June 26, 2025
Provided Image/Harry Smith
A women's sports bar named after Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender activist, plans to open this summer. Owner Chivonn Anderson, above, hopes the South Street spot will become a community hub that celebrates the legacy of prior generations.
A bar that will primarily play women's sports and LGBTQ+ shows and films on its TVs — the first of its kind in Philly — is coming to South Street.
The menu is still to be determined and the plan is to open Marsha's before the end of the summer at the former home of Woolly Mammoth, which closed in May.
The bar is named after Marsha P. Johnson, a Black transgender activist who was a prominent figure during the Stonewall uprising in 1969, a series of events between police and LGBTQ+ protesters. Owner Chivonn Anderson said by honoring Johnson, she wants to make the bar a community hub for sports fans, women and queer people while celebrating the legacy of prior generations.
“I’m buying this property as a queer woman of color — and I wouldn’t be at the table if it wasn’t for her and Sylvia Rivera and all of the other people that stood up and said, ‘No more,’” Anderson told the Philadelphia Gay News. “They gave me the opportunity to be doing what I’m doing right now.”
Before opening her own space at 430 South St., Anderson was the director of development at Redcrest Kitchen in Queen Village and a real estate agent. She grew up in Olney and said that South Street was a haven for her as a queer teenager in the 1990s after she came out at 15.
“South Street was the only place I ever felt comfortable growing up,” Anderson said in a statement. “Creating Marsha’s on the corner of South Street and Passyunk Ave feels like a full-circle moment. It’s about building the kind of bar everyone feels welcome stepping foot in.”
Marsha's is not affiliated with Watch Party PHL, a group that watches women's sports at bars and restaurants around the city and is fundraising to build another sports bar for women. But Anderson told PGN that she wants to build a relationship with them and hopefully work together at some point.
