The Sandbar...Home of the Indoor Hurricane!

Girls' Night Downtown Oct. 13

Ladies, mark your calendars for a Girls' Night Downtown, a fun new event in downtown Lawrence!

Downtown Lawrence, Inc., and the Lawrence Memorial Hospital Endowment Association are teaming up to bring a shopping extravaganza to our downtown shopping district. Along with special discounts at participating stores, the proceeds will all benefit Mario's Closet, a specialty shop at LMH that offers wigs and other accessories for cancer patients that was founded by the Mario V. Chalmers Foundation.

Here's what you need to know:

• When: Thursday, Oct. 13
• Time: 5-9 p.m.
• Cost: $20, or $10 with a college I.D. (All ticket proceeds go directly to Mario's Closet)

Tickets can be purchased online in advance here. You can also purchase tickets at the DLI office, 833 1/2  Massachusetts, or on the night of the event next to the Eldridge or in front of U.S. Bank.

So, what do you get for the ticket price?

A pink shopping passport that gives you access to great discounts at participating merchants (see a list of participants here) and a pink shopping bag from Douglas County Bank filled with more coupons.

At every store you shop, be sure to get your passport stamped, and after you've shopped 'til you're about to drop, you can stop by after-parties at several venues, including the Sandbar. Drop your completed passport into the drawing box at the after-party, and you'll be entered to win the grand prize: a pink wallet full of gift certificates to downtown businesses!

This is a fabulous opportunity to shop downtown, enjoy great discounts, get some early holiday shopping done AND help raise money for a great cause.

We'll be participating in the party afterwards with a shot special, and everyone who visits and shows their pink passport to the bartender will get a free Sandbar pint glass. It just so happens that Thursday nights are tropical drink nights, too, so you can enjoy $2.50 tropical drinks in your new glass!

Sandbar Profiled in Article on Foursquare Use

Last week, Dave was contacted by a reporter who wanted to interview us about our use of foursquare, the location-based social networking service.

I spoke with the reporter, Stephanie Miles, this week to answer a few questions. The interview is featured online at StreetFight.com, a site that looks at the business of hyperlocal. Read it here!

We haven't done much with foursquare lately. We were one of the first businesses in Lawrence to use it, but it's hard to figure out a special to offer customers when you run a bar. Liquor laws in Kansas don't allow us to discount drinks unless everyone is entitled to the same discount, all day, so that kind of defeats the purpose of checking in on foursquare.

The first special we ran rewarded frequent customers: for every third check-in between 5-9 p.m., the customer could show their check-in to the bartender and get free jukebox credits. People love our jukebox, so this seemed like a fun way to reward them for coming in regularly on a shift where we aren't usually very busy.

Another special that we ran didn't reward the customer with anything but warm fuzzies, but it was a success. We borrowed the idea from the Legends shopping center in Kansas City. For every check-in during a period of time, we donated a buck to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. We raised almost $100 with this special, which is great.

Other exciting achievements (for us, anyway) with foursquare were when we unlocked the swarm badge for having 50 people checked in at the same time, and the night we hit 1000 check-ins and rewarded the customer with a T-shirt.

We aren't currently running any foursquare specials, but if we can come up with a good one we'll certainly do it again.

University Daily Kansan Reviews Local Bars

A few days ago, I got a Google alert for "Sandbar." Many of the alerts I get for the bar's name aren't relevant- they're either talking about one of the millions of other Sandbars around the country, or they're talking about an actual sandbar. You know, the kind with sand and an ocean.

This one, though, also mentioned the local university paper, so I clicked the link.

The article was a review of local bars that students frequent, and after reading the entire article, I saw no mention of the Sandbar.

Finally, I saw the small picture that accompanied the article. Oddly enough, the paper chose a picture of our bar to go with the article that didn't mention our bar at all.

I guess our building is more aesthetically...interesting? It's a cool picture. But I'd also bet that 90% of the "students" convening outside the bar aren't students.

Sandbar Shirt in Ecuador

We love all the Sandbar shirt pictures we've been getting from all over the world! Ecuador is definitely a place we haven't seen one of our shirts in before.

Sandbar fan Richard sent us this picture on Facebook:

Here's what he had to say about it:

I just returned from Ecuador today. While there I took a trip into a small town called Mindo about 1.5 hours from Quito. From Mindo I went hiking through the mountainous rainforest with a few friends and proudly wearing my Sandbar shirt. Rock Chalk!

