Post #573110 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Jan 24, 2011 10:18 AM

That was Bob Bryant, when he left Trader Vic's IN 1955 and opened "Tiki Bob's" one block down the street from the S.F. Trader Vic's. He used it in the name first, and he shares the credit with Steve Crane AND Trader Vic of using the Tiki as a logo for the first time, which marks the beginning of Tiki culture within Polynesian pop: At the entrance, on the menu, matchbooks, ads, and as a mug or S&P shakers.

Mind you, it has not been determined what year the first Tiki mug appeared, it seems likely that the Tiki Bob mug came out later. Trader Vic introduced his Maori logo Tiki on his Beverly Hills "Traders" menu also in 1955. So it really was a Zeitgeist/ synchronicity thing - though Crane is known to have been copying a lot from Vic. I am not sure what year the "Luau" changed from its Pre-Tiki bamboo decor which hailed from when it was "The Tropics" to the more elaborate Tiki decor mentioned in its menu introduction.

I never understood this strange competitiveness about the origins of Polynesian pop and Tiki. This is not some kind of sports jock contest, the historic facts are simply that - Facts: Don The Beachcomber inspired Victor Bergeron, Lee Henry and Bill Sapp, and the Thornton brothers. Nobody is gaining anything by that fact, or trying to diminish the importance of the Mai Kai and the other Tiki power places, it's just how it was.