If you hang out on the Sandbar patio for even a short period of time, you'll hear some pretty funny stuff.
Here's a few gems from last Friday night.
Is it raining?
A patron who shall remain nameless suddenly exclaimed that it was raining. No one really believed her; the sky was clear and blue, even though it was getting dark, and there were no signs of imminent rain or storms anywhere. And it was hot. And no one else felt raindrops.
About an hour later, she realized that her cup was leaking, and every time she took a drink she felt "raindrops" on her arms and legs.
You got a smoke?
People on the patio get this a lot. But they probably don't always get the question from the ultimate cougar: feathered, bleached blond hair, short shorts, extra heavy makeup and heels. We're pretty sure she didn't believe that no one in the party had a cigarette.
I'm a puma.
The cougar conversation led directly into the puma conversation. If you're not quite old enough to be a cougar- what is the defining age, anyway?- but you fit the basic criteria, apparenty you can be a puma. I think she just liked saying the word, to be honest.
Are those bats?
Apparently lots of people walk out of the Sandbar and immediately look up to see weird, white, glowing bird-like things flying around. A big debate ensued as to whether they were bats, or pigeons, or some kind of hawk. No one really knew, but the bat story was the most popular.
This is a guest blog from Heather, one of our Friday night bartenders on the early shift. This particular event happened on Friday the 13th, which may or may not explain both the customer's bizarre behavior and Heather's reaction to it.
Now we all have our pet peeves in life and bartenders are no exception. Sometimes, we get cranky. It happens to all of us now and again. A recent Friday night event made me a bit more than cranky as I actually yelled at someone.
This guy was in on a busy and crowded Friday night with his buddies. He starts making facial expressions like he is going to be sick. Then he starts making full body motions like he is going to throw up on the guy next to him. He was close to the door, so I in turn yelled “Get out, take it outside†while pointing to the door. We certainly didn't have time to clean up vomit on this busy night.
He puffs out his chest and peacocks on over to the bar saying “What? Couldn’t you tell I was joking?†as he made the same apparently fake vomiting motions towards me. No, I couldn’t and I didn’t want to have to clean it up either. Yuck.
I get that sometimes people just don’t know any better but come on! Besides, it is never a good idea to intentionally make the bartender mad- or to throw up in the bar.
Here's a guest blog from long-time bartender Heather, works the Friday 5-9 shift. Last Friday was Heather's first shift back after several days off, and it happened to be Friday the 13th. Welcome back, Heather!
Friday the 13th, another Friday night down at The Sandbar- or so I thought walking in the door. That was before five bar crawls, a bachelorette party and a birthday celebration made their way through our doors. Yes, that’s right: five bar crawls in just four hours.
One group of bar crawlers got out the super long shotski, one group sang their sorority song, there were matching T-shirts, Dirty Banana shots, Shark Attacks, Bahama Mamas, broken glassware, yelling, hugging, and photo-taking. One group had a guy calling out the remaining time in the bar, which, having been on a bar crawl or two, I thought was awesome.
Most of our patrons were quite patient with the ruckus and, in fact, seemed amused by all of it. In addition to all of the festivities we had old friends, new friends, a just-turned-21-year-old and his family, a cute little guy in his stroller, a soon-to-be-married couple out on a date, a potential romance blooming and, of course, some KU Grads.
Personally, I think the ghost may have even been in attendance as well. We have a handy step stool for those of us who aren't Dave’s height. I was getting down from pulling a couple of T-shirts and missed the bottom step. Instead of crashing to the floor I just kind of… landed. Okay, so it isn’t that far to the ground, but I am a klutz of the highest order. Which was unfortunate for Phil on this particular night as I did actually stomp on his foot once or twice.
At the end of it all I can’t help but think that Jimmy Buffet could probably turn this particular night into one heck of a song!
The night was so full of entertainment that we'll have several more guest blogs from Heather about the evening. Stay tuned!
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.
The buses were loaded and we were off to Power & Light!
After what seemed like an extremely short trip- most of which was spent, at least on bus #2, trying to get the sound system working so we could listen to Sandbar music, and also dodging the slow-to-move Ktag gates at the tollbooth on I70- we arrived at the Kansas City Power & Light District.
As soon as everyone could hop off the buses, our Sandbar crew disappeared into the throngs of parrotheads. Grand Boulevard was closed for a block or two, and there were some random booths set up in the street, but the real party was in the KC Live area. A tropical band was playing and there were parrotheads everywhere.
We realized quickly while walking through the crowds that a lot of people had heard of the Sandbar. Many people in our group had on our commemorative concert T-shirts, and everywhere we went we heard "Hey, Sandbar!" or "It's Dave from Sandbar!"
Surprisingly, it didn't take long to find people we knew in the huge crowds. Brit and Megan, a pair of former bartenders who met at the Sandbar while working together on Saturday nights and are now married, met up with us at Johnny's Tavern:
We traveled from bar to bar, which is easy to do in the P&L with its open arrangement and lax Missouri liquor laws. We started at Johnny's Tavern, where we also found our man on the street Pat, and wandered back to the tropical-themed Shark Bar, which Dave has never visited. At Shark Bar, we ran into a couple who love the Sandbar so much that when they got married last year, they stopped at the bar with their wedding party before going to their reception:
And finally, after realizing Shark Bar can never be as cool as our own tropical bar, we moved downstairs to Pizza Bar, where we ran into some more familiar faces. Stay tuned for stories about our fun at Pizza Bar, because they're good ones.
