By Dinna Novarr—
Every four years, FIFA hands the world’s biggest sporting event to a country and calls it a celebration of the beautiful game. Such countries have included Russia, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. FIFA’s pattern of awarding the sport’s marquee event to controversial hosts has become predictable. This year, the World Cup is in North America, a co-host arrangement spanning the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and the working assumption was that things would be different.
Before the first ball was kicked, the ACLU and Amnesty International had already issued travel advisories. The welcome mat, it seemed, had become a complicated object. Transgender fans were warned about passport requirements tied to sex assigned at birth. ICE raids, racial profiling, and the general posture of the current federal administration made the welcome mat a complicated object.
And yet here, in a city that has spent 50-plus years proving that community is something built on purpose, a group of people decided to build it again. The San Francisco Pride House is not a corporate activation. It’s not a rainbow flag slapped on a sponsor booth. It’s a room that exists because specific people decided it should. They then did the unglamorous work of making it real.
Meet the people holding the door open.
Zac Brown: The Goalkeeper Who Became the Organizer
Zac Brown is 33, queer, and a goalkeeper for the San Francisco Spikes, an LGBTQ-focused soccer club. And, for this World Cup, Brown is also the Executive Director of Pride House San Francisco. The goalkeeper position is an interesting one for an organizer: you’re the last line of defense, the one reading the field while everyone else is sprinting toward you, and the one who has to stay calm when everyone else is panicking.
The Pride House operates out of the SF LGBT Center at 1800 Market Street, a partnership between the center, the Spikes, and the global equality organization All Out. Brown has been building the infrastructure for this since late 2025, when the fundraising goal was set at $300,000 and the programming calendar was still a whiteboard.
That’s the animating idea underneath all of it. Pride House is a safe space with security plans and programming to reflect how this city celebrates itself.
Brown’s framing on the political moment is practical rather than defeated: “We’re not going to control the way the federal government works. But we can make sure the people who have decided to be here have some joy.” Joy in this case is as a political act. In 2026, that’s not a small thing.
Danielle Thoe: The Bar Owner Who Named a Room After a Legend
Danielle Thoe grew up in Plymouth, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. She was six years old when she started playing soccer. She was ten when the U.S. Women’s team won the 1999 World Cup and made her understand, for the first time, what it looked like when women’s sports generated that kind of electricity. The image has stayed with her since.
She’s now a co-owner of Rikki’s, San Francisco’s only women’s sports bar, which opened on Market Street in the Castro in June 2025, one year before the World Cup arrived. She and her co-founder Sara Yergovich met playing soccer with the Spikes. The bar is named after Rikki Streicher, the late San Francisco activist and bar owner who ran Maud’s and Amelia’s, and whose name is also on a baseball diamond in Eureka Valley. Naming a bar after a queer pioneer, instead of inventing a market-tested brand, tells you something about Thoe’s priorities.
Thoe is a Pride House SF board member as well as a member of the Spikes. What Rikki’s represents and what the Pride House extends is a specific thesis about what San Francisco’s culture is actually for. It’s not a museum of its own past. It’s a place where the act of opening a women’s sports bar in the Castro in the middle of a hostile political moment is itself a statement. Thoe made that argument in brick and mortar. She’s making it again at 1800 Market.
The Spikes, The Center, and the City That Shows Up
Pride House SF is a joint effort: the SF LGBT Center, the Spikes, All Out, and a network of community partners that includes San Francisco Pride and the Yerba Buena Partnership. Jen Valles, Executive Director of the SF LGBT Center, is among the founding partners. This is San Francisco doing what it’s always done when the stakes get high.”This city shows up for things,” Brown said. “This is going to be fun.”
Tourism projections for this World Cup are running below expectations but Pride House SF is not deterred by the math. Its working on a different metric: whether the people who made it here, who calculated the risk and got on the plane anyway, find a room that was waiting for them.
The Drink: The Rainbow Striker Pitcher
Every Pride month deserves a cocktail with politics in it. The Rainbow Striker is built on blanco tequila, a nod to Mexico, co-host of this tournament. It is layered with hibiscus, lime, and a mezcal float that adds smoke and depth. Tajin is on the rim and there is an edible flower on top. It’s festive, it has backbone, and it scales to a pitcher for a watch party. Make it at Rikki’s. Make it at home. Make it whenever the room needs a drink that knows what it’s toasting.
Pitcher Base
16 oz (2 cups) 1800 blanco tequila
6 oz hibiscus syrup (recipe follows)
6 oz fresh lime juice (approx. 8–10 limes)
4 oz Cointreau
Per Glass
¼ oz 400 Conejos mezcal, to float over the back of a bar spoon
Tajin rim
lime wheel, to garnish
Method
Combine tequila, hibiscus syrup, lime juice, and Cointreau in a large pitcher with ice. Stir well. To serve: rim each rocks glass with Tajin, fill with pitcher mix over fresh ice, then float mezcal individually over a bar spoon. Garnish with a lime wheel and edible flowers. Do not premix the mezcal float; it’s the visual payoff of the drink.
Hibiscus Syrup
1 cup dried hibiscus flowers
4 cups hot simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water)
Steep hibiscus in hot syrup for 20 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh sieve. Cool completely before using. Keep refrigerated for 2 weeks. Note: This makes more than you’ll need for one batch, so use the rest in sparkling water, lemonade, or another round.
Pride House SF runs through the World Cup finals. The programming calendar, watch party schedule, and donation link are at https://bit.ly/43ZJHcS
The Big Gay Watch Party will take place on June 12 at Beaux in the Castro. Family Day will be June 19 at The Crossing at East Cut. The SF Pride Block Party and watch party will be at Jessie Square at Yerba Buena Lane on June 25 with drag performances hosted by San Francisco Drag Laureate Per Sia. RSVP for it at https://bit.ly/4uwlBRX
San Francisco-based Dina Novarr enjoys sharing her passion for fine wines, spirits, non-alcoholic craft beverages, and more with others.
Cocktails with Dinna
Published on June 11, 2026
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