Boxers, the NYC gay sports bar, opens on Walnut St.

Just as the fall chill swept in comes the debut of Boxers, a gay sports bar whose shirtless staff wears boxers as a uniform.

Boxers, which has several locations in New York, replaces the former Ritz Camera store at 1330 Walnut St. - on the edge of the Gayborhood between Nuts to You and Millennium Art Gallery.

It's bilevel, with the main bar on the first floor and a smaller bar - and tables - upstairs. Servers wear shirts upstairs around food.

The regulation pizza oven on the second floor (and, for that matter, the chin-up bar on which staffers compete) won't be ready for the debut, penciled in for 3 p.m.Thursday, Oct. 30.

Grand opening is set for Nov. 15.

Owners Bob Fluet and Robert Hynds fell in love with Philly during stops to play in the city's gay softball leagues.

Fluet, a contractor, told me that he and Hynds are aiming at gay professionals and straight women - "as well as their straight friends and associates. The alpha male? Not really."

The liquor license, incidentally, was purchased from Grand Slam Tavern, a former self-proclaimed dive bar on Adams Avenue in the Northeast, which closed last year, said the attorney, William Morrin.

I'll venture to guess that staff there did not do chin-ups.