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!