Customers at Pearl won't stop asking owner Julie Mabry for sports. After this week, they'll be in luck—Houston's only lesbian bar is also becoming the city's only women's sports bar. Side Peace, Pearl's next-door sister bar, is now showing women's sports every day it's open from 5–10 p.m.
Opening a sports bar has been a long-time plan for Mabry. From 2014 to 2016, the space next to Pearl was an overflow space called Sidebar that showed sports. Differences between the sports-focused clientele at Sidebar and the club-goers at Pearl eventually scuttled Sidebar. But after two tenants, including a "trailer park" themed bar, came and went, Mabry took the space back over in 2022 to open a loungey companion to Pearl called Side Peace.
Mabry said that the explosion of interest in women's sports, paired with the hugely successful opening of the Sports Bra in Portland, inspired her to turn the space into a women's sports bar.
Side Peace Sports Bar will have seven TVs playing different games, with the biggest women's game of the day taking priority and playing over the bar's main speakers. Local staples including the Astros, Texans and Rockets will be shown as well. But when it comes to women's sports, everything from basketball to golf to UFC will be on the table. At the launch event, bartenders served cocktails called "Serena Williams," "Billie Jean King," and "Houston Comet." Mabry hopes that Side Peace can serve as both a place to celebrate women's sports and as a safe space for LGBTQ+ Houstonians at a time when attacks on the queer community are at an all-time high.
"A lot of us obviously played sports in high school, middle school, elementary. And even if we didn't, we have friends that wanna hang out that don't wanna be in a club scene," Mabry said. "My goal with both Pearl and the sports bar is to keep the focus on being a safe space for our community and being more joyful and just knowing that we are really lucky to have not only a lesbian and queer bar in Houston but also a women's sports bar."