It’s Cheers Replica Bar closing time for good thanks to COVID-19
The Cheers Replica Bar is no more due to the pandemic.
The Cheers Replica Bar has become the latest restaurant COVID-19 has forced into nonexistence.
News of the permanent closing time was previously reported on by Food and Wine, and was first broken by CBS Boston on Tuesday.
The bar, located in Faneuil Hall Marketplace and designed as a nearly-perfect replica of Sam’s Place from the long-running NBC sitcom, opened in the late 1990s, and its final day will be Sunday, August 30.
“Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with no assistance from our landlord, has made this current challenge insurmountable,” Cheers Replica Bar founder Tom Kershaw said in a press release.
While the pandemic has changed much in the culinary industry, understandably customers would be hesitant to eat out at restaurants in a traditional manner, and doubly so for bars. While the Cheers Replica Bar is admittedly kind of a tourist trap (and there’s a place for them), even its cultural cachet wasn’t enough to survive, which is a little sad.
The show itself ran on NBC from 1982 to 1993, racking up 28 Emmy Awards and another 89 Emy nominations, with its spin-off Frasier running from 1993 to 2004 (possibly an even bigger hit, as it gained 48 Emmy wins and 145 nominations).
As a younger Millennial I’ve always been vaguely aware that Cheers was an important part of the history of sitcoms, but Frasier seemed more famous, probably because I remember episodes airing.
Viewers of Cheers who watched during its original run are getting older, which could perhaps affect their ability or desire to travel, even before taking the pandemic dangers into consideration.
Cheers starred Ted Danson (The Good Place) as Cheers owner Sam Malone, a former Boston Red Sox relief pitcher, Shelley Long (The Shining) as Sam’s girlfriend Diane, Rhea Perlman as the smart-alecky waitress Carla, and Kelsey Grammer (X-Men: Days of Future Past), George Wendt (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and John Ratzenberger (Toy Story) as regular customers Frasier, Norm and Cliff.
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