63 JUNE 2022Imagine if there was a bar—just one, somewhere, anywhere—with
women’s games as the default rather than the special request. Nguyen
went home and tried to look it up. She couldn’t find anything. So she
decided to build it herself.
“It was kind of bittersweet,” she remembers. “Like, sweet, here’s
a niche market that I feel can be really successful. And at the same
time...there’s been all this progress, but there wasn’t a place like
this already, which was mind-boggling.”
Her creation, The Sports Bra, opened its doors in Portland in April. At
a glance, it looks like any other sports bar, with memorabilia all over the
walls and televisions showing games at all hours of the day and night.
But it’s the first of its kind in the U.S.: Here’s a
place where women’s sports are not made to feel
like an exception. Instead, they’re simply the rule.
The logistics can be a bit tricky. Given how
little mainstream sports programming is devoted
to women, getting a women’s event on every
television, every night, has meant collecting
a hodgepodge of licenses and even directly
reaching out to smaller leagues for permission
to stream their games in a commercial setting.
But that has yielded all kinds of happy surprises.
Nguyen fondly recalls a weeknight of everyone
in the bar getting into women’s college bowling
when it was the only thing on. And it has served
as a reminder: There are lots of women’s sports,
and if someone’s only willing to turn them on at
a bar, people will sit down and watch.
While the menu includes an array of typical
sports bar grub (think burgers, wings, nachos and
tater tots), the list of signature cocktails features
a handful of aptly named drinks—The GOAT,
Title IX, Pickle Ball and Triple Axel—all featuring
Freeland Spirits, a local women-owned distillery.
The house wines are curated by Sarah Cabot, a
winemaker who doubles as a running back for
the Oregon Ravens, a women’s pro football team.
Nguyen has been heartened by the early
response. She rushed to hire more staff after the
success of the opening weekend. It helps that she’s
tapped into an existing women’s sports commu-
nity in Portland: The local Thorns regularly lead
the NWSL in attendance, and the city has plenty
of women’s college basketball fans, particularly of
the Oregon Ducks. But Nguyen thinks this idea
could work in many different cities, and she hopes
that soon, it might not seem so revolutionary.
“I would be thrilled if other women’s sports
bars popped up,” she says. “Or if every sports
bar decided to dedicate one TV, just one TV in
their whole bar, to women’s sports, day in and
day out—that, to me, would be a win. I feel like
that’s not asking a lot.”
Nguyen scheduled the grand opening of
The Sports Bra for the weekend of the women’s
Final Four. It felt like a full-circle moment from
when she had been inspired to create the bar in
the first place. Now, women’s games were on
every television the place was crammed with
people and the volume was up. Yet she still
couldn’t hear the broadcast.
“It was so loud,” Nguyen recalls, a grin spread-
ing across her face. “It was like electricity.” —E.B.5
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