The Sandbar...Home of the Indoor Hurricane!

Danny is a Rock Star

All of our employees have lives outside The Sandbar- they're either in school, or they have other part-time or even full-time jobs. We've had teachers, bankers, and other professional types, as well as staff who worked at other bars or restaurants around town. One of the more unique sidelines of one of our employees is Danny's gig as a member of the local band Sellout!.   

If you've never seen Sellout! perform, you are truly missing a fun experience.  The band usually has 6-8 members performing (including former Sandbar employee Bob on the drums!) and they're all decked out in costume.  Gene Simmons (of KISS), Marilyn Monroe, Tina Turner, the construction worker from the Village People, Jim Morrison.  We've seen a variety of characters perform with Sellout!.  The band plays a great variety of danceable hits from every decade.  You won't stay in your seat very long at this show. 

Danny plays the saxophone and sings many of the band's songs. At the first shows we saw, he dressed as a Blues Brother, with a black suit, tie, and dark sunglasses.  After his wildly popular stint as Devo for Halloween, however, he's brought that character onstage with Sellout!.  Which makes sense, since one Danny's most popular songs is Whip It. Apparently the Devo costume also keeps him cooler during the show than the previous suit.

Sellout! usually performs at the Jazzhaus once a month on both Friday and Saturday nights. They've played at the Granada before, and when drummer Bob got married last April, Sellout! performed at the reception. According to their website, they play mostly in Kansas and Missouri, but are available for "fun gigs around the world." They'll be playing again at the Jazzhaus on February 16 and 17.

If you're looking for a good time with fun people, great music, and dancing, check out Sellout!. 

Postcards from Australia

So, we recently got a postcard from Australia at The Sandbar, courtesy of our globetrotting boys Jake and John.  Apparently they actually wrote the postcard shortly after they arrived Down Under.  They just forgot to mail it until recently. 

In true Jake-n-John style the front of the postcard featured a topless beach. 

Dear Dave & Sandbar family,

Australia is a blast. We are finally settled in an apartment 5 mins from the beach, enjoying our jobs, and actually joined a gym.  I had to get this card b/c I saw my first topless sunbather on the beach today.  It was awesome.  Hope everyone is doing great back home.  We check out the blog anytime we get online. Ken, it's summer here, so we are expecting a new summer of Ken.  Blair, we gave a carbomb to a rugby player and he threw up.  Papa Bear, we have a shot waiting for you down here when you're ready. 

Love,

Jake & John

It's a wide, wide world out there.  Imagine, some guys go their whole lives without seeing a topless sunbather.  I guess there's always postcards. 

A Trip Down Massachusetts

Our favorite holiday is fast approaching, and we need your help.

The Lawrence St. Patrick's Day Parade is a long-standing tradition downtown, and it's also become a tradition for The Sandbar.  Every year our float gets bigger and better as we compete with ourselves to see what we can do next. It has to be big, it has to be impressive, it has to be challenging for us to build, and it has to be something the crowd will love to see. And of course there has to be a song we can fit to the float theme, because there's always dancing on the Sandbar float!

What would the world like to see?

We go through this every year.  As soon as the parade is over, we all start talking about the next one.  Everyone has a million ideas and then, as time goes by, they're all forgotten because none of us think to write them down.  In January, we always find ourselves saying, "well it's time to start thinking about float ideas," and then bam! it's time to start building something and we're running around like crazy people!

Here are some of our favorites from the past.

In 2001, the parade committee still developed a theme for the parade, and float entries were encouraged to follow the theme as closely as possible.  I don't remember what the theme even was, but we had nothing even close.  Instead, we built an Egyptian themed float complete with gold glittery pyramids, Cleopatras, and a giant papier-mache Egyptian mask thing, courtesy of Justin and Michelle. We made the float fit the theme by using a banner that said "Everyone's a little Irish on St. Patrick's Day!"

2004 brought the Love Boat sailing down Massachusetts Street. It was truly a vision in white.  By this time the parade committee had abandoned the idea of a parade theme and floats could be just about anything. The Love Boat was all Peach's idea, and initially had some resistance, but it turned out to be a fabulous float and loads of fun.

And one more for you...my personal favorite, the hot rod car from Grease that we did in 2005.  A giant car tilted up on the trailer...this one took some creativity. But our chief builder Dave and his helpers did an excellent job. A funny note to add on this one...there was a real car driving in the parade that day that our car was an exact replica of- we went to check it out and take pictures, but for some reason the owners didn't seem as amused as we did.

