A San Francisco Bar Fight Went Viral After a Belligerent Woman Was Seen Harassing Staff
The woman who instigated the fight was later identified as Shireen Afkari.
Published Dec. 18 2025, 10:32 a.m. ET
Nothing says holiday spirit like having too much, um, spirits, at the bar. During SantaCon 2025 weekend in San Francisco, a woman incited a bar fight at local restaurant Hazie's. After the footage went viral and the woman was identified as Shireen Afkari, she was apprehended by police. But the clips that are all over social media are what people are talking about now.
She is shown yelling at staff members and bartenders as her male companion alternates between trying to get her out and also putting his hands on other men who intervene. At one point, Afkari grabs the hair of a bartender by the name of Miguel Marchese and refuses to let go for several minutes out on the street. It's a wild altercation that seemingly began because of her belligerence rather than an actual fight between Afkari and anyone else.
The San Francisco bar fight continued outside on the sidewalk.
Marchese originally shared footage of Afkari and the bar fight to his Instagram Stories, and later, a user on X (formerly Twitter) spliced together everything to paint a picture of what happened. Afkari, who is clearly drunk in the clips from the San Francisco bar fight, shouts at staff members and even appears to shove one of the other customers in the restaurant before she is finally physically taken outside.
Once out on the sidewalk, Afkari grabs hold of the bartender, Marchese's, hair. She refuses to let go despite a crowd of employees shouting for her to let go. Her male friend is also there, though he appears to be drunk too. After she finally lets go, she then yells that he has her phone. As she runs down the sidewalk to chase him, she trips over Marchese's foot and falls to the ground.
The last few seconds of the video show Afkari crying, yelling at her male friend, and getting up on unsteady feet. Her male friend then shoves someone else in another apparent physical altercation. KRON4 News in San Francisco reported that Marchese explained Afkari was refused service because she was intoxicated. Her annoyance snowballed into what he said was "chaos" at the restaurant.
"Initially, the server verbalized to me that she could tell that her table was not only intoxicated, but perhaps on some other substances and they were giving her quite a rough time and being quite verbally abrasive with her, and then I do believe after that, they asked for the manager to intervene," he explained.
KRON4 News also reported that Afkari was arrested for public intoxication.
The woman involved was fired from her job at Strava.
Although Afkari has not come out to speak on what happened or any other potential charges she might have incurred, the company she works for, Strava, did. According to SFGate, Afkari was, until the bar fight, the growth marketing and retention manager at the fitness app company. After the fight, the company left a comment on one of its Instagram posts that appeared to address Afkari's job status without naming her.
"We are aware of an employee who exhibited extremely concerning off-hours behavior," the comment said. "We don't condone violence of any kind and this does not reflect the standards we expect of our team. This past Monday, we made the decision to end the individual's employment."