This SF bar is filled with 6 tons of sand. Customers are confused.

It’s a cold Thursday night in November and I’m the only one in Del Mar wearing flip-flops.

It’s “Beach Party” week at the tropically inspired bar in San Francisco’s Marina District, and owner and general manager Michael Wilbert has taken the theme to its literal extreme. On Wednesday, he spread 6 tons of sand across the bar’s floor. On Sunday, he will remove 6 tons of sand from the bar’s floor.

Off to the side of the space, two beach chairs frame a sandcastle. A few plastic shovels and pails are strewn around it. Some beach balls, stamped with 818 Tequila logos, sit in the corners. The barstools are locked in place, legs buried 5 inches in the sand. A DJ at the corner of the bar plays Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” from his turntable. 

Some might call the move a PR stunt to drum up weeknight business. Others might point to it as a shining example of the sort of lighthearted fun that San Francisco needs. But no matter where you fall, it’s impossible to deny the basic fact that the floor is covered in sand. 

The question then becomes: What do you do when the floor is covered in sand?

The customers aren’t quite sure. Some lean against the bar. Others sip their curly-strawed cocktails in the beach chairs. A good number sit in Del Mar’s wooden swings and diner-style booths, which are lifted above the sand. The 6-ton mass of sand is not as overwhelming as it sounds once it’s dispersed and packed tight, even if it weighs approximately as much as two Toyota Corollas.

According to Wilbert, about half of his patrons show up expecting a sand-covered floor. The other half arrive to a sandy surprise.

At the door, I watched a young couple flash their IDs to the bouncer, only to cross the bar’s threshold, look down at the sand and nervously walk away.

Josh Matthew, a 25-year-old tech worker who lives in Western Addition, described the sand as “a pleasant surprise.” Since he wasn’t paying much attention when he walked in, he only noticed the sand when the ground felt unusually soft underfoot.

34-year-old Eric Jacob was also taken aback. At first, he thought that the bar was under construction, he said.

“When I first got here, I thought I was in the wrong place,” Jacob told SFGATE. “Like, why is there all this sand?”

Wilbert told SFGATE that he’s filled Del Mar with sand once before, at a Halloween beach party a couple years back. It fits the bar’s beachy, tropical theme, he says. 

The operation goes something like this:

Wilbert has “a sand guy” who dumps 6 tons of sand on the sidewalk. Del Mar’s staff, armed with shovels and wheelbarrows, then scoop the sand into the bar heap by heap. The process takes a couple of hours, “if you’re good,” Wilbert said. 

Del Mar’s staff has done its best to keep the sand contained, setting up a wooden barrier, sort of like the lip of a sandbox, between the sand-covered bar and the path that leads to the bathroom. But a thin trail of sediment tracks into the bathroom’s floor.

“The sand gets everywhere,” Wilbert said with a laugh. “The only one who doesn’t like this is my cleaning guy.”

Wilbert maintains that this is premium sand and it’s better than the sand at most beaches. Although he didn’t name his exact sources, he told me that he purchased it from a landscape company.

The sand also has added perks, Wilbert said. It makes spills easier to clean up, since that sand simply absorbs the sticky tropical drinks. There’s no chance of broken glasses, either.

I couldn’t help but wonder: after a few days of contact with San Francisco sidewalk shoes — bracketing the fact that this sand was dumped directly onto the sidewalk in the first place — plus spilled drinks, does the quality of the sand degrade? On a beach, sand circulates. The tide rises, rinses it and recedes. But what happens when the natural balance is disrupted?

Wilbert maintained that after five days, the sand remained fresh. But really, there was only one way to verify.

When I kicked off my flip-flops, the first thing I noticed about the sand was that it was cool underfoot. While it was packed tight from patrons’ sneakers (the sand was covered in shoe prints), it remained plush and cakey. It’s closest in consistency to the strip of firm sand on the beach that sits just out of reach of the tides. 

“The sand is definitely wet to the touch,” Niya Fedoroff, a 21-year-old preschool teacher from the Mission District, told SFGATE.

Fedoroff came to Del Mar for the beach party, but she chose not to wear sandals in case she went to another bar afterward.

Zoe Dabbagh, 22, told SFGATE that the sand was like a little taste of the beach. “It’s very ‘Love Island,’” she added.

But Dabbagh, who wore high heels to Del Mar, acknowledged that the sand made it difficult to walk. “You just got to stay on your toes,” she said.