Post #106075 by tikibars on Tue, Aug 3, 2004 7:59 PM

On 2004-08-03 17:25, tikijackalope wrote:
The spike in the current tiki trend probably won't last out the year, a victim not only of trendy public tastes but of boardroom meetings to predict the next hot thing

However, the classic period of tiki was well over a decade long,

In 2002, I figured that Tiki as a mainstream fad had peaked.
In 2003 it was even bigger,
and this year it is bigger still.

We'll see if the suits roll it out again next year.
I think they will.
I think that the corporate exploitation of Tiki, 21st century-style, is just beginning.

The classic Tiki period was indeed well over a decade long - I'd give the peak of Tiki more than two decades: late 1940s to late 1960s... and if you consider that Don and Vic both had restaurants open in the 1930s and that places like Chef Shangri-La (IL) and Honolulu Restaurant (VA) were opening into the 1970s, we're looking at close to four decades of original mainstream Tiki.

Given how fast things move these days, and given the short attention span of the masses in general, I am not predicting anywhere close to this sort of longetivity for neo-Tiki - but I think that we're in for a few more years of embarassing neon-colored moai mugs in Walgreen's stores, and at least one bad Tiki sitcom before it subsides.