Post #561452 by koopkooper on Mon, Oct 25, 2010 5:57 AM

Hey Tiki Fans...you need to give journalist Chris Roberts a serve over his dismissive comments about Tiki and the Tonga room. Lets show him how important the Tonga Room is !!

Make sure you comment and tell Chris Roberts how you feel about his comments, I am outraged and think that we need to stand up and show this man the amazing Tiki Culture that exists.

At the bottom of the article is a comment section...get to it gang!

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/10/tonga_room_execution_stayed_do.php

Tonga Room Execution Stayed. Does Anyone Care? by Chris Roberts

Like smoking at work, camel hair coats and a budget surplus, tiki bars are relics of a bygone era, of when Cesar Chavez Street was called Army, when nobody in San Francisco knew what a bike lane was, and organ meat was nothing more than fodder for the cows that we turned into delicious 15-cent hamburgers.

That's why we can't understand the flap over the Tonga Room. Sure, the Fairmont Hotel's tiki bar is... unique, but the hotel wants it out of its ground floor. Now. But this is San Francisco, and the Tiki Lounge was declared historic back in May, meaning all parts of it must be preserved. That didn't help the decision-making ability of the Planning Commission on Thursday, who booted a decision on what to do with the Polynesian Lounge until January 2011.

Evidently, enough people care to bother the Planning Commission with this issue for three hours yesterday. Members of the public issuing comment at public comment were roughly split on the issue, according to reports in our newspapers of record.

"We all know the Tonga Room is about as Polynesian as Hawaiian pizza," said one, according to the Chronicle's food blog. This is true, because Hawaiian pizza was either invented in Canada or in Italy, and either way it has nothing to do with an historic preservation label slapped on postwar kitsch.

Whatever happens to the Tonga Room, it's going to happen somewhere else. The Fairmont's owners reiterated their desire to get the Tonga Room the hell out of its property. (There is a mystery benefactor who has claimed he or she will move the bar in its entirety to an undisclosed location in SF, so there's that.)

So if you want to pay a cover in order to sit underneath a faux bamboo canopy and sip a Singapore Sling, now's the time. In the meantime, you can find us at Trad'r Sam's (shortly before you find us dead from alcohol poisoning), where you get a similar experience for 1/10 of the price.