The Sandbar...Home of the Indoor Hurricane!

Busker Fest this weekend!

One of Lawrence's most unusual traditions is this weekend: the annual Busker Festival.

This weekend, street performers of all types will hit downtown Lawrence with fire, swords and more. It's a great place to take the family for some entertainment!

We're excited to be part of the Busker Fest. We'll have a bar set up outside in front of our place so you can enjoy a beer while watching the performance.

Check out a schedule of the performances here.

Hope to see you downtown this weekend!

Sandbar Tiki Transformer

It's always fun to see what people do with our toys.

Sometimes they become desktop decor, other times they decorate a bathroom. Toys have been spotted hanging from rearview mirrors in cars, and often they end up in the bottom of a purse, only to be discovered much later.

Many people give them to their kids. Maybe it's their way of feeling better about leaving junior with a babysitter while they go out on the town and have a few drinks.

Here's one use of a drink toy we haven't seen before: a Sandbar tiki transformer, submitted by our friend Curtis:

Fun at our fourth annual block party

What a night!

Our fourth annual birthday block party was last Saturday, and once again we were truly amazed at what a great night it was. So many of you came out and partied with us, and for as many people that came through our doors- or gates- there were virtually no problems.

Local band Blue Orleans (like them on Facebook here) kicked off the party around 7 p.m. on our recycled pirate ship stage. (We spend a lot of time and money building our St. Patrick's Day float, so we're thrilled to be able to use it again!) Blue Orleans has played at street parties in front of our place before, and they're always popular with the crowd. In fact, usually people are asking if they can play longer

Here's a video that Patrick shot of the band:

After Blue Orleans wrapped up, Peach introduced the newest member of the Sandbar family- Dave's baby boy. He's almost eight months old, so give him a couple years and he'll be mopping floors and wreaking havoc at the bar, just like Andrew did when he was little.

While Mark Valentine's headlining band was setting up their equipment on our ship, we played a slideshow of pictures from the past year at the Sandbar. Many of the photos were submitted by our faithful fans, and we appreciate the response we got when we asked for your pictures.

The slideshow is pretty long (though, it's not the longest one EVER as our friends over at the Larryville Chronicles seem to think) and we'll eventually get it posted on YouTube so everyone can see it.

While we're talking about the Larryville Chronicles, click here to check out their recap of our block party. It's pretty funny, and we're impressed that they got their recap posted long before we found time to write our own.

The big news of the night was the debut of a brand new hurricane video! Our current video is five years old, and while we still love it and many of you still laugh at it, it's time for something new. Patrick, Peach's brother, created a new video starring a few folks from the Sandbar. We played it at the block party, and we hope you'll stop by the bar sometime to see it in action.

Mark Valentine and the Knights finished up the night by playing all of our favorite tropical tunes.

Once again, the night was super fun and went by so fast. We can't wait until next year!

Sandbar Shirt in NYC

This Sandbar shirt picture comes to us from Pete, who has taken lots of great photos of our block parties in the past. This is at the Intrepid Museum in midtown Manhattan, in New York City.

Thanks, Pete!

Sandbar Shirt in the... trash?

Remember John the bartender, of Jake-and-John Australian adventures fame?

He's long gone from the Sandbar, having moved away to Houston with his college sweetheart Natalie, who he married almost two years ago.

Recently, Natalie shared this with us:

I must confess, I was packing our closet up as we get ready to move and made a pile of John's clothes that *might* be ready to go to t-shirt heaven. His frayed and paint-splashed Sandbar tee ("I was PAINTING the sandbar!") might've been in the mix... because seriously, in its current state, it's probably not street legal. When he saw it in the purgatory pile, you would've thought he was ready to divorce me. HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!?!? GET THAT OUT OF THERE! .... Whoops. Guess I won't be making wardrobe suggestions anymore!

Sandbar shirts are important wardrobe pieces! And often, they are sentimental souvenirs of a previous life.

I was amused with the picture of the shirt Natalie sent, mostly because the shirt isn't in nearly as bad of shape as I expected.

See those little paint spots on the front? Heck, Dave wears shirts worse than this to work sometimes!

However...we can certainly appreciate the idea that someone has too many T-shirts for their closet. Coming soon, a little contest called "how many Sandbar shirts does Dave have." Kind of like guessing how many jelly beans are in the jar.

Sandbar Shirt at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame

Recently we got a picture of Sandbar friend Kevin wearing his Sandbar shirt at the original site of Woodstock (the music festival, for you youngsters). We proclaimed on Facebook that it was the coolest Sandbar shirt picture we'd received yet.

But this next one is pretty cool.

Our favorite man on the street, Pat, recently got engaged to his lovely girlfriend Andrea. They took a trip to Ohio, and while they were there they took some pictures in Sandbar shirts.

These pictures are from the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. We're pretty sure the Sandar has never been featured on the cover of Rolling Stone before!

If you've worn your Sandbar shirt somewhere neat (can you top this place?!), send us a picture. Email it to us at sandbar@thesandbar.com, upload it to our Facebook page, or tweet it to us. We'll post it here and hang it on our wall!