How the Sports Bra kicked off a women’s sports movement
July 28, 2024 9:18 PM Subscribe
When Jenny Nguyen opened The Sports Bra in 2022, she started a movement: Bars that only show women’s sports. Now, fandom and pay are rapidly growing — and it’s time for the Olympics.
Oh, the Sports Bra is fantastic (solidly good food there, too!) Highly recommend it if you're in PDX for whatever reason. But if you're going for a specific game, you might want to show up pretty early if you want to get a table.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:56 PM on July 28
posted by Navelgazer at 10:56 PM on July 28
Yeah, Rough and Tumble here in Seattle is quite busy for the big games, to the point that you might not be able to get in.
We're definitely a women's sports household. In particular we follow the NWSL, and go to several games a year. It's a great ticket, reasonably priced and a fantastic sporting experience. The league has personalities and talent. It's a lot of fun, and I agree with one of the people quoted in the article -- women's sports seems poised to really take off.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:26 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]
We're definitely a women's sports household. In particular we follow the NWSL, and go to several games a year. It's a great ticket, reasonably priced and a fantastic sporting experience. The league has personalities and talent. It's a lot of fun, and I agree with one of the people quoted in the article -- women's sports seems poised to really take off.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:26 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]
What a fantastic, well-written article. The dust in the room got to my eyes at this part:
Jillian Hiscock has a story about her first time at The Sports Bra, too. She was visiting Portland from Minneapolis, and on her second night at The Bra, a mom entered with two young girls in their tiny soccer practice outfits. As the mom waited at the bar, the girls looked around, their eyes bulging as they took in all the images of women sports heroes.
“That is going to be normal for them,” Hiscock realized...
Twice, even:
Not long ago, someone slapped a sticker to the front door of the bar that read, “Keep female sports female” — part of the call to keep trans women out of women’s sports. In response, for Pride, the bar staff made koozies that read: “Let trans kids play.”
And lol at this:
Taking a stand hasn’t been hard for Hiscock, who says she’s always had “strong opinions.” She remembers beer reps telling her she wouldn’t be successful if she didn’t sell Michelob and Miller Lite — the two most popular beers at sports bars.
“What’s the number-one-selling beer at women’s sports bars?” she asked them.
Crickets.
“OK, well, I’ll tell you in a year once we’re open and we’ll go from there,” she said.
posted by mediareport at 4:56 AM on July 29 [17 favorites]
Jillian Hiscock has a story about her first time at The Sports Bra, too. She was visiting Portland from Minneapolis, and on her second night at The Bra, a mom entered with two young girls in their tiny soccer practice outfits. As the mom waited at the bar, the girls looked around, their eyes bulging as they took in all the images of women sports heroes.
“That is going to be normal for them,” Hiscock realized...
Twice, even:
Not long ago, someone slapped a sticker to the front door of the bar that read, “Keep female sports female” — part of the call to keep trans women out of women’s sports. In response, for Pride, the bar staff made koozies that read: “Let trans kids play.”
And lol at this:
Taking a stand hasn’t been hard for Hiscock, who says she’s always had “strong opinions.” She remembers beer reps telling her she wouldn’t be successful if she didn’t sell Michelob and Miller Lite — the two most popular beers at sports bars.
“What’s the number-one-selling beer at women’s sports bars?” she asked them.
Crickets.
“OK, well, I’ll tell you in a year once we’re open and we’ll go from there,” she said.
posted by mediareport at 4:56 AM on July 29 [17 favorites]
Worth calling out: "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."
posted by madcaptenor at 6:21 AM on July 29 [5 favorites]
posted by madcaptenor at 6:21 AM on July 29 [5 favorites]
This is great! If there were one in NYC, I'd go for WNBA and PWHL games!
posted by AJaffe at 6:25 AM on July 29
posted by AJaffe at 6:25 AM on July 29
There's a wing bar near me that's just a regular sports bar, but one day I went in because I was shopping nearby and hungry. They were playing the PWHL Ottawa out of town game on one of the TVs, despite the fact that there was not a single woman in the bar until I got there (t was 3 in the afternoon, there were also not that many men) and now I go there on purpose.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:27 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 6:27 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]
Yeah, Rough and Tumble here in Seattle is quite busy for the big games, to the point that you might not be able to get in.
We're definitely a women's sports household. In particular we follow the NWSL, and go to several games a year. It's a great ticket, reasonably priced and a fantastic sporting experience. The league has personalities and talent. It's a lot of fun, and I agree with one of the people quoted in the article -- women's sports seems poised to really take off.
Our household got into NWSL after moving to Portland two years ago. Some of my wife's new colleagues are regulars at Thorns games, so we started going, and this past Christmas she surprised me with season tickets. I was never a huge sports guy before, and my wife certainly wasn't, and now Thorns fandom is a major part of our lives. (My wife has said that if she'd known how much being a fan was about group-singing and cosplay, she would have started going to soccer games a long time ago.) We heard about the Sports Bra when a friend of mine (a Washington Spirit fan) visited from DC last year, and the only specific thing on his agenda was that we had to go to the Sports Bra at some point (we caught the USWNT's friendly against Ireland in advance of the WC that unfortunately featured a serious knee injury for Mallory Swanson.) The place was packed and the atmosphere amazing.
