March Madness Mistake to Masterpiece: The story of our legendary new bar top

When I was the chef at Reed College years ago, I became friends with the bookstore manager, Gina. I was thrilled to see her again when Gina showed up at The Bra during March Madness '24 with a fella she really wanted to introduce me to.

Jared Deveraux has been a friend of Gina’s for over 30 years. As we chatted, they

recounted stories from their early 20s and all the changes, life drama, loves and losses that they've shared over decades of close friendship. Then she told me that Jared owns a flooring company that installs custom floors for the NBA, WNBA and the NCAA! He was in town to fix the HUGE oopsies (the 3-pt line was painted a whopping 9 inches off!) that happened for the floors at Portland’s NCAA women’s regionals.

He then asked me, or rather begged for us, to let him do something special at The Bra - something custom - for the bar. He told me about his 7 daughters, how he wanted to create a world where equality and equity were the norm, that he LOVED everything about The Bra and the space we created for girls like his…

He was just so genuine and completely overcome with emotion talking about the impact sports has had on his and his children's lives. I had mentioned to him that our bar top was falling apart and immediately his mind started cranking. Within minutes of meeting Jared, we became fast friends, exchanged numbers and over the next several months designed a new bar top together with the help of his team and Madison, our bar lead.

Jared was in Portland that day to correct a mistake on the basketball court. And if there hadn't been a mistake on that court, Jared and I may never have met. So turning that mistake into a masterpiece seemed like it was just meant to be.

With the erroneous three-point line as the centerpiece, he designed the rest of the bar top (which is all made with original flooring of that same infamous PDX regionals) to pay homage to our local teams, the NCAA March Madness tournament and the previous WNBA team, the Portland Fire.

Come see it with your own eyes! 

-Jenny