Post #106640 by John in Montreal on Fri, Aug 6, 2004 10:24 AM

Sabina,

I certainly can relate to early memories of tiki like yours...

In fact, it is a combination of real and "false" memories that drew me to tiki and make it so fascinating...

Part of it is a facination with the recent past... a past just slightly beyond my reach (i.e. any time just before my date of birth in 1965). Can I be nostalgic for a time that I never had a chance to fully experience on a first hand basis? I often find myself having these "false" memories...

Another part of it is the very real memories of having lived through the tail end of the tiki heyday. I have vague recollections of luaus at the Hawaiian Isle Motel in Miami Beach in 1967... I have clear memories of outings to the Kon Tiki in Montreal to celebrate special occasions throughout the early 70s...

Was there a real tiki culture back then? And was my family a part of it? Like BigBro said, we probably just adhered to certain aspects... we had a basement bar that was somewhat tiki, with the right kind of lamps, coconuts and a few souvenir tiki mugs serving as bar-top decor, and a couple of exotica albums in the lp collection stacked below the nearby stereo... but I don't know that my folks were all that aware of the pervasiveness of tiki throughout North America. However, having made the choice of frequenting Montreal tiki bars and restaurants and bringing some elements of tiki into the home surely led them to choose places like the Hawaiian Isle and others when we traveled outside of our immediate surroundings...

[ Edited by: John in Montreal on 2004-08-06 10:26 ]