This North Myrtle Beach bar is boycotting NFL games this season. Here’s why.
Are you ready for some football?
Well, Buoys on the Boulevard in North Myrtle Beach isn’t.
Weldon Boyd, the restaurant’s owner, says he won’t be showing any NFL games due to players protesting the National Anthem and the league moving to allow players to acknowledge victims of police brutality and racial injustice.
Boyd posted a Facebook video where he had also announced free meals for first-responders on Sept. 11.
In the 12-minute video, Boyd detailed what he saw as hypocrisy by the NFL while expressing anger at the league for allowing players to honor victims of police brutality.
““You know how we are, we stand for what we believe,” he said. “This is total disrespect ... we’re just not going to promote it.”
No stranger to controversy
In April, he opened outdoor dining at Buoys, defying the state’s COVID-19 mandate.
“So, they’re starving, I’m struggling and I’ve got 40 people I’m trying to look out for,” Boyd told The Sun News at the time, adding his decision to reopen had nothing to do with greed or selfish motivations, instead keeping his staff paid.
The restaurant also sued a woman for libel in 2018 when she left negative reviews on yelp and social media.
Boyd has donated food from Buoys to local hospitals and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and turned his bar into a pop-up shop for household supplies.
When it came to his latest decision, he knows it might affect his business.
“And if that hurts us ... fine,” he said. “We have to take a stance; we’re not going to just sit back and not stand up for what we think is right at the end of the day.”
Boyd said the decision isn’t about race or any one player, but the entire organization. He is a veteran and says it’s disrespectful for him and other first-responders to see the league allowing players to protest.
“I’m sorry for our regulars that really enjoy coming to Buoys to watch football,” Boyd said.
Sports and politics
In the video, Boyd talked about the Dallas shooting in 2016 where several police officers were killed by an Army veteran. Afterward, the Dallas Cowboys asked the NFL to honor the victims by putting stickers on players helmets. The NFL said no.
Now, four years later, the NFL is letting players and coaches put names of victims of police brutality on their helmets. They also have the option of putting names of police officers killed in the line of duty. A Jacksonville Jaguars player recently wore the name of a slain police chief on his helmet. Other players’ helmets sport names like Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin.
The NBA is doing something similar, allowing players to replace their name on the back of their jerseys with statements pertaining to social justice. MLB players have also taken knees during the anthem, and some teams refused to play in the days following an incident where police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back seven times in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Boyd told The Sun News he won’t be showing any sports that participate in similar protests.
The NFL has been slow to make changes based on social justice, compared to other sports leagues. But this season in the wake of the uprising of racial justice following George Floyd’s murder, it is taking steps forward.
Before every game, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” known as the Black National Anthem, will be played before games. The league is also donating $250 million over 10 years to racial justice initiatives and painting slogans like “End Racism” and “Black Lives Matter” in the end zones of stadiums.
Players kneeling or staying in the locker room during the National Anthem is still a common form of protest in sports since Colin Kaepernick started it in 2016.
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 12:31 PM.
