Tubs at The Club

Founder Sean Kramer is selling Tubs at the Club to Chris Hammond and the Tubs at the Club team, will stay involved as minority partner.

You know the story by now, I love telling it over and over again and you’re sick of hearing it. You can deal with it, because I’ll tell it again.

I started Tubs at the Club with a laptop and a tub of Rainier, spending weekday after weekday sitting at the Corner Club going over every detail of what this thing would look like. I was leaving journalism and moving back to Seattle, leaving my life at a standstill. There were things I wanted to say, yet without a platform to do it. I still had an itch to keep talking about the University of Idaho football team, Idaho athletic department, and the university that changed my life and made me who I am today.

I had many proposed names for my blog: The Deep Friesz, Under the Dome, The Hello Walk, and other fairly bad generic names. Then I asked Corner Club owner Marc Trivelpiece if it was okay to use the namesake of his bar for this thing, which he very happily gave the freedom to do so. It’s hard to put into words how much that meant to me.

Today, Tubs at the Club has grown into something with a following I never could have imagined. Even five years ago it was wild to go to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl and hear people talking about Tubs at the Club. I just wanted to keep talking, and apparently people still wanted to listen to what I had to say.

Shorty around the time after the bowl triumph I was the Red Door Pub in Fremont, Seattle sipping a beer and talking to the person next to me. Turns out he knew my roommate and was a Vandal as well. He recognized me from some of the alumni viewing parties in Seattle. His eyes lit up real big when I told him I was the Tubs at the Club guy. Today, you know this guy as your lovable host of the Tubs at the Club Podcast: Chris Hammond.

Meeting Chris that day changed the course of this website and brand for the better. The ideas flowing through his head were overwhelming for me, and it was a no-brainer decision for me to hand him the keys of this thing moving forward as my life began to transition me further and further away from the Idaho-sphere.

The podcast was all his idea. Bringing in all the team members you guys love? He had the biggest hand in that. And now, as Tubs at the Club moves into the future, it will be Chris Hammond bringing you those changes and all the great things we have in store.

Tubs at the Club is a name and a brand that has meaning to many Vandals. For that reason, I’m really pleased Chris Hammond, Marten Hiemstra, Brian Marceau and Alex Boatman will now be the main cast of characters taking Tubs at the Club into the future, and I couldn’t be more happy or proud to see these Vandals do it.

For those of you who’ve been with me since 2016, I want to say thank you. I created Tubs at the Club solely as a cathartic outlet for myself to transition out of journalism. Now it’s become an outlet for all Vandals to tell their stories and make their voices heard.

I will still be around, hopefully doing as much writing as I can from Taiwan with my busy schedule. It’s harder than ever for me to stay up to date on all things Idaho Vandals from across the Pacific Ocean, which is why I’ve just felt guilty holding on to Tubs at the Club as my mind has drifted further away.

Though, as all Vandals know, one thing never drifts far away from Moscow, the university, or the Corner Club … and that is my heart. Every day of my life I wake up an Idaho Vandal, and that will be the case until the day I die. Thank you to everybody who has supported me and my journey.

Go Vandals.