Long story short: Chubbies Shorts built a bar inside a Winnebago, now they’re selling it via Craigslist for $60,000.
Short story long: Chubbies, the San Francisco-based men’s short shorts company with the cheeky name beloved of bros citywide, gussied up a 39 foot Voyage Motor Inn Winnebago as a functional bar in 2014, dubbed it their "Bar-V," nicknamed it Ronald, opened a Twitter account for it, and sent it on the road to tailgate parties.
This all more or less makes sense to anyone already familiar with the Chubbies brand image. For anyone not up on their Chubbies, the RV setup, with its kegerators, jumbo TV trailer, framed picture of Tom Selleck, and wraparound paint job of phrases like "Chubster weekend" and "slamma lamma ding dong" pretty much says it all.
The price for your new bar on wheels is $60,000, (100 free pairs of shorts included). So why, after presumably putting so much work and money into the gloriously tacky monstrosity, is Chubbies parting with it? Spokesperson Kit Garton tells Curbed SF that the company is simply not that interested in tailgating anymore.
Indeed, judging from the relevant social media accounts, it looks like Ronald was only on the road for a couple of months in 2014. Perhaps the bar-on-wheels gimmick didn’t turn out to be as useful a marketing device as the Chubbies set thought, or maybe attention spans waned a bit once the initial excitement of the concept wore off.
In addition to the Craiglist ad, Chubbies also listed the winnie in their regular product catalog as "our most expensive item ever." Ronald is presently parked in Alameda.
- Bar-V, $60,000 [Craigslist]
- Ronald the RV [Twitter]
- Ronald the RV [Instagram]
- RV Full of Shorts [Chubbies]