We've been on vacation for a few days recovering from the craziness of St. Patrick's Day.
What a great day it was! Beautiful weather, lots of people, and more fun than ever. The weather definitely made up for the soggy day we had last year.
If you didn't make it to the parade- or even if you did, but you want to see it again- the Lawrence Journal-World has full video coverage of the entire parade.
Our float was towards the end of the parade, so we're in the fourth parade clip. Our segment is about ten minutes into the 16 minute clip.
And now, for some pictures! I uploaded quite a few pictures last night to The Sandbar's Flickr photostream. You can see the pictures without having to sign up for Flickr; however, if you're already a member or want to be, you can also join The Sandbar's Flickr group and upload your own favorite Sandbar pictures.
Here are a few of my favorites:
After the parade was over, we spent about half an hour at the Flamingo Club. The awards were announced, and we were all excited to hear The Sandbar announced as the Honorable Mention winner in the Grand Prize category. Congratulations to the Kennedy Glass float for winning the Grand Prize Traveling Trophy this year!
When the award ceremony was over, we all boarded the Love Train for one final journey back to The Sandbar. We stopped in front of the bar and performed the dances one last time on the float and then headed inside to dance on the bar. The place was packed!
Peach and Ted drove the Love Train back to Baldwin, where it will be dismantled. We try to save as much of the lumber as possible to recycle into the next year's float. And of course, while we were warming up for this year's parade, we came up with an idea for next year!
We filmed some video of our float before the parade started, and then once we turned onto Massachusetts Street, we saw our friend Bill and handed off the video camera to him. He walked alongside us for several blocks and filmed some more. I hope to have that video posted by the end of the weekend.
And now here is our second float dance for 2009: the "Locomotion" by Kylie Minogue!
I've always thought this would be a great float song. It's catchy and fun, and most importantly everybody knows this song. Finally, it was the year to build a train float so we could use this song.
Michelle, Coleen, and I worked on the dance moves for this song. They aren't complicated- they're even silly- but our goal is to make the dance as simple as possible so even the most uncoordinated among us can still be in sync. Usually we recycle our dance moves from previous dances.
So, enjoy our second dance:
The annual Lawrence St. Patrick's Day Parade starts tomorrow at 1 p.m. at South Park in Downtown Lawrence. Get downtown early to get a good viewing spot, and head over to The Sandbar after the parade for some beverages!
The Sandbar's first float dance for the 2009 Lawrence St. Patrick's Day Parade!
The song is "Love Train," by Big and Rich. This song is from their first album, the one with "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" which, coincidentally enough, was one of our float songs last year.
Peach picked out this song and choreographed all the dance moves. She unveiled it to all of us at our float practice on Sunday.
I mentioned yesterday that the LJW sent a photographer over to our float home base to take some pictures. The pictures didn't appear in Saturday's paper like we though tthey would, and one black and white photo showed up in Sunday's paper to accompany the article.
Well, the Google alerts that never fail showed me that those pictures had, in fact, been published online- on Friday! The photographer must have gone straight to the newsroom from our house.
You can see the pictures that he took and get a look at our float in the middle of construction, complete with very serious looks from Dave.
Last week, Dave got a call from a Channel 6 newsguy named Mark, who wanted to come check out our St. Patricks' Day parade float and shoot some video footage of us working on it.
Mark came out on Tuesday with his camera guy, and they hung around for about an hour- filming, asking questions, and even getting a little bit of work in themselves. Mark has a feature every Sunday on the 10 p.m. news called "Mark's on the Move," where he checks out untold or overlooked stories in the community.
A few days after Mark's visit, Dave got another phone call- this time asking if a photographer from the Lawrence Journal-World could come by and take some still pictures for the paper. He stopped by on Friday and took pictures.
The print edition of the paper also included a black and white shot of the float from our alley. Brother Pants made it into the picture, but he conveniently has his head turned away from the camera so you can't tell it's him.
We are excited about all of the publicity for this year's float. I hope that we live up to everyone's expectations…I know that we'll have fun no matter what.
Tonight we are teaching our float dances to all of the float-riders. Tomorrow, look for a preview of our dances.
Last night was the annual St. Patrick's Day Pub Quiz fundraiser at Zig & Mac's way out west. The Sandbar once again was represented by two teams that I will refer to as "the fun team" and "the smart team." Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but it's a good way to tell them apart.
The Lawrence St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee has about a zillion activities during February and March leading up the grand finale, the parade. The entire extravaganza is all about raising money for local children's charities. This year, there are four beneficiaries: the Boys and Girls Club of New York School, Lawrence Parents as Teachers, GaDuGi Safe Center, and the LHS-Positive Support Team.
Around 25 teams gathered last night for the popular trivia tournament. Our "smart team" ended up in third place, and my source tells me that they could have won the grand prize if they would have bet it all on the last question instead of playing it safe.
The "fun team," on the other hand, had to console one of it's ultra-competitive players (you know who you are!) after missing their very first question. This team, or at least three-fourths of it, was only there for the entertainment. Although, they finished in the top eight, so they did pretty well.
I don't have any pictures because I wasn't there, but thanks to Heather, Ken, Pants, Dave, Andrew, Becki, Ron, and Emerson for playing for The Sandbar.
Be sure to check out the Parade Committee's website for information about all the upcoming events.
