St. Patrick's Day might be a distant memory for anyone not associated with the Sandbar, but we think about it all the time. We were thrilled to get an email the other day with this picture attached:
You might remember a couple of adorable little knights peeking out the windows of our castle float. They're the sons of our friend Curtis and his lovely wife Rochelle, and they were so excited to ride on the float this year.
Conner drew this picture for school and his parents thought we might like to see it. His level of detail is amazing for such a youngster, and he even drew him and his brother in the window! (I think that's supposed to Dave acting all wild and crazy in the top turret.)
This entry is a guest blog by long-time Friday evening bartender and future bride-to-be, Heather.
Many of you who saw our float know it was an amazing castle. Dave truly is a float building genius and each year seems to outdo himself from the year before. What you may not be aware of is how amazing the float was on the inside as well. Decorated on the inside, you say? Ah, it's true…we here at The Sandbar don't do anything halfway.
This year our float had not only a working bathroom, but a pretty pretty pink princess bathroom. In addition to the pink princesses on the pink walls, there was hand sanitizer, hand lotion, a trashcan, a pink shower curtain for privacy, and my absolute favorite: the potted flowers.
Now Dave may have had the idea for the potty (or maybe not- the women at The Sandbar frequently requestmore access and better facilities), but the ever-resourceful Coleen came up with the decorations. The story I've been told is that Coleen and Michelle worked on the bathroom in front of Dave, all the while discussing castle related decorations and gray paint. He had no idea it was pink until it was too late.
When Dave asked the ladies "isn't that pink?"- meaning the wall paint- Michelle told him it was just the way the sun was hitting it. I like to imagine the look on his face when he first walked into the float bathroom in all its pink princess glory.
A special thanks goes out to Sandbar regular Brandon for providing the potty. Rumor has it he wanted to buy it for tailgating, and offering to loan it to the Sandbar float got bonus points with his wife.
For me, the pink girly bathroom made our castle on wheels quite luxurious and lots of fun!
After a sad weekend that saw our beloved Kansas Jayhawks losing in the second round of the NCAA basketball tournament, we thought everyone could use some cheer.
Here's a short video clip of our castle float from this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade. One of our knights, "Showtime," was gracious enough to jump off the float at the beginning of the parade and film this for us.
We hope you enjoyed our float this year!
(After creating & uploading this video, I realized that we never uploaded footage of last year's parade float, the Crazy Love Train in Locomotion. When I run out of things to talk about here, rest assured it will be posted. Probably soon. There's also video of our float dancers warming up before the parade, which will be good for some laughs.)
The only downside to being IN the St. Patrick's Day Parade is that we don't get to SEE the parade. Our only chance to see the other entries is while we're lined up waiting for our turn down Massachusetts Street, or after the parade when we're all parked at the Flamingo Club in North Lawrence.
Here's a few of the floats we managed to see.
The group from Van Go Mobile Arts, a local arts program for teenagers, created a very colorful train. They won first place in the family division with this entry:
Our neighbors on New Hampshire Street, the Barrel House, participated in their first St. Patrick's Day Parade. The piano bar opened almost a year ago. They re-created their atmosphere onboard a trailer and took third place in the commercial division:
The group from Berry Plastics has built floats for the last several years, and they're always great. This year, they created a river boat called the Berry Belle and won second place in the commercial division:
I didn't get a picture of the first place winner in the commercial division- their float moved too fast for me. Pennington & Co. re-created the Lord of the Dance, and it was hilarious. Find a picture of it online if you can.
And the last picture for today: the grand float from Kennedy Glass and crew. They used hundreds of thousands of pomps and reams of chicken wire to recreate Campanile Hill. A leprechaun and a bunch of Jayhawks sledded down the hill into O'Potter's Lake- really. The big sled was actually a moving part and it was very cool:
Those are the only pictures I have of other floats.
Which is ironic, as that is a line from a famous Queen song, and we danced to another song by Queen on our award-winning float this year. Our rockin' medieval castle featured a medley of "We Will Rock You," "Dancing Queen," and "Jump Around." And of course, some favorite Sandbar dancing tunes.
Here it is:
(photo courtesy of David Bunker, father of Friday bartender Heather)
Last summer, while a group of random Sandbar staff and friends were playing volleyball in Dave's newly installed above-ground pool, Caroline suddenly said "We should build a castle float!" Yes, this is how far in advance we think about St. Patrick's Day. None of us could believe we'd never thought of a castle before, and we immediately came up with "Dancing Queen" as the theme song.
We got a late start building the float this year due to the uncooperative weather, but our construction crew rallied and took days off work and busted their butts to get this thing built. And it might be our biggest, most elaborate structure yet.
The dragon on the front was created by Art Director Brother Pants. Of course it didn't just sit there with its head poking out of the turrets- this creature moved and grooved to the music. Neighbor boy Pierce operated the dragon with a complex bicycle handle set-up, and we even rigged smoke to blow out its nose.
The parade took some detours in North Lawrence this year because of the construction near Johnny's. Of course our float was tall- and in the picture above, we hadn't yet attached the flags in the middle of each turret. They were easily unscrewed once we hit North Lawrence so we could avoid low hanging branches and power lines. The red rectangular boxes that sat on the turrets also had to come down after the parade so we could clear the bridge by Johnny's when we returned downtown.
We're very excited and honored that the Parade judges chose our float towin the Grand Prize traveling trophy. Kudos go to our favorite friendly float rivals, the crew from Kennedy Glass/Combs/Slow Ride Roadhouse for their awesome Jayhawk & leprechaun sliding down Campanile Hill. They even invited us over for burgers and beer on Tuesday night so we could check out each others' floats and meet the crews.
Also, our neighbors to the north on New Hampshire Street, the Barrel House, won third place in the commercial division. This is the first year they've entered, since they just opened their doors last April, and we hope they continue to participate in the parade with us.
If you have pictures to share, please email them to us (sandbar{at}thesandbar{dot}com) or upload them to our Facebook fan page or Flickr group.
