A well-known Oakland sports bar is throwing in the towel after eight years of business. In a cruel twist, the last day was the Super Bowl.
The Athletic Club Oakland, located at 59 Grand Ave. near Lake Merritt, shared the “very sad news” this Sunday on Instagram.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t keep it going longer — god knows we’ve tried,” said co-owner Miles Palliser. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us; it’s been a wonderful ride. We’ve opened a few businesses over the years, and we’ve had to close a couple. And I don’t know if any of them have hurt as much as this one.”
Palliser and business partner Ezra Berman founded the Athletic Club Oakland in 2018. It was a sister bar to the San Francisco Athletic Club, which closed last summer after 11 years. The website for that business maintains a statement saying it had been “a tough road since the pandemic, but it was worth the fight.”
Like the San Francisco location, the still-lingering effects of the COVID pandemic loomed in Palliser’s newest closing statement.
“This is something that we have been fighting for and against probably since the beginning of COVID, to be honest,” he said. “As so many bars and restaurants know, these times are tough and we’ve been doing everything we can think of to keep this place alive.”
The Athletic Club Oakland was a haven for sports-lovers of all affinities. Serving cold beer and carb-loaded snacks like wings and waffle fries, it often attracted crowds during big games, even rolling out AstroTurf and TVs on the street for open-air revelry.
Times had been tough. The exodus of major sports franchises from Oakland — the Raiders, the Warriors and the A’s — have been devastating to local sports bars. Last year, the The Athletic Club Oakland launched a crowdfunding campaign to pivot into a “chef-driven remodel timed between February’s Super Bowl and the start of March Madness,” according to the San Francisco Standard.
That obviously did not work out. But there’s a chance for redemption, yet. Palliser shared on Instagram that he and his team have been talking with an unnamed party, who’s interested in keeping the spot alive as a sports bar.
“I want to leave you with a little hope that maybe in a few months we’ll be able to get this place reopened with a new operator but, hopefully, still the same Athletic Club energy,” he said.
In the meantime, the bar posted, it’s “been a lot of fun screaming at televisions with you all!!! Love — the ACO team.”
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