Last Saturday, downtown Lawrence was inadvertently the host of yet another crazy event: the Running of the Bullsh*tters.
This themed pub crawl required costumes (of course!) and was the brainchild of former Sandbar staffer Erick. He traveled to Spain last year and saw the famous Running of the Bulls, and decided that if we can't have exactly that in Lawrence, this was the next best thing.
Participants were asked to wear white pants, white shirts and red sashes. A lucky few were selected to be the bulls.
The pub crawl started off at the Sandbar and then the bulls herded everyone south to the Granada:
A cardboard cut-out of Michael Jordan that was inexplicably in the Sandbar's upstairs office made the trek, too. Someone apparently found humor in having a member of the Chicago Bulls along for the ride and his likeness was taped to a wooden oar.
Stops included the newly-reopened Jefferson's, the downtown Lawrence sign at the corner of 6th and Massachusetts and then a trip across the river to Johnny's.
Erick did a great job organizing this fun adventure. The weather was great and everyone enjoyed running (or walking) along Massachusetts, enjoying food and drink at some of our favorite places.
Last Saturday was ridiculously busy; in fact, it was one of our best sales days in a long time. Along with the Jimmy Buffett pre-party crowd and passengers on our party buses, a charity pub crawl was happening in downtown Lawrence. Even though we don't participate in the pub crawl, many of the teams stop by the Sandbar in between their official stops.
One of the teams, Team Brewhawks according to the message they so politely left ON OUR BUILDING, apparently had a little more time to play than the others.
When we got back from Jimmy Buffett later that night, we found this graffiti scrawled outside in between our windows.
So, Team Brewhawks, thanks very much. It's one thing to write on a bathroom wall (which we still don't love), but it's another to write on the outside of our building. Please, people, don't do this. Dave's already painted over it, but believe me he had plenty of other things to do without spending time on this.
Our final stop at Power & Light during our Jimmy Buffett pre-party extravaganza was Pizza Bar. We were hungry and pizza sounded good.
We walked in, took one look at the line and thought "we'll never get any food." But fate intervened- we spotted former bartender Erick, his sister Shelly and their parents across the bar, and as we headed their direction, we saw another familiar face. Remember the downtown Lawrence restaurant JoShmo's? The proprietor, Josh, is now working at Pizza Bar.
After a round of enthusiastic greetings, Josh quickly hooked us up with a pizza. And then he also introduced Dave, Peach and the world-famous Sandbar, Home of the Indoor Hurricane to the entire crowd at Pizza Bar. The man with the microphone has all the power.
We ate, we drank, we chatted. More people we knew showed up. And then Josh was back on the mike, announcing that Dave was going to do the Car Wash. On the "bar" in the middle of the restaurant. (It's really just a strange stone-like divider that's about bar height.)
There's no getting Dave off of bars. He, and several more fearless followers, stayed up there for one more song and danced to "YMCA." There's video of that too:
And then, after all our fun at Pizza Bar, it was time to go see the man, the legend, Jimmy Buffett.
After our party bus returned from the Jimmy Buffett concert, a bunch of us were sitting on the patio remembering all the fun we had.
A young girl stumbled out of the bar, tripping over her high heels and slurring to nobody in particular as she passed by the patio "Don't go in there, that bar sucks."
And then she promptly stumbled on those pesky drop-offs from the sidewalk to the curb, and fell on her rear into the tire of a car.
Please excuse the brief interruption of the Jimmy Buffett Extravaganza while we tell you about the second charity event we participated in over the weekend. (It was a busy weekend, if you couldn't tell already!)
Our staff and friends have participated in Bowl for Kids Sake, a fundraiser for Douglas County Big Brothers Big Sisters, for a number of years now. This year, a new event was added: a special bowling day for the hospitality industry, with teams from bars, restaurants and liquor stores.
The Sandbar put together a team full of not-very-good bowlers and one ace bowler. We had a great time bowling, even though most of us were tired from the Buffett concert the night before. Bartender Heather and her husband Ken celebrated their one year wedding anniversary, and the lucky couple both won gift certificates at the event! They prompty exchanged "gifts," as Becki pointed out that the first year's gift is, in fact, supposed to be paper.
We were amused that the team next to us was "Team Super Dave." It was not a rogue team captained by our own Super Dave, who served as a cheerleader instead, along with Jana and Bettina.
It was a great event, and the Bowl For Kids Sake committee deserves a round of applause for their dedication!