Thanks for the picture, we love it! And for those of you who don't know, our shirt wall of fame by the popcorn machine is full, but we started a new wall of pictures in the back room. Dave put up a huge corkboard and we've got lots of space, so send us your pictures!

Take Charge Lawrence and Beat Manhattan!

Did you know Lawrence is in competition with Manhattan for $100,000? Lawrence is participating in the Take Charge Challenge, a community-wide project challenge, and the prize is $100,000 for energy-efficient projects. Oh, and bragging rights.

Here's what you need to know, straight from the city of Lawrence (note: copy provided by the city, not written by me):

What is Change5?  It’s about saving money! Did you know that if you change the 5 most used bulbs in your house that you’ll save $75 a year? That’s $75 you save on bills and $75 you can spend on other things. Why not Change 5? 

Have you changed 5? With only 9 days left in the Take Charge Challenge, Lawrence is lagging behind Manhattan and we have just a few days left to change the outcome to beat Manhattan (and KSU!) and bring home bragging rights to Lawrence that we won the 2011 University challenge!

How can YOU help?  We’re asking everyone in Lawrence to log on to the Take Charge Kansas website and register ANY bulb switches (from incandescent to CFL) that you’ve made in 2011. If you’ve already registered your bulbs, then tell a friend! We are canvassing Lawrence via email and social media to get the message out that we’re in this to WIN it and we need the community to get behind us to win! If everyone in Lawrence registers 5 bulbs, then Lawrence can win and bring home the $100,000 grand prize for LOCAL Lawrence projects. 

 Why should YOU care?  The projects selected would not happen in our local community without the funding from the Take Charge Challenge.  What will Lawrence do if (when) we win:

1.  Fire Station #5 – Take Charge Challenge funds would be used to install solar photovoltaic panels at Fire Station #5 at 19^th and Stewart Ave.  The project would cost approximately $66,000. Fire Station #5 is the largest user of energy amongst the five Lawrence stations.  The panels would reduce energy usage by 16,500 kWh or 2% annually. 

2.  Prairie Park Nature Center – Take Charge Challenge funds would be used to install solar thermal panels at Prairie Park Nature Center in southeast Lawrence.  The panels would cost approximately $8,000 and would reduce energy uses by 2,500 kWh annually. 

3.  East Lawrence Recreation Center – Take Charge Challenge funds would be used to install large fans at East Lawrence Recreation Center.  The fans would reduce HVAC energy costs by 15% annually and save approximately $1,400 per year. 

4.  Energy Audits for city buildings – The remaining funds will be used to help improve efficiency in city buildings – fewer dollars for energy costs means more dollars available for services and programs.

 

What NOW?  Log on to the Take Charge Kansas website and register your bulbs immediately.  And, ask your friends, co-workers and neighbors in Lawrence and encourage them to do the same.  But, don’t wait --- time is running out --- only 9 days left!

 Don’t have any more bulbs to change?  Tell a friend or neighbor! We need EVERYONE to get involved – KU students, landlords, homeowners, neighborhood organizations – anyone who wants Lawrence to win and be able to complete these great projects for our community. 

Thanks for helping out!  The Take Charge Challenge ends on September 30, 2011. Energy efficiency matters to Lawrence and not losing to Manhattan matters to our community.  Go Lawrence, beat Manhattan!

 

Friends, this is a small, simple thing you can do that not only helps you save money and energy, but it also helps your community. These projects will benefit us all!

Blast from the Past: Bartender Josh

Last weekend's Halfway to St. Patrick's Day street festival had an unexpected guest: former Sandbartender Josh!

Josh worked at the bar back in the 90's. He was also Dave's roommate for a couple years. And, Josh is the one who initially set up the Sandbar's website and webcam, long before many businesses in town were using the internet for anything. We may have had one of the first webcams in town, according to this 2002 LJworld.com article.

Josh was a groomsman in Dave's wedding, and now he's living in Wisconsin. We haven't seen him much since he moved away, but he was back in Kansas for a wedding and stopped by to say hi on Saturday.

Remember Josh? Got any good stories? Share them in the comments!

Halfway to St. Patrick's Day Party Recap

Last weekend was the first-ever Halfway to St. Patrick's Day street festival, brought to you by the Lawrence St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee.

If you're not familiar with Lawrence's St. Patrick's Day Parade, you might not know that the big parade on March 17 is only one event that surrounds this holiday. The committee starts meeting every year in the fall to plan a whole bunch of different events that raise funds for children's charities.

