Fairplay

Where Tribute Pizza does date-night Neapolitan and Ranchos leans family-style Mexican, Fairplay solves the problem of watching Spurs at 9 a.m. on a Sunday without feeling like you've stumbled into a chain. The beer list rotates through local taps with the seriousness you'd expect from a 30th Street joint, and the food—carnitas fries, animal fries piled high—actually rewards showing up hungry. The bar itself is long enough to accommodate watch parties without turning into a scrum, and the open layout means you can claim a corner table and still track three games at once.

This is the rare sports bar that posts its game schedule on Instagram and follows through. Spurs supporters have claimed it as home turf, but the vibe skews more "locals who happen to care about the match" than "aggressively themed." Happy hour pricing keeps it accessible for weeknight drop-ins, and the menu knows its lane: nothing fussy, everything shareable, fries that justify ordering a second basket.

Parking on 30th Street is the usual hunt, but the patio makes up for it—dog-friendly, open-air, and close enough to the action that you're not exiled for wanting fresh air. If you're rolling through with kids before a dinner reservation elsewhere, it works. If you're settling in for three hours of Premier League, it works better.

The differentiator here isn't the screens or the taps—it's that Fairplay figured out how to do the sports bar thing without the sticky floors or the generic wings. It's what happens when a neighborhood that cares about beer also wants to watch the game.