Post #386656 by Tipsy McStagger on Thu, Jun 12, 2008 12:57 PM

On 2008-06-12 11:59, nature boy wrote:
There are 50's diners all over the place. I know it is not the same because the focus of those type places is nostalgia and not creating the exact same thing as a actual 50's diner. But hey, I would be happy with a nostalgic Tiki place in every town!!

true- there are many original diners still left but alot of vintage ones bit the dust over the years.....the thing with diners is they serve a specific function as eateries and the whole diner look and concept is alot more palatable to your average american in a sense that they have more mass appeal for the simple reason that they don't challenge anyones ideas or provoke new ones....it's simply an old/new place to get something to eat, maybe socialize a bit and it looks like happy days....the bigger and more focused the theme, the harder it is to sell to your average consumer these days ...tiki themes put the restaurant biz over the top which was what made it so appealing....now in these times of everything being disneyfied, we have places like rainforest cafe, (had) planet hollywood, etc.....in this climate, tiki would have to go way over the top even further to put itself beyond the reach of those places and still appeal to a large number of consumers...a tall order indeed. tiki will always be with us on some level...it's just hard to see it realisticly as opposed to the way we normally like to romanticise it, through our eyes as tikiphiles....