A couple months ago, Dave put up a shot wheel of fortune behind the bar. If you know Dave, you know his wheels (pardon the pun) are always turning and he's always coming up with new ideas, so of course he's already modified the shot wheel.
Introducing, the carnival shot!
If you want to play this game, you get to throw darts behind the bar. Dave added a dart board to the mix. You throw two darts, and the two numbers they hit determine the two liquors in your shot. Then, the bartender spins the wheel to pick your mixer. Finally, they mix up your new, randomly created shot. It might be good; it might not.
The wheel still has the shot picker, for those of you who are too indecisive to pick your own. The bartender spins the wheel, and the outer ring of the wheel contains the names of our most popular shots. Whichever one the wheel lands on is the one you get.
The fourth Sandbar hurricane video made its debut in 2005. We said farewell to the local studio and went off on our own to film this one. The studio was great, but we're not professionals (obviously) and trying to deal with teleprompters and filming segments out of order just confused us.
We experimented with a "green screen." The idea was to drop in a cool background, but we didn't know what we were doing so we just left it green. It's kind of a funny joke to us now.
This video was the first to feature Phil as King Neptune in front of our giant fish tank. If you look closely, you can see Dave in the upper left corner, reflected in the fish tank. Former mayor Marty makes his fourth appearance in the hurricane video as he rides to the Sandbar on his Harley to warn us of the imminent danger. Notice, also, the former facade of the Sandbar.
This video starred Dave and Debbi as the anchors. It was also our first experiment with the news crawl across the bottom of the screen- be sure to read those, they're funny. We made up silly stuff about our staff and some regular customers.
Patrick gave up his role as a hurricane expert, and instead traveled to Bongo Bongo to speak with a real hurricane expert. Coleen reprised her role as the local weather girl, until an unfortunate lightning incident. Former bartender Chris serves as a celebrity news reporter and interviews Fabio (aka bartender Blair).
For the first time, we filmed the Sandbar dance so customers can follow along. Bartender Heather performs the dance as the words to the song scroll along the bottom. We made a drinking game out of this: every time Heather pulls her dress down, you take a drink.
Once upon a time, we had a fairly regular series on this blog called "Door Diaries." It was basically a running diary of the things our door staff encountered on a nightly basis.
We kept a notebook by the door, and the staff was encouraged to write down any issues or problems they had along with funny anecdotes and stories. And even drawings.
It's been almost six months since we've published any of these entries. Want to know why? I've gone through all the notebooks and exhausted everything that's worth re-telling here.
New project: convince the staff to start writing in the notebook again.
But you, too, can help: funny things happen in the bar that the staff doesn't always see or hear. I'd love to hear random anecdotes from the customers. Email them to us at sandbar@thesandbar.com; you can be anonymous or get credit for the tip.
Sandbar fan Maggie submitted pictures of her Sandbar shirt in Washington, DC!
These are the first pictures we've received of Sandbar shirts in our nation's capital. Maggie posed in her shirt by the Washington monument and also with the White House in the background.
Thanks Maggie!
If you're off on vacation somewhere during this holiday, we hope you took your Sandbar shirt. Take a picture in it and send it to us!
