Cheers Review Part 1

I used to watch TV all the time before I went to college. During my high school years, there were two episodes of Cheers every night on Nick at Nite. This was back when my addiction to the internet was fighting my television addiction. But as 10 o'clock would roll around, I'd think, "Oh, I've got to get off the computer - it's time for Cheers."

Maybe around 9:45 one day I decided to combine my two addictions and Google the show. It was then I found that Cheers was a real bar. Fiction and reality were clashing, and I was in the middle. I could walk down that staircase! I was determined to go!

Alas, I was 16 years old and I lived in New Jersey. There was no way, I thought, I would ever get to go to Cheers. But the over next few months I completely immersed myself in everything Cheers.

By day, I was on the internet, learning every thing about the real bar that I possibly could. I read the reviews. I memorized the menu. I must have taken the online virtual tour hundreds of hundreds of times.

By night, I would watch my two episodes of Cheers on Nick at Nite and as I would see Norm, Frasier, and the rest of the gang walk down those stairs and into the door and sit at the bar, I imagined myself doing the same thing, and knew that one day it would be true.

But Cheers was just a fad in my life, like many others before and after it. I grew up and I moved on. I hardly watch TV these days. Had things been continuing status quo, I would've never again thought to go to Cheers.

Until my father got a job in Massachusetts.

"Where do you think you'll live?" I asked him.

"Well, we were looking at Beacon Hill..."

BEACON HILL! Beacon HILL!

Cheers is in Beacon Hill.

"Oh my god!" I exclaimed. "Did you go to Cheers?!"

"No," he responded, unsure of my sudden excitement. "I thought that was somewhere else in the city, anyway."

"You're thinking of Cheers Faneuil Hall," I said, the memories coming back to me. "That's the fake Cheers. The one in Beacon Hill is the real one. It's got the staircase and everything."

For the next few weeks it was all I could think of. Everything was as it was before. Except I couldn't watch it on TV. Thankfully we here on the internet have something called Youtube. I even saw videos of people playing the theme song on piano! I remember I used to want to play piano JUST BECAUSE OF THE CHEERS THEME SONG.

It all came down to Thursday afternoon. We were staying in temporary housing in the Boston suburb of Hingham and my parents were talking about meeting up with the realtor on Saturday to look at places to lease in Boston.

"We're going to Cheers, right?" I piped in.

"You're gonna come with us to look at places with the realtor?"

"Of course! I have to go to Cheers!"

"Okay, okay, we'll stop in for a drink."

And how did I repay them the next day? By revealing that I had been deceiving them about my school grades all month. Our family dynamic changed completely. But on Saturday morning, we were on our way to look at apartments in Boston, with my main question being "How far away is this from Beacon Hill?" Of course, I was really asking how far the place was from Cheers. All the while I could feel the scorn in my parents' eyes for what I had done.

After a good few hours of apartment-hunting and unspoken parental disappointment, we finally arrived across the street from the familiar facade of the dreams of my youth, 84 Beacon Street, Cheers. I could see everything. There was a British guy on my side of the street attempting to take a picture of his equally-British companion who was across the street leaning against the staircase. My parents were arguing about how much money to put in the meter.

It became clear to me that they were operating under the impression that we would not just be "going in for a drink", as previously stated, but going in for a full meal. Once they saw the menu located outside on the staircase, it was determined between the two of them (even though I had spoken about it multiple times) that there was indeed food there and that we would be having lunch.

It was quite crowded as we walked in. Small children were everywhere. We were given one of those blinking electronic devices one usually only encounters in soulless chain restaurants and told to wait at the bar. From a middle-aged female bartender I pretended was Rebecca, I ordered a Sam Adams Winter Lager, because what else could be more appropriate at a bar in Boston during January?

Now, at this point it was 1:30 PM and I had not eaten all day. I drank my beer fast and was asked by faux-Rebecca if I wanted another. I gladly accepted and after a few sips of that one, I was feeling pretty wonky.

I immediately became horribly shocked at myself for being such a horrible son, and began rambling onto my parents how I was going to make my last semester at college really count, how I'd do all my homework the day it was assigned, eat healthy, exercise, go to the library, etc.

Part 2 here