The motorcycle club Dykes on Bikes revved their engines. Low riders bobbed in celebration. Nancy Pelosi, in a violet suit to match her violet stilettos, waved a rally towel from a motorized cable car.
In boom-time San Francisco, there are many unicorns, the name for privately owned start-ups worth at least $1 billion. But only one got a victory parade on Wednesday — and a quintessentially Bay Area one at that.
The guests of honor were not tech bros unleashing artificial intelligence agents. They were the Golden State Valkyries, the new champions of the Women’s National Basketball Association, who played their first game just 18 months ago.
Already, the billionaire venture capitalist Joe Lacob’s investment of $50 million to buy the rights to a Bay Area expansion team has ballooned to a $1 billion valuation, a record for a women’s sports team. After the championship, Mr. Lacob said, “A V.C. friend has told me this is the best start-up he’s ever seen.”
The Valkyries have sold out every game they have played at Chase Center, the waterfront arena that also hosts the Golden State Warriors. Their nail-biting Game 7 win over the Atlanta Dream to take the trophy on Saturday night drew 3.3 million viewers, the most of any W.N.B.A. playoff game ever.
But the numbers do not tell the full picture. Love stories, after all, do not revolve around data — and San Francisco and the wider Bay Area have fallen hard for the Valkyries.
On Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of fans lined the Embarcadero, the waterfront boulevard studded with palm trees. They filled the wide sidewalks from the Ferry Building and southward for blocks. They screamed with glee as the team, most of them women of color and several of them queer, began rolling past on double-decker, open-air tourist buses painted violet.
Stacey Camillo, 62, dressed as an actual Valkyrie, a woman warrior from Norse mythology, carrying a sword and wearing a gold headpiece. She said she ran track in college, but there was no hope back then of young women becoming professional athletes. She said she had been waiting decades for a moment like this one.
Ms. Camillo, who is lesbian, said the fact that the team’s players and coach had spoken out in support of gay and transgender people throughout the season made their win even more special.
“The team embodies the best of the Bay Area in terms of support and community and social justice,” she said.
The coincidental timing of the parade — hours after Democrats routed Republicans and elected numerous women, people of color and transgender candidates to office — seemed to infuse the deep-blue city with even more joy. One fan carried a sign reading, “No Kings! Only Valkyries.”
As he kicked off the parade, Mayor Daniel Lurie said, “The sun is shining down on our city, and yes, our country!”
The crowd cheered even louder.
It was one more big win for a city that had been counted out just five years ago after the pandemic hollowed out its downtown, the fentanyl epidemic killed thousands and property crime surged. Those challenges have eased, and San Francisco’s biggest problem now is that so many people, particularly those working in A.I., want to live in the city, driving housing prices way up.
“It’s a championship that reflects San Francisco’s comeback and reflects the Bay Area’s rise,” Mr. Lurie said. He said its importance to the city recalled the January 1982 Super Bowl win by the San Francisco 49ers, which came as the AIDS epidemic was beginning and soon after the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
San Francisco is now bathed in violet, the team’s color, from lights atop the City Hall dome and the Transamerica Pyramid to the gear sported by legions of fans.
The Muni buses’ destination signs read “Go Valkyries!” The airport had big violet displays featuring basketballs in its terminals. The libraries are issuing special Valkyries library cards.
There is a waiting list for season tickets for next year at Chase Center, which is called Ballhalla when the Valkyries play, a twist on Valhalla, the hall of the slain in Norse mythology.
On a BART train to the parade, Fatima Ramirez, 36, said she told the teacher of her 8-year-old son, Victor, that he would miss school because of a stuffy nose, but she was actually taking him to the parade.
“You have to go to a parade if there’s a parade,” Victor, a third grader in a Valkyries cap, explained.
Ms. Ramirez attended the 2012 victory parade for the San Francisco Giants, but said she was more excited about this one.
“In a space with so many women, it just hits different,” she said. “It’s a big testament to what happens when you support women in sports.”
She rested her hand on her pregnant belly, and said her baby girl, whom she has already named Elsie, is due in a few weeks. She said someday she will show the parade photos to Elsie and tell her how important it was that she was there.
The post In a City of Start-Ups, the Golden State Valkyries Reign Supreme appeared first on New York Times.
