Friday night was the sixth annual Lawrence Chamber of Commerce's Young Professionals Putt Putt Pub Crawl. The event brings together local young professionals for a fun evening of traveling to downtown bars, socializing, and playing putt putt. Each of the participating bars puts together their own putt putt hole, and this year there was a trophy for the best hole, as voted on by participants!
The Sandbar has participated in this event every year, and Dave always tries to make a creative putt putt hole that's not too hard, but not too easy. It's set up on the beach upstairs. This year's hole looked a little like skee-ball with a sombrero on top.
Our web guy/resident Guinness drinker Frank agreed to supervise the putt putt hole. He was all decked out for the occasion in a Hawaiian print shirt. Frank handed out beads to the golfers, and shots were available upstairs. The hallway got a little congested with all the players, but everyone seemed to really enjoy the Sandbar's golf course.
The other bars that participated were Fatso's, the Granada, the Barrel House (they had cornhole instead of mini-golf!), and the Eldridge. The crowd ended up at Johnny's across the river for an after party with pizza and prizes.
Our friend Becki won an awesome door prize- a cooler full of party supplies and four tickets and parking passes to a Royals game in July!
And, the Sandbar was voted best putt putt hole by the players! We'll get a trophy to display in the bar- we'll put it next to our St. Patrick's Day trophy.
Last month our sister Sandbar in Ottawa featured live music on the beach. Well, the beach volleyball court behind the building, which is the closest thing to a beach around here (unless you count our fake beach upstairs).
The Barnyard Boys, a local band, performed that night- and a few weeks later a video popped up on YouTube of their performance. If you like bluegrass music, you'll love the Barnyard Boys.
It doesn't look like their website has been updated for awhile, so I can't tell you when they're playing again, but if we find out we'll let you know.
Sundays aren't usually a busy day at the Sandbar- they're laid back and slow, a good day for idle chatter with the bartender or even watching TV with the jukebox turned a little lower than normal. Last Sunday was an exception.
Some of our Margarita Monday (and some other nights of the week) regulars are experiencing some life changes: Briana graduated, Amerika is moving to New York City, and Phil had a birthday (but he's not going anywhere that we know of). So, what better way to celebrate than to open a few hours early for Sunday Funday!
Of course there was a shotski for six, featuring the Fail Whale shots:
We ate Choco Tacos and cookies; drank Bahama Mamas and beer and Beachtini's (some drank more than others, ahem); and socialized. Oddly, there was no hurricane or mermaid, but there was a ceremonial signing of a dollar bill that was later stapled prominently on the wall.
The party might have carried on into the night if it wasn't for a certain popular TV show that was ending its run on Sunday night. It was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon, especially one that was nice enough to enjoy the patio.
It's always a sign of a good time when you have a pile of tropical drink toys at the end of the party. Thanks to everyone who came in on Sunday, come back soon!
Photos courtesy of Phil Martinez and his fancy camera.
The Free State Social, a social media conference presented by the World Company, was held in Lawrence on Thursday, April 29. A community wide tweetup took place that night downtown, with several bars and restaurants offering specials.
I've mentioned already how busy we were that night and how much fun it was. Now, I've compiled some of our favorite tweets, pictures, and videos from that night into a story on Whrrl, one of my favorite location-based social networking applications. I like Whrrl because it allows you to check in to a location, add pictures, add text, or join other people who are in the same location. Essentially, you can create a digital story of an event.
The story I created is below; click on the image to view it.
Last Thursday the Sandbar participated in the Free State Social community tweetup. We were packed that night with social media types from not only Lawrence, but all over Kansas and even from a few other states.
Every night at 10 p.m. (and other times at the bartender's discretion or the paying public's request) we run our Indoor Hurricane extravaganza. It's a cheesy live show full of mermaids, wind, rain, lightning, music, and dancing on the bar. Thursday night was no exception, and several hurricanes blew through the bar that night.
Three of the keynote speakers at Free State Social agreed (were coerced?) to jump on the bar and pretend to be mermaids: Sarah Evans, Chris Brogan, and Shawna Coronado. Thanks to the handy Christmas present Dave got last year (a Kodak zi8) I was able to record the festivities.
This isn't the only video of the night, and it's definitely not the best- there's more to come. I'm working on putting together a type of "digital scrapbook" with pictures, videos, and comments from the Sandbar tweetup. It will be posted here when it's finished.
Nerd alert: this post won't make sense to many of you. But it's an interesting account of the activities at the Sandbar last Thursday night when the Free State Social community tweetup took place.
Foursquare is a location-based social networking site. Users "check in" when they go places, and their friends can see where they are. The game aspect is one appeal of Foursquare- check in's accumulate points, which in turn allow the user to earn different badges. One of these badges is the elusive "Swarm Badge," which can only be earned if 50 or more people are checked into the same place at the same time. It's like a Foursquare flash mob.
Our neighbors in Kansas City have organized several events to try to earn the Swarm Badge, and each time they've fallen short by just a few people. Lots of people thought the Swarm Badge would be earned at the Free State Social conference last week- since many of the attendees use Foursquare and 300 people were at the conference- but it didn't happen.
I never thought we'd earn the Swarm Badge at Thursday night's community tweetup- after all, if we didn't get it at the conference where all the attendees were in the same place at the same time, it didn't seem possible to unlock it at the tweetup, where participants were spread all over downtown Lawrence in a million different places.
However, people kept coming to the Sandbar on Thursday night, and our friend Jacinta sent the first tweet about swarming the Sandbar. More tweets and retweets followed, and more people kept coming to the bar and checking in. Suddenly we had 16 people checked in, then 33, then 45. The Swarm Badge seemed like a real possibility. Even people who don't normally use Foursquare checked in to help with the cause, and at 9:50 p.m. the 50th person checked in and unlocked the Swarm Badge for everyone:
A funny irony- our legal capacity is 49, and 50 people are needed to unlock the badge. There may have been more than 49 people in the bar, but the patio was busier than it's ever been too.
I think we're the first place to unlock the Swarm Badge in Kansas, from what I've heard. This might seem trivial, and perhaps it is. But it was a fun activity on Thursday- it encouraged people to network with new people and gave them something to talk about, and it helped add to the sense of community that was already created by Free State Social.
And, of course, it was great for business on Thursday. I saw several tweets from people who only came to the Sandbar so they could check in and try to get the Swarm Badge- I don't know if they bought anything or not, but at least they were exposed to our crazy little world for a little bit of time. Maybe they'll be back sometime.
If you were there, leave a comment and let us know what you thought. If you want to write a guest post about your experience at the Sandbar, we're up for that too.
