Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumHow the Nation's First Women's Sports Bar Kicked Off a Movement
(a lengthy, but most enlightening read for anyone interested in women's sports and gender equality)
Although I have no interest in sports, if there were such a bar here, it would have at least a bit of my custom!)
How the Nations First Womens Sports Bar Kicked Off a Movement
PUBLISHED 7/30/2024 by Chabeli Carrazana, The 19th
When Jenny Nguyen opened The Sports Bra in 2022, she started a movement: Bars that only show womens sports. Now, fandom and pay are rapidly growingand its time for the Olympics.
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(Christine Dong / The 19th)
This article was originally published by The 19th.
The place was empty except for Jenny Nguyen and the cable guy, who had just finished hooking up the two TVs. Soon, this small room in Portland, Oregon, would be the nations first womens sports bar. It would rarely know quiet like this again. Nguyen flicked through the TV schedule and found two college womens basketball games. She put one on each screen, and settled into a brown leather booth across from their twin glows. It didnt take long for the tears to come.
Nguyen, a former chef, had been playing with the idea of opening a bar dedicated to womens sports since 2018. But she considered herself risk averse and pretty unambitious. Shed been unemployed for five years. And yet, once the idea took hold, she couldnt quite shake it. One night in 2021, she had been talking to a woman she was dating who, like Nguyen, had played basketball. (Nguyen played through high school until she tore her ACL at 19.) They envisioned a bar where the TVs only played womens sports and no one batted an eye. It would be a place for families. How cool it would have been, they thought, to have had a place like that when they were kids or teenagers? What about now, in their 40s? We both realized that a space like that didnt exist for us. When I thought about the young me, I thought, God, if we can get one kid in here that could feel represented and feel like theres a future for them in sports, even if that one kid had that moment, it would be worth it, Nguyen said.
When Nguyen launched a Kickstarter campaign for the bar in February 2022, it was fully funded within nine days, ultimately racking up more than $105,000 from 600-plus donors. She found a spot in Portlands Sullivans Gulch neighborhood next to a music shop. Inside, a bar ran along one end of the room and leather benches along the other. A basketball net chandelier hangs near a chalkboard menu listing 21 taps, all beers either made by women or at breweries owned or operated by women. Nguyen crafted a sophisticated bar menu (Aunt Tinas Vietna-wings, a Vietnamese take on chicken wings, and a tempeh Reuben are on offer) and a cheeky cocktail list. The Title IX, one of their signature cocktails, is a mix of bourbon, peach liqueur and mint. Around the entire room: scores of memorabiliaalmost all donatedthat pay homage to local and national teams. One of Nguyens favorites: a quilt of the iconic moment in 1999 when, after her penalty kick clinched the World Cup for the United States, Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt and knelt on the turf in her sports bra. When The Sports Bra popped into Nguyens head, she was sure it was the name for her bar, even when people pushed back saying it was, somehow, too risqué. She just thought about it differently. I wouldnt change much of what a sports bar is, but I would just change the channel on the TV. So I just took sports bar and I switched the two letters, she said. The key is: The tiny changes make the biggest difference.
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(Christine Dong / The 19th)
The Bra opened in April 2022, a 40-seat museum to womens sports greatness. The front door is plastered with a mural of women athletes. Practically every available surface is lined with autographed jerseys, trophies, cleats and balls. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert signed the wall. On opening day, lines were out the door. The Bra hit nearly $1 million in revenue in just eight monthsa lightning-fast streak to profitability, especially for the hospitality industry. The bars success has been so monumental that it helped Portland win its bid to host the Womens Final Four in 2030. Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden used it as the venue to pitch Engelbert on expanding the WNBA to Portland. The Bra and Rough and Tumble, a womens sports bar that opened in late 2022 in Seattle, have inspired the launch of similar bars in Long Beach, New York City, Minneapolis, Austin, Kansas City, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago and Denver. Theres at least one group chat for owners who are starting out.
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(Christine Dong / The 19th)
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(Christine Dong / The 19th)
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https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sports-bra-women-sports-bar-05-1024x683.webp
(Christine Dong / The 19th)
https://msmagazine.com/2024/07/30/womens-sports-bar-bra/
mahatmakanejeeves
(61,337 posts)Pitchers sister pub is new venture from former JR.s manager Perruzza
Published 6 years ago on August 16, 2018
By Mariah Cooper
League of Her Own (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)
Since the closing of Phase One in 2016, lesbian women in D.C. have been forced to schedule their nightlife choices around weekly or monthly parties hosted for them around town. ... David Perruzza hopes to change the landscape of D.C. nightlife for queer women with his new lesbian bar, A League of Her Own.
The space, which officially opened on Aug. 16, is located right next to Pitchers (2317 18th St. N.W.), Perruzzas newly opened gay sports bar.
Perruzza, who was a former manager at JR.s Bar for years, said he had been thinking about D.C.s need for a lesbian establishment since working at JR.s.
One day I had this couple come in and they said, Hey, are there any lady bars? I was like, No, theres not and the look of disappointment on their face. I was like, Wow, this is really sad that this is the nations capital and we dont have a bar for the ladies, Perruzza says.
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