A Fan’s First Buffett Concert

David, one of our customers, and his wife Haley recently traveled to Houston to fulfill a longtime dream: to see Jimmy Buffett in concert. Here's what they had to say:

For
the last ten years or so I've been trying to see Jimmy Buffett live in
concert.  Unfortunately  with Jimmy's tour schedule and my schedules,
he never seemed to play close to Kansas.  We had
20100528_davidzimmerman_buffett_0004plans last year to
fly to Las Vegas to see him at the MGM Grand, but right as we were booking
our airline tickets he cancelled the concert.  This spring we made
plans to go see Jimmy live in Houston, TX and got our tickets and hotels
all booked.  The 12 hour drive down was worth it jamming to Jimmy
songs on my ipod with my wife as I drove south.  The night of the
concert we got all dressed up with Margaritaville attire, grabbed a tour
t-shirt and a margarita before the show.  The show was fantastic, Jimmy played for over 2 hours.  The songs were a variety of the new
album, "Buffet Hotel", random other artists songs, and a lot of
the old standby's on the "Songs You Know By Heart" classic album.
 All I can say is that it was well worth the wait to see him live
for the first time!  Any Sandbar or Jimmy fan should see him live
at least once in their lives, it is truly an experience to be remembered!

David was kind enough
to also forward some pictures of Jimmy on stage, the fins in the
audience, and of course, the requisite margarita. No Shark Attacks in sight, however. 


20100528_davidzimmerman_buffett_0002

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Thanks, David and Haley! We're glad you had a great time.

Jimmy Buffett, an Alabama apartment, & a Lawrence resident

Back in April, I saw a tweet from a customer who had been in the bar the night before and visited our fake beach. I thanked her for coming in, and she responded with this:

Picture 1

Whoah, what? I couldn't let that fun fact go by without an investigation. A short conversation (on Twitter, naturally) and a link to another blog later, I had a story. Turns out, Sally's dad supposedly lived in the apartment after Mr. Buffett, and then she took up residence in apartment #223 in 1998.

The short version:

Our favorite beach music maker attended Auburn University for one year in 1964. He lived in the Plainsman Apartments, pledged a fraternity, and learned how to play the guitar so he could win the ladies' attention. Lucky for us, he decided music was more important than school. And the rest is history.

The long version is available here. It's actually quite an interesting story from a blog dedicated to all things Auburn. The author researched the rumors surrounding Buffett's attendance at Auburn, and with the help of a biography called "Jimmy Buffett: The Man from Margaritaville Revealed" by Steve Eng, he had his answers.

Pretty cool that we have a resident among us who lived in Jimmy Buffett's college apartment!

Frank’s Dirty Banana’s Jamaica Mistaica

Did that get your attention?

The Sandbar sponsored a team at the 8th annual St. Patrick's Day Pub Quiz Trivia event last night. This event has traditionally opened the St. Patrick's Day season in Lawrence, although this year some other events have actually taken place already. We've had at least one team in this event every year since it started.

Our buddy/regular/go-to web guy Frank's business also sponsored a team this year. Between us, we originally had about 12 people committed to play, but one by one they started flaking claiming headaches and school work as excuses, so we ended up with eight. Which caused us to pool our brains and collapse our two teams into one. Good thing, too.

Art director Brother Pants named our team Frank's Dirty Banana. (You can take that however you want. We did.) Our category of choice was Train Songs. Our team members skewed heavily to the old-school crying country fan base, so we figured we'd own those questions. And we did, for awhile.

Our first important missed question: some long-winded diatribe about Johnny Cash and prison and we answered too quickly with the seemingly obvious "Folsom." Uh, no. The song title might have Folsom in it, but it was actually written about San Quentin, which practically every other team in the room knew. 

Perhaps our more embarrassing miss of the night involved a question about The Sandbar's muse, Jimmy Buffett. Did you know that Bono, lead singer of U2, was on Jimmy's plane with him when they were shot at by Jamaican authorities who thought the plane was smuggling drugs? Yeah, neither did we. We've all heard the story behind the song "Jamaica Mistaica," (from the Banana Wind album), but we don't even have a U2 song on the jukebox and would've never guessed who the passenger on the plane was. 

