The event the Sandbar crew has waited for for years happened last weekend: Jimmy Buffett's return to Kansas City with the "Welcome to Fin Land" tour.
The party started early Saturday afternoon at the Sandbar. We had a pre-party with boat drinks, parrothead hat-making supplies and Ted cooking beer brauts on a grill outside. The bar was full of partiers by 2 p.m.- most of them were parrotheads with spots on our party bus to the show, but teams on a local charity pub crawl taking place downtown also detoured from their route and stopped by.
Peach had fun making a party hat for the concert, and bartender Andrew and his girlfriend Jamie decorated their brand-new commemorative concert shirts.
Our two party buses pulled up at 4 p.m. We had nearly 80 people signed up for a fun ride to the Power & Light District! Passengers ranged from staff and regulars to hard-core Parrotheads of all ages. We loaded up our buses and headed for Kansas City.
It was such a beautiful day in downtown Lawrence to be on our patio! If you were there, we'd love to see your pictures. You can email them to us at sandbar@thesandbar.com, or upload them to our Facebook page.
Jimmy Buffett returns to Kansas City this weekend!
We reserved a party bus to take us to the show, and our seats sold out before we could even advertise them. There's still been a lot of interest in our bus, so we decided to rent another one. But we've only got a few spots left, so if you want one, you better hurry.
Now, our first bus is a "luxury coachline" according to Peach. Our second one is not. But it will still get you to the show, and it will still be fun.
Here's the details:
$25 per person
Bus leaves the Sandbar at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday
Bus returns after the show
BYOB allowed on the bus (small coolers, please)
If you signed up on the first bus, there's no need to sign up again. Also, if you've already signed up on the first list, don't worry, you'll be on the "luxury" bus.
A sign-up sheet is available at the bar. Payment is required to reserve your spot. You can sign up in person or call the bar and pay over the phone.
We'll have a Buffett pre-party at the bar that day, too. Food, boat drinks and parrothead hat-making supplies will be available, so even if you're not riding our bus, come by for some fun!
(People on our e-mail list were notified about the second party bus first. If you want to get our news before the rest of the world, sign up for our email list.)
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.
I've discovered that there are many other Sandbar's all over the country, and it's fun to see the events and specials they have. This one, in particular, caught my eye: a Snuggie pub crawl!
This pub crawl started at The Sandbar in Scottsdale. This Sandbar is talked about a lot online and especially on Twitter. Apparently it's popular with the Iowa Hawkeye fans in Phoenix. Anyway, the crawl was a charity event supporting the Phoenix Fraternal Order of Police.
It sounded like a pretty good deal- tickets were $15-$20, and each ticket included a Snuggie! It also included a starting & ending drink at the Sandbar and one raffle ticket, but who cares about that when it includes a Snuggie!
They even had prizes for the best Snuggie, sexiest Snuggie, and probably others that weren't listed in the event page on Yelp. Most likely the prize winners brought their own personally created Snuggies instead of wearing the ones that came free with the ticket.
Just this weekend, I discovered that a Snuggie party will take place in Kansas City– this one is an Oscars Watch Party planned by a group of young professionals and will also help raise money for charity.
Who thinks this sounds like fun? If we planned one, would you be there? More importantly, would you wear a Snuggie?
I daydreamed about Sandbar logo-d Snuggies before Christmas, but after finding out the price, and more importantly how many we would have to order, it just won't work out anytime soon. Unless I buy an embroidery machine and do it myself. Unfortunately I don't think screenprinting on fleece will work very well…but we could try it.
Scott created a quiz show game at Kaspar's Bar & Grill way back in 1999 with Peach's brother, Tom, who later bought the place and renamed it Conroy's Pub. (The article refers to him as "the godfather of Lawrence's trivia scene- I sense a new nickname.)
These days, Scott and Jen host Brainville Trivia at both Johnny's locations in Lawrence. On the second and fourth Wednesday of every month, they're at the original Johnny's, north of the river. Game starts at 7 p.m.
On the first and third Tuesday of the month, they host Brainville at Johnny's West, the new location out at 6th and Wakarusa. Game time is 8 p.m.
There's no limit on team size at either game, and they are free! Winners receive $25 cash.
If you love trivia and want to try out a live action game instead of Buzztime that we have available all the time, check out Brainville with Scotty & Jen! You might see some Sandbar folks in the crowd, too.
Congrats to Scott & Jen on a great article and publicity!
Our Man on the Street, otherwise known as Man Who Will Be Celebrating His 40th Birthday Soon, tipped us off to this event. Or rather he has been pestering us about it with video links and posts on our Facebook pages.
I finally decided to check out what was so important, and I'm glad I did. We are totally doing this in downtown Lawrence next year. We might do a test run at our annual holiday/employee appreciation party next weekend.
How fun would it be to roam around Mass Street with a huge group of Santas, scaring little kids handing out candy canes, and spreading holiday cheer?
