Post #176818 by Humuhumu on Tue, Aug 2, 2005 11:40 PM

I understand your sentiment, but this is definitely not about becoming bland enough to be palatable.

Rather, this is about just taking a moment to pause in our conversations to reach out to those who don't have the same history with tiki that we do. Ideally we would do that all the time when people bring guests with them who are new to tiki, but sometimes the conversation just barrels on with no pausing to explain simple things, like why we cringe when we hear "mai tai" and "grenadine" in the same breath, what a "leilani" is and why you wouldn't pay $20 for one, etc. It's also about acknowledging that other people don't have to have interests in common with us to be interesting to us. These people may be just as weird as we are, in a different direction.

I'm certainly not saying that every tiki event should be "slowed down" for these folks to catch up with us, but I think that it's worth an effort to slow down now and then to hold a hand out to help people catch up, instead of leaving them feeling alienated.

If these folks continue to feel alientated and unwanted at events, we all lose out on getting to spend time with their tiki-lovin' spouses, and we might be losing out on an opportunity to introduce these people to a side of tiki that they will like.