.jpg)
Atiki bar is a themed drinking establishment that serves elaborate cocktails, especiallyrum-based mixed drinks such as theMai Tai andZombie cocktails.[1]Tiki bars are aesthetically defined by theirtiki culture décor which is based upon a romanticized conception of tropical cultures, most commonlyPolynesian. Some bars also incorporate general nautical themes orretro elements from the earlyatomic age.[2][3]
Many early tiki bars were attached to hotels or were the bar sections for large Asian restaurants.[4] While some are freestanding, cocktail-only affairs, many still serve food; and some hotel-related tiki establishments are still in existence.[5] Large tiki bars may also incorporate a stage for live entertainment. Musicians such asAlfred Apaka[6] andDon Ho[7] played a historically important role in their popularity, and the bars also booked acts such asexotica-style bands and Polynesian dance floor shows.
One of the earliest and perhaps the first known tiki bar was named "Don the Beachcomber," established in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California in 1933 byErnest Gantt (who later legally changed his name to "Donn Beach"). The bar served a wide variety of exotic rum drinks (including theSumatra Kula andZombie cocktail), and later Cantonese food.[8] It displayed many artifacts that he had collected on earlier trips through the tropics. When Beach was sent to World War II, Don the Beachcomber flourished under his ex-wife's management (Sunny Sund), expanding into a chain of 16 restaurants.[9] Ultimately there were at least25 restaurants in the chain.[citation needed]
When Gantt returned from the War, he moved to Hawaii and openedWaikiki Beach, one of two archetypal tiki bars. The bar was designed to evoke the South Pacific, with palm trees, tiki masks on the walls, a garden hose that showered a gentle rain on the roof and amyna bird that was trained to shout "Give me a beer, stupid!" The bar was located on the beach, lit by tiki torches outside which enhanced its ambiance.[9] A Don the Beachcomber was located at Waikiki'sInternational Market Place.[citation needed]
The other archetypical bar isTrader Vic's, the first of which was created by Victor Bergeron inOakland, California, in 1936. The quintessential tiki cocktail, theMai Tai, was concocted at the original Trader Vic's in 1944.[10] He began opening franchises outside of California, beginning withThe Outrigger inSeattle, Washington in 1949.
In 1957, lacking the capital to expand, Bergeron partnered with Conrad Hilton and licensed the Trader Vic's brand toHilton Hotels for $2,000,000, for use in Hiltons across the US and worldwide. Hilton retained Bergeron to oversee the decoration, staffing and operation of the restaurants for an annual salary of $65,000. Hilton soon estimated the popular Trader Vic's establishments were earning his hotel chain $5 million a year.[11] As the chain expanded, Bergeron also marketed tiki mugs, cocktail mixes, and other products for mass retail sale.[citation needed]
Members of the Bergeron family still have a hand in the operations of at least one branch. The original restaurant in Oakland, California, no longer exists but there is still a Trader Vic's a few miles away in nearbyEmeryville. Roughly 20 locations are operating throughout the world and bearing the iconic name.[12]
.jpg)
Prior to Donn Beach opening his first tiki bar, during the 1930s South Pacific-influenced dreams of escapism had started to become more prevalent in American music and popular culture.[1] The "kitschy"Clifton's Cafeteria opened in 1931 with some elements that today could be viewed as part of "tiki-like" thematics (indoor gardens with exotic travel themes), labeled by Tiki historian Sven Kirsten as pre-tiki and part of the "birth of Polynesian pop". In 1939Clifton's Pacific Seas was remodeled to a full-blown exotic setting and decorated with 12 waterfalls, volcanic rock, and tropical foliage.[13] The original restaurant was demolished, but a much smaller version in the form of a side-room bar named thePacific Seas resides at another Clifton's location.[14]
TheTonga Room of theFairmont Hotel in San Francisco is an iconic tiki bar operating since 1945, still retaining its Polynesian flair after having undergone a number of facelifts over the years.[15] At one time the Sheraton Hotel, Hilton Hotel, and Marriott Hotel chains all had several tiki bars incorporated into their establishments.[citation needed]
From California, tiki spread north, andThe Alibi Tiki Lounge is a currently operating tiki bar established in Portland, Oregon from 1947. TheKalua Room opened as part of the Windsor Hotel in Seattle in 1953 and was one of the first to put a tiki-like image next to their restaurant's name.[16] The oldest operating tiki bar in Hawaii is theLa Mariana Sailing Club Tiki Bar and Restaurant, established in 1957.[17][18][19][20] TheHawaiian Village Hotel was the home to legendary tiki bartenderHarry Yee.
