The Baddies arrived at the pier around 8:30 a.m. They were dressed in overalls and sweatshirts and their sturdiest shoes; they carried tumblers of fresh coffee and six-packs of beer. Almost none of the 15 women had met before this particular Sunday, but you’d never know it given the way they hugged each other hello, the sea breeze blowing strands of hair across their faces.
It was a beautiful day for crabbing.
That morning at Torpedo Wharf was the fifth monthly meetup of the Crabby Baddies, a new local club for women who crab, or who are at least crab-curious. It turns out, there are a lot of these: Over the past few months, crabbing has become a trending hobby for women around the Bay Area. It’s easy to understand why once you’ve tried it.
“It all started, like a lot of great stories, with a layoff,” said Lissa Koelzer, one of the founders of the group. She explained that after she lost her job in public relations last year, she “wanted to define this chapter of my life with a really cool, weird hobby. I wanted something really unconventional.”
Koelzer was inspired by Katelyn Bui, a local content creator who KQED called “the most famous crab fishing influencer in the Bay” in a profile from last December. Around that time, Koelzer bought a hoop net, a common recreational crab trap, and invited her friend Hannah Gomez Farias to go crabbing with her for the first time.
“We both had the best day,” Koelzer said. “We made this promise to each other that this was going to be our thing, and we were going to go out there every month together.”
They posted a video of the day on TikTok, and it racked up enough comments from local women wanting to join that the two were convinced to make the Crabby Baddies a real club. Now, they have more than 5,000 followers on Instagram and around 500 members in their private WhatsApp chat. Most of the women who joined the April meetup on Torpedo Wharf, whose ages ranged from 23 to 35, heard of the club through TikTok.
Koelzer, 31, and Gomez Farias, 34, both said they do not want to make the club a business. They recently started selling merch — a tote bag, red beanie, a baby tee with two crabs across the chest — but they said that’s mostly to cover the cost of bagels, gear, and bait that they provide for the Baddies. (They endearingly, unironically call each other Baddies at the meetups.) “I don’t see how this would turn any kind of profit,” Gomez Farias laughed.
That easygoing spirit is what sets the Crabby Baddies — and crabbing in general — apart from many other pay-to-play social scenes in San Francisco.
It’s outdoors and relatively easy: The basic skills required are tying a sturdy knot; tossing a hoop net off a dock; and hanging out. It’s also relatively inexpensive, the largest investments being the hoop net or a fishing rod, which can run you about $80, and a crabbing license, which costs $60.
If you go with a group like the Crabby Baddies, it’s even cheaper. They crab from public piers, docks, and jetties, so no license is required. The organizers also provide traps, bait, and sometimes, bagels. All interested folks need to do is dress appropriately and be ready to get their hands wet.
“It’s outside, there’s a tailgating vibe, and there’s a low barrier to entry,” one Baddie named Emilia Dallman told Gazetteer SF on the wharf.
The Crabby Baddies are the most organized group within the growing scene, but there are plenty of women taking advantage of the season.
LuRay Joy is one of those women. The 31-year-old said that crabbing has always been on her radar growing up in San Francisco, but she finally decided to give it a go last November, after she got some free gear from a friend who was moving to Los Angeles: a hoop net, a fishing rod, and some crab snares to attach to the end of the rod. “I was like, alright, this is my moment,” Joy said.
Like the Baddies, Joy began her crabbing journey catching rock crab on a pier in the Bay. Equipped with her license and some solid hoop-net-slinging skills, Joy frequents China Beach and Ocean Beach where she can catch Dungeness crab.
“Dungeness crab are the yummy-yummy, super-good crab that they serve in restaurants and are super dank,” she said. “Rock crab are also delicious, but they’re not as dank, and smaller usually.”
Dungeness crab are protected inside the Bay and can only be caught oceanside, west of the Golden Gate Bridge. Rock crab, however, can be taken from the Bay; their black-tipped claws make them easy to distinguish. There are also minimum size requirements that must be met to ensure young crabs and females are thrown back into the water. Generally, a shellfish gauge is used to measure the carapace.
Allison Murray, who works in wildfire defense, frequents the Pacifica Pier after work and on the weekends. A decade ago, she borrowed her dad’s gear and has been hooked since. Murray, like Joy, uses a double-loop hoop net to catch. The pastime isn’t without snags — such as literally snagging nets on barnacles or having catchless days — even for more seasoned crabbers, but Murray says that’s never been a deterrent.
She’s currently focused on upping her bait game. Crabs are attracted to “fattier, stinkier kinds of meats” like chicken with the skin on, pork, squid, or anchovies. “We tend to do a nasty little concoction. I’m convinced that cream cheese is the secret link,” she said. (Crabs, they’re just like us.)
Despite sometimes being the only woman among many fishermen, Murray, 37, finds that oceankind are a welcoming population. “They’re all out there to help each other. They cheer when you pull something in. It's not competitive, you know, who’s going to get more. There’s no sense of scarcity there,” she said. Over the past several months, Murray has noticed more younger people and women crabbing at the pier.
That Sunday morning, the Baddies weren’t the only women at Torpedo Wharf, but they were certainly the largest girl gang. Koelzer said, fortunately, the gender dynamics on the pier haven’t really led to any unsavory encounters with the fishermen. “Sometimes men mansplain crabbing,” Koelzer said, “but those are usually the ones who don’t know the rules anyway.”
Joy said it’s subtle, but she has felt some pressure to show the world that women are just as capable as men at male-coded activities like crabbing. She recalled, one day, paddling out on her longboard at China Beach to drop a hoop net in the ocean.
“I was like, okay, all eyes are on me, because I’m just this chick in a bikini trying to get some crabs. We have to have crabs in the pot, or it’s going to be so embarrassing,” Joy said.
Luckily, when she pulled up the pot, there were two big crabs inside. “I paddled them back in, and the entire beach came over to look. Everyone was in a big semi-circle around us, checking out the crabs,” Joy said. “There’s such an amazing energy around just seeing what’s in there, checking out this weird bottom creature that you don’t really get to see that much of.”
Beyond ocean breeze and good hangs, crabbing is an accessible way to interact with nature and local food sources, whether by negotiating with a sea lion who’s raiding your net or having to kill and prepare the day’s bounty yourself.
“Over the years, I realized I really had no relationship with the stuff I’m consuming,” Joy said. “Like, it’s 60 bucks to go eat crab at a restaurant. It’s super expensive, but it’s super delicious and fun to have with friends. I wanted to have access to that, but in a way that feels like I’m close to it, not just going to a store and buying it.”