Well, that's it for a short trip down memory lane.  As the big day approaches, we'll share lots more of our favorite photos, stories, memories and maybe even video, if I have time to figure out how to upload to YouTube.

We have a new Random Question over to the right, be sure to vote on your favorite Sandbar float! And if you have ideas for a new float, send them our way!

Most Popular Night at The Sandbar

What's your favorite night to go to The Sandbar?

We posed this question to our many thousands of readers, and you overwhelmingy voted for St. Patrick's Day!  No surprise to me, that's my favorite day and night at the bar, too.

St. Patrick's Day is busy all day long. The bar usually opens around 11 a.m. to accommodate the pre-parade partiers.  It's non-stop fun as soon as the doors open.  Distributors and marketers always have promotional items for us, so we have prizes to give away all day too. By the time the parade is over, there's a line at the door.   In fact, when the popular Sandbar parade float returns with it's performers, there's barely room for the stars of the float to go inside!

The bar stays busy into the wee hours of the night.  And this year, St. Patrick's Day is on a Saturday, so we anticipate even larger crowds than normal.  Stay tuned for more information on our annual holiday!

Brainville

The Sandbar has some brainy folks hanging around.

A group of employees, friends, regulars, and other randoms started going to Brainville, a trivia game held at Johnny's every Thursday night and run by our friend Scotty Mac.  The game usually starts around 8 or 8:30, and there are usually 8-10 teams showing off their smarts.

The Sandbar group is sometimes smart, sometimes not.  It costs $5 per person to play, and the winning team or two takes the prize money.  I think our group has won a couple times and come close several other times.

Ron and Morgan organized an official trivia team to go to the Bottleneck's trivia game on Sunday nights.  They even had fancy matching shirts made up, with designs on the front and their names on the back.  They're so dedicated to answering questions for money that they even skipped out on our Christmas gift exchange.

We've thought about trying to incorporate a trivia game at The Sandbar.  Maybe on Fridays after work, or another, less-busy evening.  We aren't sure yet.  It's still in the thinking-about-it stages.  What do you think? Are Sandbar customers interested in trivia? Let us know!

How To Get Kicked Out

We don't like to kick people out of The Sandbar, but occasionally there's a customer who is just too drunk, bothering other customers, or getting belligerent with the staff.  Sometimes, it's just time to go.

Last week the guys were cursed with a particularly rowdy patron.  She'd been drinking all day during the football game, and by the time she came to The Sandbar she should have been finished.  She was banging the tip jar on the bar and yelling at the bartenders.  She wanted to dance on the bar and was told no, because she was too drunk.  After the hurricane, she managed to sneak onto the bar without catching the attention of the bartenders.  Once they saw her, they tried to get her down- but it's difficult to make someone get off the bar if they don't want to.  When she finally decided to disembark our fine dancing platform, she fell on the floor.  Which is exactly why they told her not to get up there in the first place.

At this point, the guys decided enough was enough, and escorted her to the door. She yelled and cursed at them during the entire walk to the door, and then even tried to come back in, telling them she was going to call the owners, get the staff fired, etc.

The moral of this story?

Don't be a bad customer.  We like to have fun as much as the next person, but belligerent drunks are not our idea of fun.  We like to keep The Sandbar fun for everyone, and if a customer is hindering this goal, then they need to leave.

Don't get on the bar after you've been told not to.  If the bartenders think you're too drunk to get up there, you probably are.  They have a lot of experience with this.  Your safety is very important to us.

Don't yell or curse at the bar staff.  This is an especially big pet peeve with most of the staff. They can hear you, even if they don't acknowledge you.  They're busy and they'll get to you when they can.  They'll probably ignore you until you stop yelling at them.

Don't use the "I know the owner" line to make threats.  This doesn't work.  Real friends don't make threats like this. If you're using this line, it pretty much guarantees that you're not a good friend of the owner(s).  Real friends treat their friends' employees with respect.

Don't dump beer on other customers. This has happened so many times. It's not a good move. It's guaranteed to get you a personal escort to the door.

If you can follow these simple tips, you'll probably be fine.  We want you to come here to have fun. The Sandbar is a happy place. 

Buffett Brew

For all you Jimmy Buffett fans out there...

Looks like Jimmy Buffett is expanding his empire to include beer.  LandShark Lager is a new brew from Margaritaville that is currently being featured in the Orlando, Vegas, and Key West locations.