California'sTiki Ti is another historically important tiki establishment still in operation, as is Florida'sMai Kai, which is a focal spot for a large annual hukilau tiki gathering.[21] Shelter Island, San Diego had at one time a heavily concentrated area of tiki bars, the best known being the still operatingBali Hai.[22]
In 1962, the now famous Kon Tiki Bar opened inTucson,Arizona.[23] Also in 1962, theSip 'n Dip Lounge opened inGreat Falls, Montana, bringing a tiki theme to the cold northern state and featuring a swimming pool where swimmers could be observed underwater from a window in the bar, a concept inspired by a similar design at thePlayboy Club in Chicago.[24]
TheKahiki Supper Club was a very large tiki restaurant and bar in Columbus, Ohio (since demolished). ThePago Pago Lounge was in Tucson, and theChin Tiki andMauna Loa were in Detroit (both closed).[25][26] TheZombie Hut closed in 1990. Stephen Crane'sThe Luau restaurant is also gone but was considered historically important in the tiki craze's early days, as were Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber.[27]
Eli Hedley (1903–1981), a sculptor and beachcomber, had "Island Trade Store", a Polynesian-themed tiki bar, inMidway City, California, "Tiki's Tropical Traders", a retail venue inDisneyland, whereSteve Martin worked, and also worked withDonn Beach.[a]
The original tiki bars flourished for about 30 years, and then fell out of vogue.[84][85][86] In the 1990s, thetiki culture was revived by a new generation of fans and new tiki bars were founded worldwide that often looked to Trader Vic's and Don the Beachcomber for inspiration.[87][88] In that decade, the Sip 'n Dip Lounge, which had survived with its tiki theme intact, added the feature of having women dressed asmermaids swimming in their pool within view of the bar's patrons.[89] The live mermaid incorporation and the overallretro tiki ambience ledGQ Magazine to rate the lounge as one of the top 10 bars in the world for 2003.[90] By the mid-2010s, both traditional tiki cocktails and new cocktails with tiki characteristics were being served in bars associated with thecraft cocktail movement.[91]
Michael Warren ofThe Dispatch associates the tiki revival in the 2010s and 2020s with bars such as San Francisco'sSmuggler's Cove and Brooklyn'sSunken Harbor Club.[92]
The interiors and exteriors of tiki bars often include tiki masks and carvings,hula girl motifs,black velvet paintings, large tropical murals, live plants or palm trees, bamboo, grasscloth,tapa cloth, and similarfabrics, torches, woven fish traps,pufferfish lamps, glass floats, and the use of rock and lava stone. Indoor fountains, waterfalls, or even lagoons are popular features.[93][94]
Beyond Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron,Stephen Crane was a well known promoter of the early tiki style, and was hired by Sheraton Hotels to design theirKon Tiki chain of establishments to compete with Hilton'sTrader Vics.[95] An early menu from hisThe Luau restaurant in Beverly Hills outlines where he got the materials for its decoration, including "chairs from Hong Kong", "Monkey pod furniture milled in Papaaloa", "structural bamboo hand-wrapped by Philippine craftsmen", "Chinese soapstone", the shells of "man-eating clams from the Indian ocean", and mentioning other materials from Nepa, Niiu, Samoa, Tahiti, Fuji, and of Tonga-Tabu origin.[96]
"Mick" Brownlee was the main wood carver for Donn Beach in Hawaii.[97][98] After 1956 many designs were also accomplished with original work from the companyOceanic Arts, co-owned by Bob Van Oosting and Leroy Schmaltz in California, which imported materials and did original wood carvings.[99][100] The tiki aesthetic was also refined by restaurant designersClif and Lou Sawyer, who took part in over 360 design projects including atThe Luau,Don the Beachcomber (Palm Springs, AZ),The Reef (Casper, Wyoming),[101] and thePago Pago (Tucson, AZ).
