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Beyond Tiki, Bilge, and Test / Beyond Tiki / Quienes es mas Tiki?

Post #64052 by ikitnrev on 12/09/2003

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I
ikitnrev posted on 12/09/2003

In my view the team (OSU, LSU, USC) that is the most tiki is the team that has the most players who are likely to choose to seek out a tiki bar when doing a roadtrip. I have no way of determining that, and I don't expect ESPN to do a poll soon on this subject. Maybe some of the players have tiki bars in their homes? If so, I'll cheer for them!

In my view, sports teams aren't tiki. Cities and states aren't tiki either. Instead, it is the individual(s) that determines whether something is tiki.

If there was a OSU fan who was into tiki, and seeked out a cool bar in New Orleans, I would call him tiki - but that honor does not get passed to the entire team, or the rest of their fans.

If Joe Namath celebrated his Super Bowl win by going out for rum drinks at a tiki bar -- now, that would be tiki. A group of LSU fans celebrating a victory in a tiki bar would be tiki too.

But having a group of OSU fans on one side of a tiki bar, with a group of USC fans on the other side of the same bar -- well, that could be tiki, until they started to trade playful insults about the others schools, which then led to loud group singing of the respective school fight songs, which then escalated to yelling, screaming, and then a rumble that destroys all the tiki mugs in the tiki bar. That is definitely not tiki.

Fortunately, most of the better tiki bars I know don't have television sets, so the chance of a gang of sports fans showing up in mass is unlikely.

One of my general complaints with sports fans is that there is a subset of them who do enjoy that playful taunting of the opponents - for them, that is a form of camaraderie, done in good jest. But sometimes that carries on outward to the rest of their world, where such banter is less welcome.

I don't find myself watching as much football on television as I used to, but I can watch and enjoy a good game without feeling guilty about it. But generally, I greatly prefer drinking rum drinks with friends in a tiki bar.

Vern