Currently, the committee is accepting applications for the 2012 beneficiaries. If you know of a non-profit agency in the Lawrence or Douglas County area that works with young people, please encourage them to apply! Applications will be accepted until 5 p.m. on Oct. 3. More information, including the application, is available here.

Now, back to the party last weekend.

We were happy to help out with the street festival by securing the necessary permits from the city as well as providing the drinks. We set up a bar outside, our block was closed to traffic and a stage was set up at 8th and New Hampshire. Three bands performed: Radio Flyers, Ashley Davis and Imminent Domain. The committee requested a $5 donation for a wristband in order to drink outside.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't very cooperative. Saturday was gray and rainy and cool, and it certainly kept some people away. For those of us who sweated buckets during our own block party last month, though, the cool weather was a welcome relief!

Lots of loyal Sandbar friends and St. Patrick's Day fans came out for the party, and bagpipers from Kansas City even stopped by to entertain us. We also loved the bands; we'll keep them on our list for potential bands for our next birthday block party.

Tomorrow, we'll tell you about a surprise guest who made an appearance at the party!

Design our next pint glass!

Our customer-designed pint glasses have been extremely popular this past year, and we're ready to crowdsource another one. Next up, one of our favorite holidays: Halloween!

Check out last year's Thanksgiving, winter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and graduation pint glasses for examples.

Here's what we're looking for:

• The design has to be a black and white line art drawing. We only print single-color designs, so a design with multiple colors won't work. Shadows and other shading won't work either.
• Keep it simple. Remember, pint glasses aren't huge and the design will only be a few inches in size. The design should be fairly basic and not have a lot of tiny detail, and it should also translate well to a small size.
• You don't need to include the Sandbar name or logo. Our logo will be on the other side of the glass.

Our panel of judges will choose their favorite design that also meets the above requirements. It's also possible that we'll choose more than one. And it's also possible that we might combine elements from more than one design into a new design.

And if you can't draw or use design programs on a computer, don't worry! We've received crude hand-drawn submissions before from people with great ideas, and that's fine. Dave can take the idea and create a graphic for our printers. Anyone is welcome to submit an idea!

What do you get if your design is chosen? Well, our undying gratitude and fifteen minutes of fame on our blog, for one. We'll also give you a pack of pint glasses and a T-shirt of your choice.

So, get busy designing! Submissions can be emailed to [email protected]. And our next customer-designed glass will be for our popular Bahama Mama drink, so start thinking about that one.

Disclaimer stuff: submitting your design to us gives us full rights to use it on our websites, social networking sites and merchandise. We'll give you credit everywhere we can, of course.

Fun Police at the Sandbar

Bartender Danny's Bike MS team, the Fun Police, stopped by the Sandbar on Saturday after biking 70 miles! They started in Olathe and made their way to Lawrence for an afternoon at the Gears & Grooves for MS Festival, followed by camping overnight at South Park.

The Sandbar helped sponsor the Fun Police this year, so our logo was on their fancy new jerseys.

After posing outside for a few pictures, the Fun Police came inside for drinks and shotskis.

Thanks, Fun Police, for everything you do. I checked out their Bike MS fundraising page, and I was amazed. The Fun Police's fundraising goal this year was $15,000- and they not only reached that goal, they went way over it with $17,333.79. That is fantastic! And it looks like (at least at this point), our boy Danny raised the most money with $3,105. Way to go!

Talk Like a Pirate Day Tomorrow!

Aye, matey! Tomorrow is September 19. That means...it's Talk Like a Pirate Day!

This is an international holiday of fun started by a group of friends, and when Dave Barry mentioned it in his newspaper column once upon a time, the rest of the world got involved.

This year, there's a Google map filled with pirate parties around the world. Check it out here. We're not on the map because we aren't having an official party (and we didn't find out about the map until it was too late to be added anyway), but we're sharing it just in case you want to party with a bunch of pirates.

The head pirates are also collecting pictures from pirate parties for their Flickr gallery.

Dave ordered new pirate toys just for tomorrow. We'll have pirate eye patches to hand out with tropical drinks, so stop by and pretend you're a pirate for awhile.

One thing we noticed on the Talk Like a Pirate Day website that intrigued us...a mention of PirateSanta.com. We're very curious about what this might be. There's not much information on it yet.