Separate side rooms are employed, one of the earliest being "the black hole of Calcutta" as used by Donn Beach.[102] Some of the biggest tiki restaurants are designed as large open air spaces with cavernous ceilings that allowed for the construction of separate areas with exotic names. The "cannibal room", "kon-tiki bar", "scorpion's den", and "trader's hut" could all be collected under one roof. Some like theChin Tiki were multiple-level affairs, requiring patrons to climb stairs or cross bamboo bridges to get to other sections.The Kahiki Supper Club in Columbus, OH advertised as "The world's most elaborate Polynesian Supper Club" inLife Magazine and even provided its own interior map.[103] This allowed keeping dinner show areas secluded away from more private drinking lounges, and lent to the "experience" by making patrons feel they had been transported away to an entire village. Limited windows or the use of fake windows with dioramas is done for similar reasons.[93][1][104]
Live animals are sometimes present. The now closedBahooka Tiki bar was famous for its over one-hundred fish tanks.[105][106][107][108][109]The look of the establishment's menu, swizzle sticks, matchbook covers, and cocktail napkins can be extremely important design considerations for tiki bars.[110][111] These add to the exotic destination immersion and feel for the bar and are taken home by customers where they then become a form of outside advertising.[112][113]
A hallmark of tiki bars are specialty drinks, some of which may be unique to a bar and the recipes for which were often carefully guarded in order to prevent imitation from competing bars or from customers trying to recreate a drink at home.[9]
Multiple types ofrums (light, dark, spiced, overproof and originating from various countries) are typically mixed together with orange liqueurs (Triple sec,Grand Marnier,Cointreau), tropical fruit juices, sweet syrups (falernum,fassionola,orgeat) andbitters.[9] Many are bright in color, including more unusual cocktail colors such as blue (fromCuraçao) and green hues (fromMidori orCrème de menthe).[114][115]
Some classic drink recipes[116][117][118][119] from the early tiki era, many attributed to Don the Beachcomber or Trader Vic, include the:
Blue Hawaii,Cobra's Fang,Coffee Grog,Corpse Reviver,Doctor Funk,Diki-Diki,Fog Cutter, Fu Manchu, Gold Cup, Head Hunter,Mai Tai,Navy Grog, Lapu Lapu,Mr. Bali Hai, Outrigger,Pago Pago, Pearl Diver, Py Yi,Planter's Punch,QB Cooler, Rum Barrel,Scorpion, Shark's Tooth, Shrunken Head,Singapore Sling,Suffering Bastard,Sumatra Kula,Test Pilot, Three Dots & A Dash, and theZombie
New tiki drinks continue to be created by a variety of bartenders and others. Jeff "Beachbum" Berry devised two cocktails in honor of new-wave tiki-pioneersSven Kirsten andOtto Von Stroheim, with theSven-Tiki andOtto's Grotto cocktails.[120] He is also known from having created theAncient Mariner and Von Tiki cocktails.
Beyond fruit, cocktails are often garnished for customers with papercocktail umbrellas, fancyswizzle sticks, live flowers or plastic animals.[121] Cocktails can be very complicated and dramatic, often served in decoratedceramic vessels, employing dry ice or ice shells, or may be set on fire.[122] The ordering of some drinks also triggers a serving ritual, such as theMystery Drink that could result in the ringing of a gong and a hula dressed "mystery girl" bringing the beverage to the table; the mystery drink was once popular enough that Johnny Carson "ordered" it twice during the filming ofThe Tonight Show.[123] Some drinks ordered at Disney'sEnchanted Tiki Bar also result in certain things happening, such as the ordering of aKrakatoa Punch causing the picture of a faux volcano to erupt.[citation needed]
As the term is used generically, "tiki mugs" are ceramic drink vessels traditionally shaped astikis,Easter Island statues (moai), shrunken heads, totems, coconuts, skulls, or in other Hawaiian, exotic, retro, or pirate-themed styles.[110][9] The name of the bar is often listed on the back of the mug or its bottom. Wood may also be used, typically in the shapes of miniature barrels or boats. For some drinks actual fruit is used, such as hollowed-outpineapples or drilledcoconuts with long straws that are used to serve customers.[124]
Although many are much bigger than a typical coffee mug, for drinks that are meant to be shared, larger capacities are required. AScorpion Bowl (or Kava Bowl) is an oversized cocktail that is served in a large bowl for communal drinking.[125] A variation on the Scorpion Bowl is theFlaming Volcano. Also a communal drink, the Flaming Volcano is traditionally served in aceramic volcano bowl that has a raised crater reservoir typically filled with a small amount ofoverproof rum (151 or 160) and carefully lit on fire. Large shells or their ceramic counterparts are also sometimes used for communal drinks, such as in theChin Tiki Special.
