“Wouldn’t you like to get away?” asks the opening theme of Cheers. “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.”

This vibe of mini-getaways and a communal spirit seems to resound with the team behind Hope & Anchor, the West side bar run by Bobby Smith, former owner of The Percolator, Christopher Lewels, former manager of The Black Market, and musician Jim Ward.

Described by Ward as an “epic patio bar” (“The view is epic, the vibe is epic, it’s just epic.”), Hope & Anchor is located in the former Garden Mart building on N. Mesa. The inside of the bar is adorned with cool-toned paint and eclectic art, including bullfighting paintings and illuminated whales created by artist Ivan Salcido that were previously displayed at a Jim Ward concert at Philanthropy Theater this May. Outside, you see red patio furniture and wooden round tables ready to be filled with patrons, and just a glance beyond the fence is a full view of the Franklins.

What sets the ambiance apart from the run-of-the-mill drinkeries and massive chain restaurants is the close attention to detail. Even their neon sign, which satisfies an apparent convention among bars, is second-hand, advertises an obscure cigarette brand called Panhandle Slim, and is completely unique. There are some El Paso-specific touches, with the wooden fence carved as the outline of the mountains, with a small star carved into the fence.

Ward shares how he hopes the bar can help make the city better:

For the owners, the timing was ideal. “We always kind of decided that we would do it when the right place popped up, and I think I might have been out of town, and I got home and Chris called me and said ‘I found a spot. It’s either now or never,’” said Ward.

The former plant nursery seemed like the perfect place to go from the ground up. “The whole idea was to find something that wasn’t in a strip mall, something that was never a bar before, something that we could build from scratch. The key to this location was, it’s a great location, it has a big patio, which is something we were interested in, and the parking situation that couldn’t be more ideal. It kind of fit all those criteria,” said Lewels.

Though Hope & Anchor is tied to a musician, Ward points out that it will not necessarily host gigs. “That was one of my criteria for going into anything is that it wasn’t a venue, because I spent most of my life in venues,” he said. However, they said that it was not entirely out of the question that the bar could host secret shows or small events as they pass though town.

The bar owners draw inspiration from the types of bars visited around the country by the owners, such as the Cha Cha Lounge in Seattle or Motor City in New York. But the bar is not a carbon copy, but rather a mesh of eclecticism the owners saw in El Paso. “We wanted it to feel like you were in someone’s house who had traveled a lot. We wanted to have those little touches,” said Ward. “I don’t want to say that it’s not like El Paso, because it is El Paso. It’s 100 percent El Paso. It was hand-built by El Pasoans.”

Although it's moniker could be mistaken for a nautically themed restaurant, the name Hope & Anchor has greater symbolism for a group of El Pasoans who have been laboring for months to reach a goal. “I think that it means having these ambitions to do something, but also being somewhat realistic, being connected, being grounded,” said Ward.

Because of the networks built throughout the spans of their lives in El Paso, they say they are able to make it more than just a business.

Ward said: "As opposed to ‘Please deposit your money here.’ it’s more like ‘Please come hang out with us…and deposit your money. But I still want to hang out, even if you don’t have money.’”