Picture the setting. A clean, family-friendly bar and grill on a busy Saturday afternoon. Booth and bar seating both well populated. Burgers, wings and nachos flowing in a steady stream out of the kitchen. Beers getting poured ice cold from the tap. Big screens showcasing college and professional sports.
Bar patrons are raucous, cheering on their favorite teams, their favorite athletes to victory. It’s a scene that plays out in countless establishments all over the country. Now focus on those screens. Did you picture the athletes as women? It’s likely you didn’t.
But Jenny Nguyen wants to change that.
Nguyen told The Washington Post she has a vivid memory of a night very much like the one describe above, a night when she and her friends lost their minds at the exciting finish of a major sporting event: the championship game of the 2018 NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
The difference is that Nguyen and her friends were clustered around the only screen in the whole bar showing their sporting event of choice.
“We went nuts — screaming and jumping,” Nguyen said. “No one else in the entire bar was watching our game. So they were like, ‘What just happened?’” Nguyen said she joked after the game – with the sound muted – that “the only time we’ll ever get to watch a game fully is if we had our own place.”
Four years removed from that pivotal experience, the 42-year-old former executive chef is about to make that idea a reality in Portland when she opens “The Sports Bra” – a sports bar whose tagline is “We support women.”
A sports bar that will only show women’s competitions on its screens.
Nguyen said the idea didn’t begin the move from glib observation to brick-and-mortar reality until 2020, when the city calls home became embroiled in unrest as protesters flooded the streets asking for equity and Nguyen wanted some way to provide some of that equity to her community.
That’s when Nguyen’s girlfriend prodded into action. “You know how we always joke about The Sports Bra?” she asked. “Why don’t you do it?” And the more she gave it serious thought, the more convinced Nguyen became that The Sports Bra could occupy an important space.
And women won’t just be the bar’s choice of entertainment. The menu will also be female-driven with key ingredients and beverages provided by female distillers, farmers, ranchers and brewers.
But can giving female athletes their own space to be showcased make that much of a difference?
Consider a study by the University of Southern California and Purdue University that found women-athletes are featured on televised news shows about 5.4% of the time, a number that has risen by less than a percentage point in 30 years. (The 5.4% in 2019 was up from an even 5% in 1989.)
Nguyen, herself an avid basketball player in high school who briefly played college ball before a torn ACL ended her hoops career at the tender age of 19, said sports gave her, as a young, closeted queer woman, a place she felt “protected.”
The outpouring of love for her brainchild on social media would suggest The Sports Bra could also be the type of welcoming environment that might be lacking for fans of women’s sports, and supporters are putting their money where their hearts are.
A Kickstarter campaign Nguyen started to provide funding for the venture has more than doubled its goal, having now raised over $100,000. The Sports Bra is expected to open next month.
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