The Madness of March is in full swing, and we’re excited to see how far the Jayhawks go in the Big 12 Championship this week and the NCAA Tournament starting next week.
To publicly show our affection for our beloved team, we gathered some of our staff members, along with some of the crew from Sandbar Subs across the street, and filmed a little commercial, now airing on local Channel 6.
You all know we don’t mind getting a little cheesy now and then (okay, most of the time). We had a good time on a Friday afternoon, and believe it or not, we only had to do a couple takes to get a good video.
The ALS ice bucket challenge has taken social media by storm, and if you haven’t seen videos of kids, adults and even dogs being drenched with buckets of ice water (and, in some cases, just ice), then you’ve been living under a rock. Or you don’t have a Facebook account. (Looking at you, Mr. Regular Customer who will remain nameless.)
Anyway, the phenomenon basically consists of someone dumping a bucket of ice water over their head and then nominating one or fifteen of their friends to do the same, with the whole event captured on video and then shared on social networks.
The nominees have 24 hours to take the challenge or else they’re expected to make a donation to the ALS Association. But, we also know that many of those taking the challenge are also donating—so they’re definitely putting their money where their mouth is.
In fact, as of today, the ALS Association reports they’ve received $22.9 million in donations during the time period July 29-August 19, compared to $1.9 million during the same time period last year. What’s more, the donations have been made by existing donors and more than 453,000 new donors.That’s amazing, people.
It’s no surprise that some of our Sandbar staff and friends were called to the challenge. Check out our video below, featuring managing partner Dave; longtime regular customers Curtis and Brandon; and current bartender and longtime Sandbar art director Justin.
Andrew, consider yourself lucky that you’re on your honeymoon.
Even if you’re tired of seeing the ice bucket challenge videos dominating your newsfeed, you can’t deny that it’s truly accomplished a goal of raising awareness of ALS—and raising some serious cash.
Something you probably don’t see every day: thirty kids, in a bar, without their parents.
That was our day yesterday at the Sandbar.
Our friends at the Lawrence Public Library are hosting Read Across Lawrence, an annual community reading event, and this year’s selection for kids is “Turtle in Paradise.” The book is about a turtle who heads for Key West, and the hurricane of 1935 is featured in the book.
Read Across Lawrence includes educational events to go along with the book, so, naturally, it made sense to hold an event at the Sandbar. Where else in Lawrence can you find a little bit of Key West, and a lot of hurricanes?
So yesterday, about thirty kids got their first taste of the Sandbar as they moved between three educational stations and learned about the science behind hurricanes from UKanTeach students.
After about 45 minutes of learning, the kids got to experience the famous indoor hurricane, complete with the cheesy video and napkins flying through the air.
This might be the cutest thing ever:
Once it was over, the kids got a souvenir strand of beads to take home with them.
A funny thing that happened: as he got his beads, one kid asked Dave “can I have a mustache?”
Dave and I looked at each other in a bit of shock. “How does he know about mustaches?” we wondered.
But we just got the box of mustaches and started handing those out, too.
Thanks, Lawrence Public Library and parents, for letting us be part of Read Across Lawrence!
In the midst of all our holiday cheer, something dropped in our laps that relates to another very important holiday: St. Patrick's Day.
Our friend Scott posted this video on his Facebook page:
It's called Double Dream Hands, and it's fantastic. We were instantly reminded of our own cheese (but not quite this cheesy) St. Patrick's Day dance routines.
You can bet we'll be incorporating Double Dream Hands into our float dance this year.
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.
