We had a nearly fatal incident at the Sandbar on Christmas night.
Blair offered to open the bar at 7 p.m. that night. Shortly after he arrived at the bar, Dave got a phone call. Something was wrong with the power, so he went down to the bar to check it out. (I should add that usually, Dave isn't in town for Christmas. Fortunately, he was awaiting the arrival of his son, so he was in town this year.)
Dave's pretty good with electrical stuff but he couldn't figure out the problem. The lights in the bar came on, but then part of them would dim or go out. Worse, the fish tank in the back room had already started to overflow due to the lack of power.
They called Westar, and a technician showed up at the bar pretty quickly to solve the problem. Turns out, there was a loose wire on the power line that's connected to the bar. We were only getting power to half of our circuit box. Something Dave would have never figured out, and he certainly wouldn't have been able to fix.
The technicial fixed the line and the power was fully restored. And most importantly, the Sandbar fish lived.
Big thanks to Westar for sending a technician out so quickly, especially on Christmas!
You might have noticed that we haven't posted much on the blog lately, and we haven't been very active on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. There's a good reason for our inactivity!
There's a brand-new Sandbar baby in town, and your blogger was a little busy giving birth last week and learning how to handle a newborn baby this week.
Manager Dave is a proud new daddy! Be sure to congratulate him next time you see him. Of course he wore a Sandbar shirt for a hospital photo opp.
Fun fact: no fewer than three nurses in the labor, delivery and postpartum areas at Overland Park Regional Medical Center have been to the Sandbar, and a few have even danced on the bar.
We love our Sandbar shirts, and we especially love finding old-school shirts from the early days. Fortunately, Dave is a packrat and held on to many of his shirts from the 90's, shirts that many of you have probably never seen.
These days, most of our T-shirts are solid-colored logo shirts. Back then, we mostly sold white T-shirts with cool designs on the back. It was also pre-official-logo time, so the now-familiar tiki head is nowhere to be found on these shirts.
For Christmas, Dave and I had a T-shirt quilt made for Sandbar founder Peach. It's made up of 21 Sandbar shirts through the years and includes a shirt from the ill-fated Jimmy Buffett concert bus trip to Denver, the original latitude & longitude shirt and some of our newer shirts.
Here's a picture:
How many shirts do you recognize?
The quilt's not quite done; our friend Nancy put it together but it still needs to be quilted. Nancy did a fantastic job on it and we can't wait to see the finished product!
Typically we post stories on the blog 3-5 times a week. This week, however, we're taking a break.
Dave's having a baby! Well, his wife is. Which means the writer of this blog is unavailable and Dave won't be at the bar much, if at all, to see what's going on and provide stories.
If you've got great bar stories, email them to us at sandbar@thesandbar.com. We're always accepting guest blogs (subject to editor's approval, of course).
And we'll have more stories for you soon, including the one about the wacky Christmas night at the Sandbar.
It wouldn't be a holiday without a Sandbar staff-themed JibJab video.
Feliz Navidad from some of our bartenders:
Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!
And a very bizarre rendition of Winter Wonderland that Andrew will probably hate:
Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!
Have a great holiday season! We'll most likely be open on Christmas Eve and Christmas night, but not until later. It depends on when staff wants to open up. Pay attention to our Facebook page or Twitter account and we'll keep you posted.
If you didn't already know, Dave is going to be a daddy soon. Soon, as in sometime next week. Baby's official due date is December 30, although he (yes, he) could be here anytime now.
The Sandbar family created a contest and put in their guesses as to when baby will arrive. Each person picked a date and time, and for the tiebreaker, baby's length in inches. The entry closest to the actual time without going over wins.
If this baby is 49 inches, as Andrew guessed, we might have some problems.
Next time you're in the bar, be sure to congratulate Dave. He's pretty excited about baby's arrival. And be sure to tip well, diapers are expensive!
The annual Sandbar staff holiday party was Sunday night, and it was fun!
The bar was closed to the public until 9 p.m. so we could treat our staff to food and fun. The always-popular white elephant/gift-stealing game was the highlight of the night, and this year Dave added a twist: in order to steal someone else's gift, you had to answer a question from "Fact or Crap." If you correctly guessed fact or crap, you could steal; if not, you had to pick a new gift.
The first white elephant gift was a box of autographed Turner Gill footballs. It may have gone downhill from there.
Some of the other white elephant gifts included items from last year's gift exchange; an ancient broken scanner; a personal massager; a pink flamingo light; and a three-pack of ladies' camisoles. It's always a strange assortment.
Everyone was encouraged to wear crazy hats, and most of the attendees obliged. We had Santa hats, Viking hats, cowboy hats and sock monkey hats.
And we even had a surprise visitor! Drew, aka "Steel Wolf," a bartender from many years ago, stopped by with his lovely wife.
We opened the bar to the public around 9 p.m. and the party continued the rest of the night. Thanks to all of our staff for the awesome job you do all year round!
This is the second year we've participated in SantaCon Lawrence. What is it? In a nutshell, a pub crawl of Santas parading around downtown Lawrence. Santas were also encouraged to bring non-perishable food donations to be donated to Just Food, the local food bank.
The Santas (and some elves) gathered here around 2 p.m. last Saturday. A reporter and photographer from the Lawrence Journal-World stopped by to talk to Santas and take pictures, and after about an hour the party moved on.
The Santa parade traveled through Sunflower Bike Shop and headed south on Mass Street, with Santas handing out candy canes to children and waving at passersby. The tour included the Granada, a detour to Pyramid Pizza for non-alcoholic sustenance, the Replay Lounge (where a few Santas did the Car Wash on stage, and Dave was interviewed by Channel 6), the Red Lyon, and then back north.
A few Santas stopped for cupcakes at Cupcake Construction Company; others detoured through the Pig. The group came back together at the Bottleneck and ended the evening at Henry's on 8th.
We've got new pint glasses for the holidays! This design is on one side of the glass and our logo's on the other side:
This design idea was submitted by Chris way back in August. Way to plan ahead, Chris, we need to do more of that!
We loved it, of course. Pints are available for $3 each, and they make great gifts for the Sandbar fan in your life! You can also bring your pint glass in on Thursdays for $2.50 tropical drinks.
