Fort Worth bars plan New Year’s Eve parties to end year of ‘unforeseen circumstances’
Marty Travis, the manager of Billy Bob’s Texas, got some bad news around lunchtime on Tuesday to close out a year that has been full of setbacks.
Country star Tracy Lawrence had to cancel his concert scheduled for New Year’s Eve at the bar and music venue in the Stockyards due to an illness, according to Travis, who told the Star-Telegram he knew Lawrence was tested for COVID-19 but didn’t know the result. Travis quickly refunded customers who had bought tickets and began drafting a last-minute announcement to circulate in a mass email and on social media. He booked a replacement act: Granger Smith, the Dallas-born singer behind radio hits like, “Backroad Song.”
Travis is hopeful country fans will still show up to the end-of-2020 performance, which will include an optional surf and turf dinner and culminate in balloons dropping over the crowd at midnight. Billy Bob’s has been restricting capacity at its concerts to around 2,300 people, roughly 37 percent of its typical capacity, and customers are advised to practice social distancing. Everyone has their temperature taken at the door, while tables are limited to groups of 10, Travis said. The venue has been putting in more work, he said, “to stay alive.”
He wants the New Year’s Eve show, which is coinciding with dozens of other events happening across Fort Worth, to say “get out of here” to 2020.
“We want to keep our energy alive and just start the new year off right,” Travis told the Star-Telegram in a phone interview. “When I got the phone call that Tracy was canceled, I thought to myself, ‘Why not? Why should it be easy to end the year?’”
There are no shortage of New Year’s Eve events in Fort Worth scheduled on Facebook, and Fort Worth Magazine has highlighted 10 of the happenings.
Celebrations across North Texas will inevitably be about bidding farewell to a year that has affected everyone in ways big or small — and continues to upend life. Ahead of New Year’s Eve, ICUs in Tarrant County hospitals are nearing capacity as the number of residents to die of COVID-19 has gone above 1,400. Officials including Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins are warning against large New Year’s Eve gatherings.
Officials are also reminding citizens to remember to not ignite fireworks, which are illegal in Tarrant County with some exceptions, or shoot off celebratory gunfire that can pose a deadly danger to people nearby. There are large fireworks shows planned across the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Many people, however, will be ringing in 2021 from the comfort and safety of home. The Fort Worth Public Library is providing a free virtual concert for these people, “An Amplified New Year’s Eve,” that will feature performances from local artists, aired over YouTube and the city’s municipal cable channel.
For bar employees marking a new year, it will be hard to celebrate the end of 2020 without recognizing the devastating impact coronavirus and shutdowns have had on their business.
“This has definitely been totally unforeseen circumstances that we find every single one of us in,” said Chris Polone, the owner of Rail Club Live who has been outspoken about Gov. Greg Abbott’s COVID executive order for businesses. “It’s important more than ever that we continue to unify with one another, as well as our community ... as opposed to waiting on the government to come save any of us.”
He plans to speak at the New Year’s Eve show, called Death to 2020, to a reduced-capacity crowd of around 100 who will come out to see a lineup of local acts. It will will be a Bring Your Own Beer and masks-mandatory event, where everyone gets their own bottle of hand sanitizer, Polone said.
Polone, who has stayed open at times this year in protest of Abbott’s emergency order shutting down bars when communities reach a certain hospital capacity threshold, said he will be demonstrating at a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission office on Thursday. Bar owners across the state will be doing the same, he said.
While businesses classified as bars must currently remained closed in the region that includes Tarrant County due to the high hospitalization rate, many have obtained licenses to continue operating as restaurants.
Polone, however, hasn’t sought a restaurant license and has received 14 citations for opening Rail Club Live, Star-Telegram media partner WFAA-TV reported, according to city records. That’s the most citations received by any Fort Worth business. And the TABC has suspended his alcohol license.
“We are going to be protesting at every single TABC office throughout the state of Texas simultaneously on Dec. 31st, New Year’s Eve, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the busiest day of the year for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission,” Polone told the Star-Telegram.
At the Amber Room, a bar in the Historic Southside that opened almost one year ago, co-owner Justin Faram said there’s no big theme behind the New Year’s Eve celebration, other than maybe to say “let’s get this year over with.” Around 40 or 45 people will be admitted to a dinner where there will be dishes like short ribs paired with wines, Faram said, and then a party in the speakeasy will go until 1 a.m. People can buy tickets to one or both events, with tickets ranging from $75 to $250.
Winslow’s Wine Cafe in Fort Worth has sold all of the tickets to its 6 p.m. four-course dinner, and as of Tuesday, there were only four tables left for the 8 p.m. time, a spokesperson for the restaurant said in a Facebook message. A local guitarist will play music.
“NYE has always been a special night at Winslow’s and we’re doing all that we can to keep the tradition up this year,” the spokesperson said.
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 8:45 AM.
