JJ Pope isn’t planning major renovations at the former site of Boomer’s Bourbon and Cigar Lounge. But as soon as she got the keys to the building in early June, she knew the walls needed a makeover.
“Everything in here is going to get painted,” she said. “Except for the ceiling and these tiles. I’ll leave them black.”
Pope, the founder of Q-Hall, has been testing paint swatches with names like Dusty Violet, A Mind of Her Own and Pink Chantilly — early hints of the women’s sports bar and lesbian gathering space she’s trying to create.
The longtime Ashevillian hopes to open Q-Hall within the next few months, bringing women’s athletics, queer culture and local sports memorabilia to the forefront of a space once built around cigars and bourbon.
The idea builds on the success of The Sports Bra, a Portland establishment that opened in 2022 and is widely described as the first U.S. sports bar dedicated exclusively to women’s sports. The business has since announced franchise locations in four additional cities: Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas and St. Louis.
A few years ago, Pope visited The Sports Bra in Portland during the Women’s World Cup and was instantly smitten.
“I was like, ‘Asheville needs this,’” she said. “We don’t have a lesbian bar. We certainly don’t have a women’s sports bar. And I think that the intersectionality of those two things just, you know, they go together.”
Pope said Asheville has many queer-friendly businesses, but fewer spaces explicitly built around lesbian culture. The most recent lesbian bar in town, Club Hairspray, closed in the early 2000s, Pope recalled.
“There are so many places nowadays — which is great — that are LGBTQ-inclusive, friendly spaces,” she said. “But for me, this is an LGBTQ space that is ally-inclusive.”
The business venture comes as women’s sports continue to grow in audience and revenue. Global revenue in women’s elite sports is projected to reach at least $3 billion in 2026, according to a report from Deloitte.
Still, women’s games can be hard to find at traditional sports bars, where men’s games often get the biggest screens and the sound.
“Generally you’re kind of scrounging at a typical sports bar,” she said. “You might get one screen over here or you might get the screen that doesn’t have the sound on because they are playing kind of simultaneously.”
At Q-Hall, that will be different, Pope said.
“Women’s sports is blowing up,” Pope said. “There’s enough of it on that you can just have it on all the screens all the time. You don’t have to change it to men’s sports to have something on.”
When people walk into Q-Hall, they won’t have to ask to turn the game on, she said. “You’ll know when you come in here that the game is already on.”
Visitors can also expect women’s sports represented all over the walls. She plans to cover them with jerseys, trophies, posters and insignia of local sports clubs like the Asheville City Soccer Club and the new flag football teams at UNC Asheville and Mars Hill University. Already, she has one jersey hanging on the wall: the first basketball jersey worn by her eight-year-old daughter.
“She’s getting into sports,” Pope said. “That’s her jersey over there, number 15.”
Pope said she’s accepting jerseys from other young athletes, too. It's important to her that young girls get to see themselves on the walls, alongside pros like Billie Jean King and Caitlin Clark.
