fans were kind of isolated,” FitzGerald said. Some of the women’s sports leagues were previously “'niche’ sports," she said. “People were passionate but hadn’t really been brought together.”
She had a background in mental health, and knew the timing was right: people across the city were still reeling from loneliness exacerbated by the pandemic.
“Coming out of it, I saw women’s sports fandoms as a kind of opportune space to help people reweave their social lives coming out of the pandemic,” she said.
The bandwagon has run laps around you at this point but the Liberty faithful are about the nicest fandom you can ever come across, and they're happy to keep trying to pull you in. (A personal thank you to the gaggle of Liberty fans in a Prospect Heights bar last October who, after cheering their team on to another win in the finals, then turned their attention to the Mets game on the other TVs and attempted to send the power of their good vibes to help them beat the Dodgers. It didn’t work, but cross-sport solidarity is the key to our liberation). Here is where to get started:
The official Liberty affiliated bars
Last month, the Liberty launched their official bar network, listing bars that not only show games (usually with sound) but also hold raffles, giveaways, drink specials and more.
Singers, 30 Kosciuszko St., Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
The vibe: Queer secret clubhouse.
Singers is the bar The New York Times described as a place that will do "anything to make people feel insane and alive” for its twisted, summer camp-style events, like a competition to see who could blast a cig the fastest. And that was good enough reason for us to host a voter guide happy hour with our friends at Soft Power Vote there on Monday. That spirit, and its multiple activity rooms, make it a great spot to catch a Liberty game. Gather round the projector, shoot some hoops in the backyard, make some new Liberty friends, and if things go well, you maybe can get some poppers from the vending machine. Somehow, with all that, it’s a kid-friendly place to watch a game until 9 p.m.
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Blue Haven South, 121 Fulton St., Manhattan
The vibe: Classic, Bud Light tower-ass sports bar
TVs lining every wall, tall towers of macrobrew beer, wings and buffalo chicken dip, Blue Haven has long been a standard draw for sports fans, even earning a “hottest reservation in town” headline from the Post for its hard-to-get Sunday football seating. It has embraced the WNBA in recent years and has become a go-to spot for Liberty fans downtown.
Uncle Barry’s, 58 Fifth Ave., Park Slope, Brooklyn
The vibe: Drinking craft beers when you didn’t get a ticket to the game
The Park Slope bar is a no-frills but cozy spot with an extensive craft beer list. It embraced its location a few minutes walk away from the Barclays Center, opening early for games and putting a signed Jonquel Jones jersey on display.
Fulton Hall, 250 Ashland Pl., Fort Greene
The vibe: Lots of elbow room
Large bars for sporting events are hard to come by, which is why the spacious Fulton Hall stands out for sports gatherings.
Gingers, 363 Fifth Ave., Park Slope, Brooklyn
The vibe: Old-school lesbian dive
Once considered “Brooklyn’s only lesbian bar” (at least one more has opened recently!), Ginger’s has been around since 2000 and survived an extended COVID shutdown. Now it’s full of life again, especially when the Liberty are playing, but heads up: it remains cash-only.
Baker Street Irregulars, 1152 First Ave., Lenox Hill, Manhattan
The vibe: The original T.G.I. Friday’s owned by Sherlock Holmes fans
Well that vibe description doesn’t scream women’s basketball but it is literally true: this Lenox Hill spot was the home of the original T.G.I. Friday’s in 1965, and is now one of the few dedicated uptown Liberty fan spots.
Randolph Beer Garden, 82 Prospect St., Dumbo, Brooklyn
The vibe: When you need to distract yourself from the game (if the Liberty every lose again)
Randolph is one of those places that dares you to get bored: it’s a sprawling space (that includes a rooftop with baller views), filled with pinball, bar games and a unique game called feather bowling. It’s pretty good when you need to do more than just watch a game, or for when you inevitably run into your ex and need to run away to another section of the bar.
Rounders, 999 Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint, Brooklyn
The vibe: Modern sports bar
Rounders opened earlier this year in bar saturated Greenpoint to bring it something it was still missing: a new sports bar. It’s even got the rare jumbotron style multi-screen TV apparatus hanging from the ceiling.
The Beer Garage, 412 Douglass Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
The vibe: A garage that sells beer.
If you want to replicate the classic male sports experience of watching sports in a converted garage space, Beer Garage is a good place to start.
The Bush, 333 Troutman St., Bushwick, Brooklyn
The vibe: A dyke bar for queers (their words)
The Bush is so elegantly simple of a name for this bar that you simply gotta hand it to them. It’s hosting Lib games and “igniting a lesbian cultural renaissance in Bushwick” according to TimeOut. And it joins Ginger’s as one of the borough’s dedicated lesbian bars.
Women’s Sports Rally meetups
FitzGerald’s Women's Sports Rally team hosts watch parties all season long, partnering with massive venues like Williamsburg’s massive Berry Park and Ridgewood’s The Deep End, and holding cultural crossover moments, like a recent Cowboy Carter-themed watch party.
Subscribe to the newsletter here and follow them on Instagram for updates on parties for the Liberty and other women’s sports. But don’t be late: fans often get there quite early to get a seat. On top of that, FitzGerald encourages solo fans to come early to sit in the connection section and make new friends.
“We’re kind of an easy entry point for curious fans,” she said. “People like the culture and community and vibes that come with women’s sports fandom.”
One thing she’s ardent about for her meetups: no commercials. DJs and music fill the gaps between action so people can actually talk to each other.
The bars near where the Liberty play
The Liberty are so good, there’s no bar in the Barclays Center adjacent area stupid enough to not fly the Liberty flag outside (and certainly they have no reason to fly the Nets flag).
North Pole Bar, 428 Bergen St., Park Slope, Brooklyn
The vibe: Sparse drinkery slightly off the main drag.
Mo’s Bar, 80 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene, Brooklyn
The vibe: Neighborhood hotspot
Mo's flies the Liberty flag high at this longtime neighborhood bar a few blocks from the arena.
Branded Saloon, 603 Vanderbilt Ave., Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
The vibe: Queer rodeo
The Prospect Heights mainstay feels like it was born to show Liberty games. It hosts after parties too.
Other spots around town
Scruffy Duffy’s, 638 Tenth Ave., Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan
The vibe: Classic Irish pub.
A fan on Reddit noted that this bar is “so good with women’s sports — been in there a few times and they’ll usually have a women’s game on.”
Check back on this Reddit master thread for more options around the city.
What makes for a good Liberty watch bar?
I asked FitzGerald what parameters make for an ideal Liberty watch party location, and whether those are different from say the Mets or Knicks. It isn’t always a traditional sports bar that makes the cut.
“When I started out, I would have thought it's about the screens and sound,” she said. “Those things are important but I found that there’s a lot of interest and excitement in watching non traditional, non-sports-bar settings.”
That means bringing sports fans to queer and women-owned spaces that don’t necessarily have the sound and visuals of a Buffalo Wild Wings. Fans are often gathered around watching a single broadcast, instead of a wall of TVs, but no one seems to mind.
“There's something nice about everyone watching on the same one projector screen,” she said. “It also brings this social aspect. You can kind of flirt and meet someone.”
The days of rejection are far behind; now bars reach out to her about hosting watch parties.
“Definitely, the tide has shifted,” she said.
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