Want To Relive 9/11? A Fort Worth Bar Will Help You Never Forget

DALLAS, TX — There's a hand-scrawled sign taped to a bar register in Dallas. It says simply, "If you drink to forget, we ask that you pay in advance."

Now another restaurateur is raising eyebrows with his 9/11-themed bar because, as he tells The Daily Mail, he doesn't want patrons "to forget that day."

The Fort Worth watering hole is called Bar9Eleven, and is affixed to Rio Mambo Tex Mex y Mas. It's actually been serving up drinks, and its odd nod to the events that killed 3,000 Americans in a single day and launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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As for the restaurant, it began service on Sept. 11, 2001 — that fateful day when hijacked airliners took aim at New York City's Twin Towers, plowed into the Pentagon and crash-landed in a Pennsylvania field on the way back to strike either the Capitol or the White House.

Owner Brent Johnson is unrepentant about his choice to mark one of the darkest days in U.S. history with a drinking establishment and snarky comments to "never forget" when it's Wing Wednesday there.

It's not clear how many of the folks who registered their outrage on social media have actually been to the bar, or if they're just taking offense as cancel-culture advocates. It's actually been just as it is now since being remodeled in 2013. So the outrage appears more than a little suspicious nearly 10 years after the fact.

The idea is not without precedent in the area.

There has long been "a museum" on the sixth floor of the former Texas Book Depository featuring the perch from which Lee Oswald allegedly shot President John F. Kennedy to death in 1963. It is not a monument to the president's life, only his murder. Is it as respectful as Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., where President Abraham Lincoln was fatally wounded? That's in the eye of the beholder.

There's also a local business that parades a close replica of the presidential limousine JFK used that day for kids and adults to cavort in to relive those moments as well. It's complete with detailed miniature flags depicting the presidential seal and the American flag placed over the headlights. And you can ride the same route the president took the day his life ended, and visit other JFK assassination-related stops. Just think.

Texans are a nostalgic and sentimental bunch. And we do love both our history and our heritage. When that leads to big traditions like Cinco de Mayo, or something as small as pecan pie served with a scoop of Blue Bell ice cream on a hot day, there's nothing better.

When it comes to turning a buck on a tragedy, that's something else. Maybe director James Cameron ducked criticism over "Titanic" because it's 100 years in the world's rearview mirror, and wasn't even the first movie on the topic.

But there are people walking the streets of Dallas, New York and Washington, D.C., right now who remember 9/11 and Nov. 22, 1963, all too vividly as is. Many would probably love to forget both of those days and the events that changed America forever.

And they might be much happier with a drink that put such moments out of their minds rather than dropping them back into epic tragedy.

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