Post #694131 by JOHN-O on Fri, Sep 20, 2013 1:47 PM

It's Barcopa on Santa Monica's trendy Main Street...

For interested urban archeologists, this was the site of the Pink Elephant, a Gay bar back in the 1970's when the area was Santa Monica's version of Skid Row (the "Dogtown" days). In the 1990's the "Elephant" signage faded away and the place became known as just "The Pink". Somewhere along the gentrification timeline it became Barcopa. (On another interesting note, Wolfgang Puck's restaurant across the street, Chinois on Main, used to be the notorious Punk Rock club Blackies.)

Anyway, Barcopa just recently started offering this Tiki cocktail menu...

And no this doesn't appear to be a one off, this is the ONLY specialized drink menu they provide. They even painted the world "TIKI" on the outside of the building.

The thing that makes this interesting is that BarCopa is by no means an "Exotic" themed bar (i.e. Tiki, Middle Eastern, or Pre-Castro Cuban). It's your standard Westside dance club frequented by beach locals, college students, and tourists.

The Zombie I had wasn't the 1934 Don's version, it was more the 1950's version. Right now, they said it wasn't cost effective for them to stock Lemon Hart 151 (not enough drinks to use it in) however the bar group that Barcopa belongs to (which includes The Association in Downtown L.A.) has commissioned their own private reserve with Mount Gay !...

Not bad.

And the drinks are really good value, $7 during Happy Hour (9pm-11pm) and $9 after that. Again, this place is more of a dance club than bar so it's normally only open Thu-Sat, and occasionally on Wed and Suns.

Their target audience isn't Tikiphiles (or even discerning New Cocktailians) but the Tiki experiment seems to be paying off as they've been getting great feedback on the new drink menu.

"Tiki" really seems to be going mainstream these days. :)