Joe Kinsey
Videos by OutKick
Blake Parnham of Keswick, Ontario (158 miles north of Ralph Wilson Stadium) looks out his living room window and knows it’ll be a chore clearing the snow that has accumulated on and around the 12-foot tall by 12-foot wide Buffalo Bills helmet bar that sits on the patio at the house he shares with his dad Rick, mother Michelle, and his brother Nick.
But it’s AFC Championship weekend and the bar must be opened for the biggest game in the life of this structure since it was transformed from a sandbox to the best helmet bar in the NFL. The snow will be removed along with the facemask cover and the most glorious bar structure known to Bills fans will be fully operational for Sunday’s 6:40 kickoff.
The history of the Bills Helmet Bar is quite remarkable. The story goes that Blake’s father Rick was a school teacher who would put Bills stickers on assignments that went home with students. Parents would see the stickers. One day, a mother who remembered those stickers tracked down Rick to tell him a sporting goods store had a Bills helmet that needed to be removed. It was the massive Bills helmet. Rick became the official owner and in 1996 it ended up a sandbox for the kids. Eventually, the helmet became cover for a woodpile.
Fast-forward to 2019 and a lightbulb went off for the Parnhams. The Bills Helmet Bar was stood up and came to life on the patio.
I slid into Bills Helmet Bar’s Twitter (@BillsHelmetBar) direct messages to ask the bar about its new life and how its feeling on the verge of the AFC Championship.
Kinsey: What’s your favorite helmet bar moment so far this season?
Bills Helmet Bar: The best moment of the year was all the love and attention I got during the Week 3 game against the Rams when a local television crew came to film the tailgate. They stayed for the first half, which was perhaps the best half of football of the season – then they left, the Bills blew a huge lead, but recovered to win. I was a basket-case of emotions that day.
Kinsey: How has life changed since you were transformed from a sandbox to the most famous helmet bar in the NFL?
BHB: Ah yes – I have a great maintenance team between Rick and Blake. Frankly, I expected them to have been busier this season, but aside from fixing the seam on my roof and removing some ice before winter games, I’ve been holding up fairly well. And we’ve had some good old-fashioned Canadian weather this year; there was a hailstorm in Week 8, and a fallen tree and power outage in Week 11. But it’ll take more than that to knock a 12-foot helmet over!
Kinsey: What are your bar rules people have to follow while enjoying a Bills game?
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKIftgyhcR4/
Lucky for him its north of the border. Andrew Cuomo would cite him for violating social distancing rules, slap him with a onerous business tax, then eventually shut it down for not being up to code.
Nice lawn.