Aku Aku, Toledo, OH (restaurant) - Locating Tiki

B bigbrotiki Tiki Socialite Tiki Island, above the Silverlake Joined: Mar 25, 2002 Posts: 11621	B bigbrotiki Posted posted on Mon, Nov 5, 2012 11:04 PM On 2012-10-30 07:20, Swanky wrote: All those smokers! Look at everyone with their elbow on the table and smokes in the air. If we went back in time, we'd be freaked out by the smoke first of all... I have been a non-smoker all my life, but I grew up in Europe, where if you wanted to go to clubs, there either was smoke thick enough to cut, or you just didn't go out. Never bothered me, in fact I miss it, to me it was part of the atmosphere and social ritual of night-clubbing. All that second hand smoke I breathed, and my health is still fine. The anti-smoking campaign of the 90s can only be compared to the alcohol prohibition of the 20s in my mind, it was (and is) a little too obsessive. I mean it's all for good reasons, but when something takes on such a totalitarian form, it becomes suspect to me. I indeed appears that the Aku Aku is a great example of mid-century modern restaurants that were NOT expressively Polynesian in decor, but lived their exotic-ness through their cocktails. This sub-genre of "Tiki Modern" still deserves further exploration. Another good example of purely modernist decor but serving Tiki cocktails was The Fireside: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=34423&forum=2&start=0 It all is part of the "when it was modern to be primitive" credo that I explored in Tiki Modern.

On 2012-10-30 07:20, Swanky wrote:
All those smokers! Look at everyone with their elbow on the table and smokes in the air. If we went back in time, we'd be freaked out by the smoke first of all...

I have been a non-smoker all my life, but I grew up in Europe, where if you wanted to go to clubs, there either was smoke thick enough to cut, or you just didn't go out. Never bothered me, in fact I miss it, to me it was part of the atmosphere and social ritual of night-clubbing. All that second hand smoke I breathed, and my health is still fine. The anti-smoking campaign of the 90s can only be compared to the alcohol prohibition of the 20s in my mind, it was (and is) a little too obsessive. I mean it's all for good reasons, but when something takes on such a totalitarian form, it becomes suspect to me.

I indeed appears that the Aku Aku is a great example of mid-century modern restaurants that were NOT expressively Polynesian in decor, but lived their exotic-ness through their cocktails. This sub-genre of "Tiki Modern" still deserves further exploration. Another good example of purely modernist decor but serving Tiki cocktails was The Fireside:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=34423&forum=2&start=0

It all is part of the "when it was modern to be primitive" credo that I explored in Tiki Modern.

Post #657930 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Nov 5, 2012 11:04 PM