Post #243370 by Rev. Griz on Mon, Jul 17, 2006 9:40 AM

On 2006-07-16 16:37, lucas vigor wrote:
If a TIKI bar is pushing out exotica in favor of Buffy, then that is not a good thing. If all you really like is tropical decor and fruit-based drinks, then that's ok. But if (like me) you would like to see real TIKI culture have it's rightful place as a true art form, then watering it down for mass consumption by using Buffy instead of Baxter should be a crime with heavy jail time.

The problem is economics and education. Most people drink "tiki" drinks because they're sweet and you can't taste the booze. They don't differentiate between a daquiri, a margarita, and a mai-tai. The educated tikiphile drinks these drinks BECAUSE they're "tiki" and WANTS to taste a good rum in them. There are a lot more casual parrotheads than dedicated tikiphiles in the world, and if the true educated tikiphiles cannot keep their local tiki bar afloat playing exotica and serving Fogcutters, then the tiki bar is going to cater to the crowd that comes in and plunks down the money (yes I'm talking to you, Drift Lounge, Scottsdale, AZ).

Those of us here (and I can barely include myself since I'm only a novice tikiphile) are educated, but you can't fault the dog for licking his balls, it's what dogs do. You can't fault the uneducated for going to a real tiki bar and ordering a cosmopolitan, they don't know any better. The bar owner may be a true tikiphile, but he/she is a businessperson first and they have to keep the doors open.

As far as Buffett is concerned, I don't believe for a moment that he had anything at all to do with the decline of Tiki any more than he had anything to do with the decline of Googie and Space Age that happened at the same time. Fashions change, and what goes around comes around. Hip hugger bellbottoms and peasant blouses are back (thank the fashion gods!) and so are tikis in the popular consiousness, and Buffett, whether you like it or not, has contributed a great deal to that resurgence. Why? Because he's become very popular over the last few years, and everyone wants to ride the money train. So every retail crap outlet in the world is scraping the bottom of every barrel for anything even remotely tropical to throw at the wall and see if it sticks. Tikis are undeniably tropical, and everyone has good memories of Adventureland and the Tiki Hut at Disney, so here they are. They'll be gone again before you know it, but the tikiphiles will remain as always.

Now, if I put on my Parrothead hat, I could make a case that you tiki people are trying to hijack OUR bus. Margaritaville is not a place in space/time, it's a state of mind. As you variously pity, deride, or haranuge the uneducated tiki posers out there, so you also may be committing the same sin towards the Church of Buffett by running it down for its impact on you without understanding what it's really about. Jimmy Buffett is about living your life for now and doing what you are led by your inner desires to do. It's realizing that you truly can do anything you want if you try hard enough. The Parrothead lifestyle is not about Polynesia or the Caribbean or Mexico or Florida, although it touches on all those places. It's about taking what's right about all those places and putting them together into some sort of archetypal tropical paradise that you carry with you whereever you go in life. You don't have to physically travel to Margaritaville, in fact you can't, it doesn't exist, but you can take yourself to Margaritaville while you are sitting in the conference room enduring a boring meeting, or making dinner for your screaming kids...

Or even sitting on the beach somewhere.