by Debbi | Apr 20, 2010 | Cool Stuff, Downtown, Events
What a great night!
Last night was the Adult Swim Block Party in downtown Lawrence, and we were impressed with the crowd that came out on a Monday night! One of the members of the Adult Swim crew told us that their staff estimated attendance of around 4,000. That's amazing, way to go Lawrence!
All day long, downtown Lawrencians watched as giant inflatable characters took over the block of 8th Street between Massachusetts & New Hampshire. The party started around 6 pm with games and prizes and live music to follow.
(Picture below posted on Twitter by Jeff, otherwise known as @webology, friend of the Sandbar)
We were pleased to provide hospitality for The Whigs before their set. They hung out upstairs for awhile, and our fake beach served as their dressing room. They even took a picture of it and posted it on their Twitter account.
A steady stream of customers came through the bar and partied on the patio- it wasn't nearly as crowded as a St. Patrick's Day or our anniversary party last summer, but it was a fantastic crowd for a usually slow Monday night.
I was lame and didn't take any pictures last night, but here's one I found on Twitter that was posted by @johnkary, taken from the patio of the Sandbar:
The music was over at 10 p.m., the stage was dismantled, and the street cleaned up. These people are professionals- we laughed about how the teardown compared to ours last year after our anniversary party. (Ours took forever. We dawdled and talked and laughed.)
We would love to see this become an annual event. In fact, it would be awesome if downtown Lawrence had a block party every month…
Were you there last night? What was your favorite moment? Email us your pictures or add them to our Facebook fan page!
——————————
Adult Swim on Twitter
Adult Swim on Facebook
The Whigs on Twitter
The Whigs on Facebook
by Debbi | Apr 18, 2010 | Cool Stuff, Downtown, Events, On the Patio
We love a good block party, especially when we don't have to do the work.
Tomorrow night (Monday, April 19), Adult Swim presents a free block party at 8th and New Hampshire. The block in front of the Sandbar will be closed most of the day for setup, and the party starts at 6 p.m. It includes carnival games, prizes, free t-shirts, and other surprises.
The event is geared towards the college-age crowd, but it's free and open to anyone.
And there's music! Live performances by Motion Potion and The Whigs are sure to entertain the crowd.
No alcohol is allowed in the street, but there are several bars on the block with patios, including us. We aren't extending our patio area to be any larger, but there's plenty of room for a few folks on our patio, and we'll definitely have the windows open.
The event is open to all ages, but you must be 21 to enter the Sandbar.
RSVP on the event's Facebook page, and we'll see you tomorrow night!
(Previous post about this event can be found here.)
by Debbi | Apr 16, 2010 | Cool Stuff
The recent post about our shotski got a little bit of attention, and I'm still surprised we never talked about it here before. Or maybe we did, but it was too hard to find among 800 other posts.
I mentioned that we have a second version of the original surfboard drink holder- one that has six shot glasses and requires considerable more effort on the part of the shot-takers.
A reader and regular customer, Danielle, was kind enough to email us a couple pictures of the six-person shotski in action.
First step: Gather your friends and line them up.
Another friend of ours has pointed out that this trick works best when choosing friends who are all relatively the same height. I'm thinking she must have tried doing the shotski with Dave or someone almost as tall as him. Someone ended up with Dirty Banana all over themselves for sure.
Second step: Slowly and carefully lift the shotski.
Everyone who's lifting needs to be sure to lift at the same speed, and slowly tilt the shotski towards your faces. This requires some concentration and effort, to be sure. It's probably not for the clumsy. Or the ones who've been drinking all night.
Success!
Everyone enjoys the Dirty Banana goodness. Next time you're in, try the shotski. Three- and six- person versions available. We recommend starting small and working your way up!
by Debbi | Apr 15, 2010 | Around the World
More Sandbar shirts from around the world! Or at least around the country.
Our friend Amerika visited the great state of Tennessee recently, and her bright red Sandbar shirt was stowed in the suitcase. She emailed us these pictures.
First, the Sandbar's represented at the Cherokee National Forest.
And my favorite, the shot on the Appalachian Trail. This picture proves she was really there, not gallivanting around some South American country or something.
Do you have pictures of your Sandbar shirt somewhere other than Lawrence? We're not picky, it doesn't have to be exotic. I know some of you college ladies took your shirts on Spring Break…we'd love to see the pictures!
by Debbi | Apr 13, 2010 | Newsworthy
If you subscribe to the Lawrence Journal-World, or read it online, you might have seen this little article about businesses and social media. It was actually on the front page of the print edition on Sunday!
The reporter called me last week and asked a bunch of questions about what we do and how we do it, with regard to social media. I thought I'd share some of that information here, since news articles always get cut short due to space.
We've had a website for lots of years, along with our famous webcam. Lots of funny stuff happens at The Sandbar, and we started joking about how someday we should write a book. I started learning and hearing about blogs, and eventually decided that if we were serious about a future book, it would be much easier to start small.
This blog was born in September, 2006. As of right now, there are 820 posts- a few are saved drafts, but most of those are published. That's a lot of stories. I don't know if they'll ever be compiled into an actual book, but they'll live on for eternity right here.
When I researched where to set up the blog, lots of people recommended MySpace. Remember, it was the hot thing at the time. I didn't want the blog to be on a site where people had to be members in order to read it, but I decided it would be fun to have a Sandbar MySpace page. We don't do much with that page these days- sorry to those of you who still play there.
We're also big fans of videos. Our indoor hurricane began in 2002, and we've uploaded videos to YouTube for several years. Most of our videos were uploaded to my personal account (since I didn't know any better at the time), but now we also have an official Sandbar YouTube channel.
Once I got a little bored with MySpace, Facebook started to hit my radar and I decided to set up a Sandbar page. Only I did it wrong. I didn't have a personal Facebook account at the time and had no idea how it worked, so I ended up creating a profile that people "friended." This is actually against Facebook's Terms of Service, as businesses should have fan pages, not profiles, and people should become fans, not friends. I figured that out, recreated a Sandbar fan page, and here we are.
Then, Twitter. We joined this micro-blogging site a little over a year ago. It's a nice compliment to the other social media efforts we've made, and Twitter has allowed us to reach out to new people and the community in ways that Facebook or MySpace don't. You can follow us here.
That's a little bit about how our business started down the path of social media. It's been fun to learn and we hope our fans enjoy our efforts!
