Tiki bar

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For the Tiki Bar TV podcast, see Tiki Bar TV.

A Tiki Bar is a bar steeped in Tiki culture, serving exotic rum-based cocktails such as the mai tai. The bars are defined as much by their ambience: Hula girls, scowling "Tiki god" masks and sculptures, tiki torches, bamboo, palm trees, and cloth seating.

1 History
2 Culture
3 Drinks
4 References
5 External Links

[edit] History

The first tiki bar was named Don the Beachcomber, created in Los Angeles in 1933 by Ernest Gantt (aka Donn Beach). The bar served a wide variety of exotic rum drinks (including the popular Sumatra Kula and Zombie cocktail) and Cantonese dishes, and hosted many artifacts which Gantt had found and picked up on a youthful jaunt through tropical locales. When Gannt was sent to World War II, Don the Beachcomber flourished under his ex-wife's management, turning into a chain with 16 restaurants.

When Gannt returned from the war, he moved to Hawaii and created Waikiki Beach, one of the two canonical bars that frame the tiki bar experience. The bar was drenched in South Pacific ambience, decked in palm trees, tiki masks on the walls, a garden hose that showered a gentle rain on the roof and a myna bird that was trained to shout "Give me a beer, stupid!" The bar was on the beach, lit by tiki torches outside which gave it some of its primitive ambience.

The other canonical bar is called Trader Vic's, and became a prime example of a tiki bar as well, with many of the same accoutrements.

The original Tiki bars flourished for about 30 years, and then fell out of vogue.

[edit] Culture

As of the 1990's, the Tiki culture was unearthed and given a new incarnation, based less on the original tiki culture and more on the kitsch that defined the bars themselves.

[edit] Drinks

Creative rum drinks from the South Pacific are another important facet of the Tiki bar. The secrecy surrounding drinks in the early Tiki bar days rocketed into heights of paranoia, including the removal of labels from the drink bottles. Trader Vic's and Waikiki Beach have an ongoing feud over who first created the world-famous mai tai.