What a great idea.  There are so many Parrotheads out there who will buy anything with Jimmy's name on it.  I'm surprised he hasn't come out with this sooner, actually.

Maybe someday The Sandbar will be able to offer this beer.

Sandbar TV

Video cameras are fun.

We bought our own camera a couple years ago, so we could film fun Sandbar events. We also used it to film the current hurricane video- in the past we've gone to the local television studio and filmed the video like professionals, but it's expensive, not to mention unnatural, in the studio. Much more fun to do our own thing.

Anyway, we thought it would be fun to start filming short video clips for Sandbar TV.  We'll post them here or even on YouTube and provide links. If you have some creative ideas for entertainining Sandbar commercials, send them our way.

Here's one to get you started:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmCW4gj7nfs

(I wanted to embed the video clip directly into the blog...but YouTube and TypePad haven't worked out whatever it is they need to work out to allow this.  They say it's "coming soon." We'll see.  In the meantime, you'll have to click on the link above to see the video.)

We didn't film this video.  A customer from Halloween of 2005 apparently had a camera with him, and filmed himself during one of his finer moments in life. We know it's from Halloween that year, because Ken and Blair were dressed as the Wham! boys that year, with the easily recognizable "Choose Life" t-shirts.  A quick search of YouTube brings up several Sandbar themed videos but this was the best.

Enjoy!

We love Margaritaville

The Sandbar is somewhat of a shrine to Jimmy Buffett and his lifestyle.  Our jukebox has all of his songs, and we have a rather large framed poster of him with a spotlight on it.  So, unsurprisingly, we also love Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.

Sandbar crew has visited a couple of the locations.  Our first experience with Margaritaville, was ironically, not part of Jimmy Buffett's chain at the time.  When Dave and I went on our honeymoon to Jamaica, we were surprised to see a place called "Margueritaville" near our resort in Montego Bay.  When we traveled to Negril for the day, there was another one. And finally, in the Montego Bay airport, was a third location.  We later found out that Mr. Buffett was apparently unhappy with the idea of someone else trying to capitalize on his chain and was in the process of buying the Jamaican copycats.

Margaritaville New Orleans was our next stop.  Located on Decatur Street in the French Quarter, it was a research dinner during our trip to the Big Easy.  We tried the food, checked out the upstairs "Tire Swing Bar," and shopped in the store.  We especially loved the stairs painted with the words to "Margaritaville," the song.

Margaritaville Las Vegas was everything you would expect in a city known for it's over the top shows.  It's part of the Flamingo, on a corner of the Strip. At intervals throughout the day and night, the staff of the restaurant gathered in the center of the room for their own Vegas show.  They sang and danced. They encouraged audience participation. They even had a guy on stilts.  But the best part was the giant volcano and blender at the bar.  A girl popped out of the volcano and slid down the side of it into the blender. It was amazingly funny.

Eventually we'll visit the rest of the Margaritavilles.  If they're anything like the ones we've seen, we know we'll love it.  That would be a fun Sandbar field trip- traveling the country to check out all of Jimmy Buffett's restaurants.  Surely that's tax deductible???

How did you get here?

It's kind of funny to see how some of you wind up at this blog.

I have a web counter set up on this blog to track the number of hits and some other general information.  I can see the domain name you came from, like sunflower.com or rr.com or swbell.com.  That doesn't usually tell me much, because half of the people in Lawrence use sunflower.com. I can also see the time of day that each hit takes place, and how long the person stayed as well as how many pages they viewed.

The most interesting part to me, however, is the referring URL.  In most cases, there isn't one. Those people likely are customers or friends of The Sandbar and just typed the blog address directly into their browser.  A lot of people came directly from the main Sandbar website. But others have ended up here because they are searching the web for something that may or may not have anything to do with us.

Searches for "sandbar webcam" and "sandbar dancing" would, not surprisingly, lead a person to our blog.  But, someone out there was searching Google for "super dave costumes" and was directed here.  Still others have searched for "indoor fun nashville" and "tuxedo thong" and ended up reading our blog.  Someone even was looking for "maynard's birthday" and showed up here! What's funny to me is that the Sandbar blog shows up on the first page of search results for some of these searches.

Lots of folks out there are looking for the elusive Dirty Banana recipe.  We talk about it, but we don't tell you how to make it. Other people are looking for Halloween costumes, especially Dee Snider wigs and how to dress as a woman.

The internet really is an amazing thing.