Post #758354 by swizzle on Wed, Feb 3, 2016 9:12 PM

On 2016-02-03 10:42, Ragbag Comics wrote:

Now, there's a WHOLE lot of people just getting into it, who haven't probably ever been
to a classic old place, but will go to the hot new craft Tiki bar in town because it's
all the rage at the moment.....

To newcomers, freshly exposed to the wonder that is Tiki, a Tiki mug is a Tiki mug.....

I guess I don't think history is that important to a lot of newer collectors.....

But the frequency of interesting finds and discoveries on here, and the frequency of posts in general, has certainly tapered off a bit.

I think Ragbag summed it up very well and i'm just going to touch on the points he made that i have quoted.

1.) We have several bars here in Australia that have 'tiki' drinks on the menu but as far as actual Tiki bars go, there is maybe half a dozen spread out over the entire country and not all of those are necassarily good. The LuWoW, which is one of two in my home town of Melbourne, is absolutely amazing decor wise (drinks are average) but the amount of people who are actually into tiki culture and its history is a joke. I go whenever i can, maybe once every 2-3 weeks, and hang out with a friend and the manager and then occasionally another friend might show up, but we all go when it opens and then leave after a few hours when it starts getting busy. Wednesday is 'Rum Club', which no-one goes to, it's just a few people who might go out for a drink on a Wednesday night. Thursday is karaoke in the back room, and Friday and Saturday nights bands play in the back room also.
When the back room is open (Thurs-Sat) there is NOBODY in the tiki room. People are there for the 'event's' that are on. Not to hang out and chill in an awesome looking tiki bar. They actually close the tiki bar down on Thursday nights because it's not worth having two bars running. (The back room is called The Forbidden Temple and is not tiki, although one or two might be in there somewhere).
Now my point after all that and in relation to Ragbag's comment, is that it is not tiki people visiting this venue. It's people who go there because the place is 'cool'. I would love to know how many people, if any at all, had never heard of tiki before The LuWoW opened and then after going there actually became interested in what 'tiki' and 'tiki culture' is all about and researched it and then became heavily involved/interested. I reckon i could count them on one hand, and still have fingers left over.

2.& 3.) To me, those two points go together and also relate to point number one and my comment above. All these new people into 'tiki' aren't really into it all. They just like the imagery, that it involves cocktails and getting drunk (not that there is anything wrong with that), and also that it is all the rage at the moment.

4.) This is true and is what Swanky said below.

On 2016-02-03 10:27, Swanky wrote:
First, interest and activity on TC is not at all an indicator of interest in Tiki. As you said, message boards are not used much and the real purpose of TC was research and that is a dwindling thing as years go by.

And a lot of what was exciting 10 years ago is nearly dead, i.e. new findings, new questions, new research.

It's all been said/covered before somewhere on this forum (which will bring me to AceExplorers comment). Unless we are talking about new bars that are opening up or new artists/mug makers, there is not much left to discover. Besides an old article or menu or crypto mug showing up occasionally that refreshes an already discussed topic, there's not much more out there to learn.

*This comment here and what Tikiskip said, "If I answer a question here on TC I barely get any thing, not so much as a reply. Makes you not want to take part in TC.", is summed up in this particular post, which is something new and interesting to talk about. There has been nearly 400 views and only 11 responses. Technically you could say eight responses because Skip has commented three times, and the views are probably only half that because i'm pretty sure a lot of those views are the same people coming back to read the thread again when they can see somebody has posted a new comment (i know i'm guilty of that). So even if it is really only half that number of views, why is it there are only 8/200 comments/views? Why aren't people contributing?

And then there is this;

On 2016-02-03 17:00, AceExplorer wrote:
Sure, someone commented about the derail in "his" thread, but he may not understand the dynamic of how these free-for-all exchanges happen on sites like TC. They're natural conversations.

.....if someone wants to do a search.

And it's not just the newbies who are guilty of this, but no-one bothers using the search function. If you took the time to do that, not only would you most likely find the answer to the question you are going to ask, BUT, you might also discover that not only has your question already been covered at great length in another thread, you'll also see that that thread got derailed too but new 'conversations' started in it that led to something new being discussed that you can learn from.
People these days are just so lazy and just want instant gratification. "Look at me! I want to start my OWN thread and have people respond to MY question and talk to ME, instead of me taking some time to do some research".

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Yes Tiki Toli, i've noticed it a lot also. I always have several mugs in my 'watched' list on eBay just to see what they end up selling for and am always surprised as to how cheap some of them go for. I'm not in a postion to be buying many mugs these days and sometimes there are mugs i would like to buy but just can't afford to at the moment, but then when i see how little they have sold for, sometimes i think i could have bid on it and won it.

[ Edited by: swizzle 2016-02-04 03:50 ]