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.
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!
It's almost time for our fourth annual birthday block party!
This year's extravaganza will be held on Saturday, Aug. 11. The fun starts at 7 p.m. with live bands, a beer garden and tropical drinks.
Around 9 p.m. we'll have a special surprise: the unveiling of a brand new Sandbar hurricane video! We're also attempting to create the first outdoor hurricane in Lawrence. Mark Valentine and his band will play afterwards, starting around 9:45.
We're also putting together a slide show of Sandbar pictures from the past year. If you have pictures you'd like to have included, email them to us at sandbar@thesandbar.com. We'll do our best to include all the photos we receive!
There's a $5 cover charge for the beer garden, and you must be 21 to enter the beer garden and/or the bar. Alcohol must be kept within the beer garden. Otherwise, everyone young and old is welcome to join the party!
We've had some questions about the shark slide from last year. We weren't able to reserve the slide again this year, someone else beat us to it. So, it won't be there this time.
We were solicited to take part in a promotion to find the- wait for it- "Best Country Music Bar in America."
Yep, you read that right.
While many of us at the Sandbar love country music, and we have a lot of country music on our jukebox (or, at least, we used to- but that's another story for another day), we're pretty sure that no one in their right mind would consider the Sandbar a country bar.
Not to mention, this particular contest requires a "small fee" to participate.
Typically, the email pitches we get are completely impersonal and it's obvious they're just blasting them to out everyone. This one was a little bit different.
The sender made a point to mention that she grew up in Kansas, graduated from K-State but has lots of Jayhawk family members and is familiar with Lawrence and she really wants a Kansas bar to win.
It might have been better had she not mentioned those things and just let us think it was another anonymous, impersonal pitch. Because someone who was familiar with Lawrence and a "Jayhawk at heart" would surely know we're not a country bar, right?
It's funny, because the big prizes in this contest are concerts with major-label recording artists in your bar. Where in the world would we put them?!
So, no. We won't be paying to participate in this contest, but the email was good for a laugh.
We don't send emails very often. Not even once a month. We only send email when we have something important to say, like about St. Patrick's Day or a really great new special or something like our block party.
Yep, we're doing it again- our fourth annual birthday block party is coming up, and our email subscribers will get the info first.
So what are you waiting for? Click here to sign up. We promise, you'll get less than one email a month from us, and if you love the Sandbar, you'll love our emails.
Like bikes? Like beer? Of course you do. So do the folks who participate in Bike and Beer Wednesday, a self-described group of "laid-back people who love bicycles and beer."
This past Wednesday, the group kicked off their weekly event at the Sandbar.
One commenter noted that there are no bikes in the above picture; so it may have just been Beer Wednesday.
A number of Sandbar friends participate in this group. Former bartender Carrie; man on the street and former bartender Pat and his fiancee' Andrea; art director and sometime-bartender Justin and his lovely wife Michelle; Randy, Thom, Lisa and many others.
The group rides different routes around Lawrence, and sometimes it's a BYOB event while other times they end up at a local watering hole. Or start there.
Picture from the BBW Facebook page.
We love the creative alliteration they added to our Jimmy Buffett collage.
BBW'ers, come back soon! And next time, harass Dave into going with you.
A favorite tradition of local Lawrencians- and people from far, far away, too- is the annual Downtown Lawrence sidewalk sale.
It takes place every year on the third Thursday of July, and this year promises to be a hot one. Hot, temperature-wise and bargain-wise.
We don't really do anything for the sidewalk sale, since we're a little bit off the beaten path of Mass Street, but we do have cool drinks and popcorn to snack on.
A few things to know about the sale:
The city bus system, the T, is FREE this year on sidewalk sale day! All fixed routes are free all day, and the bus is in service from 6 a.m.-8 p.m. More details here.
If you're tweeting about the sidewalk sale, be sure to use the hashtag #swsale. If you can fit #Lawrence in your tweet, use that too.
Did you know? The sidewalk sale is put on every year by Downtown Lawrence, Inc. DLI is a not-for-profit membership organization that was created to promote downtown. Members include retail, bars, restaurants, service providers and other downtown businesses.
Also, your esteemed bartender/manager Dave is president of the board of DLI! So be sure to come out and support the annual sidewalk sale tomorrow.
Most people would never notice a new ice machine in their favorite bar. But when the new ice machine churns out pellet ice, or rabbit turd ice or Sonic ice, we bet you'll notice!
Everyone we know seems to be a fan of Sonic ice- the crumbly little pellets of ice that people love so much, they buy it by the bag at Sonic. And Taco John's, too.
Dave investigated and tested and tested some more before decided to make the leap. He wanted to make sure the ice didn't melt faster than our other ice, or cause our drinks to be out of balance with more/less/different ice.
The verdict: good.
So the new ice machine is here, and you can now enjoy Sonic ice with your favorite tropical drinks!
Happy hour is legal again in Kansas as of July 1. Hooray!
A long time ago on a trip to Vegas, Dave discovered a wheel of fun in a bar. They spun the wheel, sort of like Wheel of Fortune, and whatever it landed on dictated the special for the next hour, two hours, whatever period of time they wanted.
Obviously, since happy hour wasn't legal, we couldn't do the same thing here, but Dave modified their idea into what you might know as our shot wheel. Or the wheel of misfortune.
Now that happy hour is legal, Dave is thrilled that he can implement his original plan.
And he's bought a new wheel. It's very fancy.
Behold, the Wheel of Happyness:
Dave created some specials and the wheel is ready to go. Come in and check it out sometime!
