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What Cheer Antiques

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What the heck is "What Cheer?" you might ask.... Well, once upon a time, there was a New England colonist named Roger William. He was originally part of the Boston colony, but soon found that those people were becoming too bossy in the religion department. He was like - "hey, isn't this why we left friggin' England in the first place?" On the verge of getting booted out for being too "radical," he took off in search of someplace more laid back (and probably narrowly escaped the whole witch trial business). Roger was interested in the native peoples of the new world, and did a little research into their language. The legend goes that when he pulled into Rhode Island, he greeted the local Narragansett Indians with "What Cheer, netop!" which loosely translates into "Hi, neighbor!" (and not, "hey, we're here to take your land.") Today it is probably the equivalent of "whassup?" The Narragansett Brewery would later adopt this as their slogan - "Hi Neighbor!" So, that's the story of What Cheer. I first heard it as a risd student, when I had a class in the What Cheer Garage, and was like - "the what?" Years ago, there were tons of businesses that used the term, but when we opened in 1999, we were the only ones around.

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