Customers who want to keep a tiki mug can frequently do so for an additional fee. Mugs are often "taken" from the bar as a souvenir or collectible, and some mugs can be quite valuable.[126]
Although a largely American creation, tiki bars are not limited to the United States, and many others exist in Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, particularly in Germany and the United Kingdom.[127][128][129][130][131][132][133] At least three tiki bars opened in Australia in 2017.[134][135]
There are at least a dozen Trader Vic's locations in Europe and Asia, including in London, Tokyo, Munich, and Bangkok.[136] The Trader Vic's franchise caters to its local clientele, and in London opened with aLondon Sour on its cocktail menu in 1965, and its Munich location with aMunich Sour in 1972.[137]
In 2017 noted tiki historians Sven Kirsten,Jeff Berry, Martin Cate, Brian Miller, and Chris Osburn listed their top 15 operating tiki bars in the world and included four in London, one in Munich, one in Tokyo, and one in Barcelona.[138] Other judges included top- rated tiki bars in Paris, Hong Kong, and Berlin.[139]
In the wake of commercial tiki bars, during each wave of tiki popularity, home tiki bars were also built. Home bars often serve a dual purpose — to create a recreational space in which to imbibe home-crafted cocktails, and to show off tiki collections of mugs, art, and other artifacts.[140][141] Home tiki bars are built both inside and outside, sometimes asman caves. Those built outdoors are typically placed in backyard patios but are also erected on theshorelines of boat docks for people living on the water.
Some of these home bars are simple but others are lavish enough to rival their commercial forebears.[142][143] Not limited to America, many from around the world are uploaded onto internet sites and sometimes even toured.[144][145][108]
In this first image, they're in Adventureland, with "Tiki's Tropical Traders" in the background.
Tiki's Tropical Traders...Insurance Company of North America
For the first several years of Disneyland's operation, the shop was owned by Eli Hedley, the original Beachcomber. In exchange for carving early Adventureland tikis and offering general scenic decor, Hedley was given the shop space rent free. Walt negotiated the lucrative arrangement with Hedley personally. (auction catalog of circa 900 documents, artifacts, images)
Van Eaton Galleries is proud to present "Remembering Disneyland", an exhibition and auction of nearly 800 props, souvenirs, and artifacts from the park's 60-year history. "Remembering Disneyland" tells the story of Disneyland through the memories and experiences of former Cast Members, performers, and individuals who have had a role in the legacy of the park...With items including original wardrobe, concept art, props, vintage souvenirs, and more,...The auction is scheduled for December 16, 2017 and there will be a free exhibition of the items at Van Eaton Galleries November 21, 2017 through December 15, 2017.
Long Beach, San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City, Carson, Lomita, Rancho Palos Verdes, Torrance
@bamboo_ben_'s Grandfather is the original beachcomber who carved tikis, ran a tiki shop in Disneyland and outfitted many tiki temples! Love this shot of his tikis and sign. Trader Mort tiki second from left still
Nat Gozzano Jr, of Palm Springs ... was also known as Nat Reed, artist & founder of the art gallery "The Art of Nat Reed". ... was born in 1961 to Nat & Marilyn Gozzano, of Huntington Beach, CA. ... Nat's mother was the author of "How Daddy Became a Beachcomber" that told the story of their Hedley family in the 1940's. They lovingly built the home they called "The Cove" with found items from the sea on their beautiful stretch of beach in San Pedro, CA. Nat's Grandfather was Eli Hedley, a noted Tropical Decorator in Southern CA and owner of Island Trade Store, in the original Disneyland and Midway City, CA. ...Nat's cousin, Ben Bassham, carries on the family tradition
via Free Online Library
