Post #538346 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Jun 22, 2010 7:26 PM

We often forget nowadays how strict and puritan the reigning dress, decor and social code was in the first half of the 20th Century. Many 9-5 men and women fantasized about trading in their boring jobs for a freer, more relaxed lifestyle:

That of the traveller, the artist, the bohemian, the beachcomber. To live in a shack, filled with exotic mementos of an adventurous and artistic life.....

The huge success of Don Blanding's 1932 book "Vagabond's House" was an indication of that: In its title poem, Blanding describes such a fantasy place, a place which none of the regular Joes and Janes at that time would dare to actually decorate their home like:

Not a literal description of a Tiki bar, but the feeling and atmosphere of a jumble of exotic objects, materials and art that are intriguing and unusual is all there. When we look at this 1940s interior of Trader Vic's and its patrons in contrast to it...

...we can perhaps appreciate how much this type of environment must have felt "bohemian" to its suit-and-tie clients.
"Bohemian" here equalled "informal". For an evening they could be Leeteg, the painter of nudes, visiting a rowdy sailor's dive - and still be safe and sure to return home to their orderly life afterwards.

It was this "fake" bohemian make believe that the children of that Polynesiac generation found ridiculous and shunned as passe. Until, as woofmut pointed out, the next generation of artistic-minded bohemians dug it up and dug it again.