The buses were loaded and we were off to Power & Light!
After what seemed like an extremely short trip- most of which was spent, at least on bus #2, trying to get the sound system working so we could listen to Sandbar music, and also dodging the slow-to-move Ktag gates at the tollbooth on I70- we arrived at the Kansas City Power & Light District.
As soon as everyone could hop off the buses, our Sandbar crew disappeared into the throngs of parrotheads. Grand Boulevard was closed for a block or two, and there were some random booths set up in the street, but the real party was in the KC Live area. A tropical band was playing and there were parrotheads everywhere.
We realized quickly while walking through the crowds that a lot of people had heard of the Sandbar. Many people in our group had on our commemorative concert T-shirts, and everywhere we went we heard "Hey, Sandbar!" or "It's Dave from Sandbar!"
Surprisingly, it didn't take long to find people we knew in the huge crowds. Brit and Megan, a pair of former bartenders who met at the Sandbar while working together on Saturday nights and are now married, met up with us at Johnny's Tavern:
We traveled from bar to bar, which is easy to do in the P&L with its open arrangement and lax Missouri liquor laws. We started at Johnny's Tavern, where we also found our man on the street Pat, and wandered back to the tropical-themed Shark Bar, which Dave has never visited. At Shark Bar, we ran into a couple who love the Sandbar so much that when they got married last year, they stopped at the bar with their wedding party before going to their reception:
And finally, after realizing Shark Bar can never be as cool as our own tropical bar, we moved downstairs to Pizza Bar, where we ran into some more familiar faces. Stay tuned for stories about our fun at Pizza Bar, because they're good ones.