JOHN-O's Las Vegas (& Honolulu pg 8) Thread - General Tiki

TM tiki mick Tiki Socialite SOCAL Joined: May 12, 2004 Posts: 4094	TM tiki mick Posted posted on Mon, Nov 22, 2010 4:02 PM Me too. John, I had some wonderful experiences in Honolulu back in the 80's, when Hotel street was enthusiastically called "shit street" by us service guys! Oh yeah! We would go down there every weekend and hit what we affectionately called the "Buy me drinkee" bars! My favorite was the "Harbor Lounge", run by an obvious madam whose name was "anne". All the cocktail girls/strippers were also hookers. These were the kinds of places were you only went with a large group of guys, because there were always Hawaiian and Samoan bikers there. It was scary and thrilling at the same time...but of course the big draw for me was that these were vintage bars from the WW2 era, that had long since gone to pot....(Kind of like these days!) anyway, the bars all had the original jukeboxes for the most part, with 45's and in some cases, 78 recordings of all the big band stuff of that era...glen miller, tommy dorsey, etc...it was a real time machine! One night I met this old Chinese guy outside who told me if I gave him 10 bucks he could quickly turn it into 100. I followed him all up and down hotel street (which was chinatown) and indeed, he conned everyone he saw and made the 100 bucks back and then some! He even gave me my cut! But stepping into that tropical night after an evening of drinking mai tais, singapore slings and sloe gin fizzes was a priceless experience I will never forget. I would just walk down the streets and try to imagine being a serviceman on leave back in 1940s...and it was not hard seeing that I was exactly that, but in a different time! Oh, I would seek out those bars that had Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman recordings on those machines. My buddies never understood, and they were into metal and other types of music...and there was no category called "tiki" so I had no one to talk to except the old-timers like my boss, Mr. Elmore, (CW3 Elmore) who had seen Martin Denny and Arthur lyman live on many occasions and was suprised that I could whistle songs such as Bali Hai and quiet village. he always used to chuckle about that and say I was born in the wrong time period! I have looked in vain for pictures on the net, showing what honolulu used to look like back then. it's all gone, you know? No longer can you whiff cocaine on a bar table while drinking a mai tai, watching a stripper and listening to Stan Kenton...those days are gone!

Me too.

John, I had some wonderful experiences in Honolulu back in the 80's, when Hotel street was enthusiastically called "shit street" by us service guys! Oh yeah! We would go down there every weekend and hit what we affectionately called the "Buy me drinkee" bars!

My favorite was the "Harbor Lounge", run by an obvious madam whose name was "anne". All the cocktail girls/strippers were also hookers. These were the kinds of places were you only went with a large group of guys, because there were always Hawaiian and Samoan bikers there. It was scary and thrilling at the same time...but of course the big draw for me was that these were vintage bars from the WW2 era, that had long since gone to pot....(Kind of like these days!) anyway, the bars all had the original jukeboxes for the most part, with 45's and in some cases, 78 recordings of all the big band stuff of that era...glen miller, tommy dorsey, etc...it was a real time machine!

One night I met this old Chinese guy outside who told me if I gave him 10 bucks he could quickly turn it into 100. I followed him all up and down hotel street (which was chinatown) and indeed, he conned everyone he saw and made the 100 bucks back and then some! He even gave me my cut!

But stepping into that tropical night after an evening of drinking mai tais, singapore slings and sloe gin fizzes was a priceless experience I will never forget. I would just walk down the streets and try to imagine being a serviceman on leave back in 1940s...and it was not hard seeing that I was exactly that, but in a different time!

Oh, I would seek out those bars that had Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman recordings on those machines. My buddies never understood, and they were into metal and other types of music...and there was no category called "tiki" so I had no one to talk to except the old-timers like my boss, Mr. Elmore, (CW3 Elmore) who had seen Martin Denny and Arthur lyman live on many occasions and was suprised that I could whistle songs such as Bali Hai and quiet village. he always used to chuckle about that and say I was born in the wrong time period!

I have looked in vain for pictures on the net, showing what honolulu used to look like back then. it's all gone, you know? No longer can you whiff cocaine on a bar table while drinking a mai tai, watching a stripper and listening to Stan Kenton...those days are gone!

Post #566109 by tiki mick on Mon, Nov 22, 2010 4:02 PM