Barry and Patty Myers offer a non-traditional Thanksgiving at the Weirs

WEIRS BEACH — Barry and Patty Myers know about community.

They’re the owners of Cheers at the Weirs, a bar and restaurant off Lakeside Avenue. This year, the Gilford couple kept the place open on Thanksgiving day, providing a place to go for members of their community who might not have had another option. 

They opened up shop in August, and, this Thanksgiving, took a note from their time in Massachusetts running another establishment near a high school football stadium. There, they’d keep the place open on Thanksgiving so families and fans of high school football teams would have a place to go during games on the holiday. 

“It proved pretty successful, so I just thought I’d give it a shot,” Barry said on Thursday.

There were a few patrons mingling at the bar, some eating and some drinking on Nov. 27. Professional football games were displayed on TVs inside, and Patty chatted with a couple at the corner of the bar nearest the entrance. The Weirs was a relative ghost town on Thursday around mid-day, save for the folks inside Cheers at the Weirs and the infrequent passage of vehicular traffic outside.

The off-season can be difficult for restaurants in the area, Barry said, but they’re somewhat unique in that they’re open all year long. Offering aggressive food specials through the winter helps, as does being a place the community will know is open reliably. 

Barry and Patty know not everybody in town has family or friends close by, and they hoped that, by opening the restaurant over the holiday, they’d be able to give people a place to get some good old-fashioned community. It appears it worked — Barry said they were busy Thursday morning. They’d stay open until the early afternoon, close the place for a few hours to have a family Thanksgiving observation on their own, then open back up again through the evening. 

“I’m really happy to be able to provide that for people,” Barry said.  

“When people come in and they smile,” he said, when asked what makes him happy about keeping the shop open through the holiday.