This past Friday night, we went to see the Thorns Academy team play Wrexham Women AFC as part of the Wrex Coast Tour at Providence Park. Thorns Academy won 7-0, but despite the score, it was all love in the air at that game. Rob McElhenny and Kaitlin Olson were there to talk at the top of the match, calling Portland (where Olson is from, which I didn't know) the "beating heart of women's football," which brought a tear to my eye. Lot's of fans were wearing gear for both teams, which I'd never seen before in any sport, and definitely not at Providence Park, a place known for its rabidly loud fanbase. (Apologies to Smedly, butlerian jihadi: there's a regular chant at the games, sung to the tune of "When the Saints Go Marching In," starting very slow and progressively getting faster and faster over the course of 10-15 minutes. At the end of each verse, the crowd invariably yells "FUCK SEATTLE!" This happens whether we're playing Seattle or not. Smedly wasn't lying about the teams having personalities.) The game ended with tons of cheers for the Wrexham players, and set an attendance record for a Wrexham Women's game, and was just a very different but cool atmosphere from what we normally see there (as you can probably tell from above, Thorns fans are usually very, well, aggressive and contentious. Which is also part of the fun, but it wasn't appropriate in this setting.)
So, TL;DR, it's hard to tell in Portland whether this sort of thing is "poised to take off" nationally. Because Portland is already pretty all-in on it. But damn, I hope so. Because when we watch away games on TV, the crowds look pretty paltry compared to what they should be (and you can sometimes hear the visiting Thorns fans over anything else in the stadium, which shouldn't be the case in an ideal world.) Let it be so, please. And soon.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:34 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]
We're definitely a women's sports household. In particular we follow the NWSL, and go to several games a year. It's a great ticket, reasonably priced and a fantastic sporting experience. The league has personalities and talent. It's a lot of fun, and I agree with one of the people quoted in the article -- women's sports seems poised to really take off.
Our household got into NWSL after moving to Portland two years ago. Some of my wife's new colleagues are regulars at Thorns games, so we started going, and this past Christmas she surprised me with season tickets. I was never a huge sports guy before, and my wife certainly wasn't, and now Thorns fandom is a major part of our lives. (My wife has said that if she'd known how much being a fan was about group-singing and cosplay, she would have started going to soccer games a long time ago.) We heard about the Sports Bra when a friend of mine (a Washington Spirit fan) visited from DC last year, and the only specific thing on his agenda was that we had to go to the Sports Bra at some point (we caught the USWNT's friendly against Ireland in advance of the WC that unfortunately featured a serious knee injury for Mallory Swanson.) The place was packed and the atmosphere amazing.
This past Friday night, we went to see the Thorns Academy team play Wrexham Women AFC as part of the Wrex Coast Tour at Providence Park. Thorns Academy won 7-0, but despite the score, it was all love in the air at that game. Rob McElhenny and Kaitlin Olson were there to talk at the top of the match, calling Portland (where Olson is from, which I didn't know) the "beating heart of women's football," which brought a tear to my eye. Lot's of fans were wearing gear for both teams, which I'd never seen before in any sport, and definitely not at Providence Park, a place known for its rabidly loud fanbase. (Apologies to Smedly, butlerian jihadi: there's a regular chant at the games, sung to the tune of "When the Saints Go Marching In," starting very slow and progressively getting faster and faster over the course of 10-15 minutes. At the end of each verse, the crowd invariably yells "FUCK SEATTLE!" This happens whether we're playing Seattle or not. Smedly wasn't lying about the teams having personalities.) The game ended with tons of cheers for the Wrexham players, and set an attendance record for a Wrexham Women's game, and was just a very different but cool atmosphere from what we normally see there (as you can probably tell from above, Thorns fans are usually very, well, aggressive and contentious. Which is also part of the fun, but it wasn't appropriate in this setting.)
So, TL;DR, it's hard to tell in Portland whether this sort of thing is "poised to take off" nationally. Because Portland is already pretty all-in on it. But damn, I hope so. Because when we watch away games on TV, the crowds look pretty paltry compared to what they should be (and you can sometimes hear the visiting Thorns fans over anything else in the stadium, which shouldn't be the case in an ideal world.) Let it be so, please. And soon.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:34 AM on July 29 [1 favorite]
Worth calling out: "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."
If this kind of thing is your jam, portland also has the Shebrew beer fest every year. It's a lot of fun and the dipshit quotient is super low relative to other brewing festivals
posted by Dr. Twist at 8:21 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]
If this kind of thing is your jam, portland also has the Shebrew beer fest every year. It's a lot of fun and the dipshit quotient is super low relative to other brewing festivals
posted by Dr. Twist at 8:21 AM on July 29 [2 favorites]
Next PDX IRL meetup spot on a non big game day? I meant to organize another this summer but had to go out of town to help my folks for a stretch.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:23 AM on July 30 [1 favorite]
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:23 AM on July 30 [1 favorite]
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