Andy, the announcer, was happy to point out that The Sandbar missed a Jimmy Buffett question. We like to say that we were Scottie-Mack'd. Twice.

We redeemed ourselves somewhat by answering the final question correctly:

X2_ba0052 

(image borrowed from Sandbar friend & fellow trivia player, Chris Pumpelly, who posted this on his Twitter stream.)

It wasn't enough to land us in the top three, but we managed to end up with a respectable score.

Congrats to the team from The World Company, who knocked off the consistent winners from Tabula Rasa to take first place this year! 

Do you know the answer to the final question? Leave it in the comments.

12 Days of Sandbar Christmas Gifts

Twelve extremely cool Sandbar themed gifts would seem like an easy blog idea, but I have to admit it came to me in a very roundabout manner.

The other day at my "real job," I got a rare spam email. I say spam only because it was an unsolicited email from a company I've never heard of, but it wasn't anything sneaky or poorly spelled. It happened to have pictures of cute socks, so I clicked to their website and promptly fell in love.

Hence, the inspiration for "12 Days of Sandbar Christmas Gifts."

Day 1: Shark Bite Socks

Anyone who loves our famous Shark Attack drink needs a pair of these socks. How could you not smile when wearing something like this?

Day 2: Palm Tree & Coconuts Salt & Pepper Shaker

I died laughing when I saw this set- it's exactly the sort of cheese that we love at The Sandbar and would be a perfect gift for our annual holiday gift exchange. Somehow I think boys, especially, might like this one.

Day 3: Pirate Lego Magnets

We love all things pirate. And who doesn't love Legos? They even have real magnets so you can keep them on your fridge or your file cabinet or wherever else they'll stick.

Day 4: Parrot Christmas Holiday Tree Art Thing

Not really sure where to start with this one. Most of the 12 days of gifts are things I'd dearly love to own. Not so much this one. It's rather unique. I suppose if you like to feed the birds, and you like parrots, and Santa, then you might like this. (It kind of looks like a rainbow-ish Jayhawk, too).

Day 5: Tiki Tissue Box

Can't get enough of the Sandbar hurricane and Tiki Ted? Get a Tiki Tissue Box. This box is sized to hold a standard tissue box, and he'll blow Kleenex out his nose. Really, I can't make this stuff up.

Day 6: Mermaid Cookbook

Need a gift idea for kids (or fun-loving adults)? Check out this mermaid cookbook, with recipes like Sea Foam Foats and Goldfish Gorp. I actually own this cookbook (thanks to Michelle!) and can vouch for it's coolness.

Day 7: Jimmy Buffett's new CD, Buffet Hotel

I should be slapped upside the head with a giant vinyl shark for forgetting that this CD was released just a few days ago (December 8, to be exact). Jimmy Buffett, hero of everyone who needs a little escape from life now and then, has another new CD just in time to fill your stockings.

Day 8: Beer Chapstick

Some of the options above a little too spendy for you? This stocking stuffer will set you back about the price of a drink. Yum, beer flavored kisses.

Day 9: Great White Shark Slippers

For all the shark lovers out there, here's a little something for your feet to keep them warm. I wonder if these come in Dave's size…

Day 10: The ShotCarver

Make your own shot glass using a piece of fruit and this little gadget. See, I'm helping you find ways to make drinking alcohol just a little bit more healthy.

Day 11: My Little Sandbox

Need a reminder of the beach for your desk? A toy for the kids when they can't go outside? Here's your very own tiny sandbox to play with when you need some stress relief.

Day 12: Mermaid Wine Bottle Holder

Our last gift in the series. A hand cut, hand finished, colored steel mermaid is ready to hold your favorite wine bottle. Ironic, a little, since we're not exactly a wine bar. But it's a neat gift anyway.

We hope you enjoyed our 12 Days of Sandbar Christmas Gift series! We'll do it again next year.