Cheers!

The Cheers Bar on Beacon St. in Boston

The bar where everyone knows your name isn't real.

The establishing shot of the watering hole known as Cheers on NBC from September 30, 1982 to May 20, 1993 was actually the Bull & Finch Pub established in Boston in 1969.

In 2022, the bar from the set of Cheers is on the first floor (through the windows facing the street) where you might expect to find Melville's (the upstairs restaurant on the show).

Cheers is one of my favorite sitcoms and was the first show we binge-watched after Covid dropped it's curtain over us in 2020.

The Cheers bar from the TV show is upstairs.

 I wanted pictures of the exterior, not sure if we could get in the place where everyone knows your name.

 We walked down the steps (not as many as it looks like on TV) then walked in, finding a packed and boisterous saloon mostly filled with out-of-towners (like us).

 Upstairs is where we found a place for lunch, so we climbed a spiral staircase, passed the bathrooms (the men's room was much smaller than the show), gift shop, and reception desk.

 

Where was Cliff? And what about Sam!

The bar looked like the one from the show although it looked smaller.  It seemed there were more people in the room than the Fire Marshall might have liked.

We ordered classic pub fare, chicken tenders and french fries, plus a salad to go with our mugs of cold water.  (It was seriously warm and we needed to hydrate.)

The gift shop sells bobble-heads of the characters from the show and t-shirts with quotes from Cliff, Norm, Carla, Diane, Sam, and Woody.  You can also buy the mugs used at the bar.

You can get a Cheers mug for $12.

 It turns out this location was more than a backdrop for a show; producers wanted a real Boston neighborhood bar where conversation centered around sports, politics, and people.

 After making the rounds of Boston's best pubs they decided Bull & Finch was the best.  Coincidentally, the actual bar won Boston's "Best Neighborhood Bar" award in 1982, the year the show debuted.

 Our trip was all about baseball.  Sam Malone (on the show) used to pitch for the Red Sox, so even though we had a tight schedule we couldn't miss this place.

I was hoping it would work to cruise past lighthouses in Boston Harbor or walk the Freedom Trail; instead we limited our tour stops to the Fenway tour, Cheers and Boston Common, plus the location featured in the next blog.

Boston Common is across the street from Cheers.

After lunch we left Cheers crossing Beacon Street to stroll around the beautiful city park then up to the State Capitol.

The front stairway was blocked for construction so we didn't get inside.  It was nice to see the statehouse again - 43 years after the time Dad and I toured it.

The Common is the oldest public park in America, it was established in 1634, 142 years before the United States was born.  We could have walked around it all day.

All photos taken by David Mossner July 29, 2022.