Aloha Hut - Home Tiki Bars

JJ Jungle John Member South Florida Joined: Feb 01, 2015 Posts: 43	JJ Jungle John Posted posted on Wed, Feb 24, 2016 12:46 PM The Abandoned Tiki Hut The haunting beauty of decaying abandoned places has always fascinated me. Now I can enjoy the wonderment of a moldering abandoned place right in my own backyard! That's right, the once illustrious Aloha Hut, home to the Refreshment Room's own Death-to-Captain-Cook Mai Tai, is now a bygone relic, slowly succumbing to the wilds of subtropical Florida. Here's a snapshot of it this afternoon. Nature slowly intrudes on the bridge. Frozen in time, now home to only spiders and mosquitoes. A lone sentinel to an abandoned outpost of racist-filled overtones. Sorry guys, I still contend there is more than a hint of racism in this appropriated tiki culture. Celebrating the lack of sensitivity to the poor treatment of indigenous people hardly sets a party atmosphere. I regret being involved with it, and I am glad to watch it fade away. The quaint charm of tiki/Polynesian/nautical fantasy style seems harmless and alluring when it is based on the fakey ephemera of the mid-20th century plastic tiki fad, but beneath that cheap souvenir veneer is a history of exploitation and abuse. The pre-fab tiki trinkets help sanitize and whitewash the ugly truths and harsh realities. Check out a link about tiki racism: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=lux Check out Jim Crow caricatures of yore. Same racism, different subject. http://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/picaninny/ I was bullied here on Tiki Central; initially, when I posted my early realization of the unsavory aspects of racist overtones in appropriated American tiki culture. Those right-wing sounding blowhards are still here. I don't care what they say any more. I have a feeling time will heal all wounds, and more than likely a big hurricane is going to come along and scrub my yard clean. Karma's gonna get everybody sooner or later.

The Abandoned Tiki Hut

The haunting beauty of decaying abandoned places has always fascinated me. Now I can enjoy the wonderment of a moldering abandoned place right in my own backyard! That's right, the once illustrious Aloha Hut, home to the Refreshment Room's own Death-to-Captain-Cook Mai Tai, is now a bygone relic, slowly succumbing to the wilds of subtropical Florida.

Here's a snapshot of it this afternoon.

Nature slowly intrudes on the bridge.

Frozen in time, now home to only spiders and mosquitoes.

A lone sentinel to an abandoned outpost of racist-filled overtones.

Sorry guys, I still contend there is more than a hint of racism in this appropriated tiki culture. Celebrating the lack of sensitivity to the poor treatment of indigenous people hardly sets a party atmosphere. I regret being involved with it, and I am glad to watch it fade away.

The quaint charm of tiki/Polynesian/nautical fantasy style seems harmless and alluring when it is based on the fakey ephemera of the mid-20th century plastic tiki fad, but beneath that cheap souvenir veneer is a history of exploitation and abuse. The pre-fab tiki trinkets help sanitize and whitewash the ugly truths and harsh realities.

Check out a link about tiki racism:
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=lux
Check out Jim Crow caricatures of yore. Same racism, different subject.
http://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/picaninny/

I was bullied here on Tiki Central; initially, when I posted my early realization of the unsavory aspects of racist overtones in appropriated American tiki culture. Those right-wing sounding blowhards are still here. I don't care what they say any more. I have a feeling time will heal all wounds, and more than likely a big hurricane is going to come along and scrub my yard clean. Karma's gonna get everybody sooner or later.

Post #759635 by Jungle John on Wed, Feb 24, 2016 12:46 PM