Post #796119 by EnchantedTikiGoth on Sun, Jul 7, 2019 9:19 AM

On 2019-07-07 07:46, tikiskip wrote:
"complete with percentages"
And it does say recommended percentages.

The whole percentages thing is ridiculous on the face of it, "recommended" or otherwise. It suggests a level of legalistic pedantry that is unnecessary for silly kitsch escapism.

"Tiki can be anything" people by-in-large tend to be pretty chill because they tend not to judge other people's experience of Tiki as "right" or "wrong". They just react negatively to being judged."

Odd, to me a tiki purist I would guess, see it as the purist have REALLY toned down the "hey that's not tiki" at least on TC.
Even some getting kick off of TC for their opinions, nobody for the other side has been kicked off it has all been mostly the real purist tiki people kicked off.

While in my mind it is the "Tiki can be anything" who cry fowl and want something done about the tiki purist bullies, that's not "chill"

What you describe is exactly what I said: the chill Tiki people are typically chill until they judged. Then it's gloves off, because people are being made to feel like they have to defend themselves.

But why not try to see the other guys point a bit.
I do get what you are saying in that map of yours but if your décor is mostly stuff spun off of the middle core tiki décor then when does your bar not become tiki.

OR does it just become tiki from almost no tiki,80% pirate 20% tiki does that rate tiki bar.
Pirates did not make the not list but it looks like it could have.

I don't really care about percentages. I don't think you can rightly quantify the feel of a space. Does the space feel more Tiki or less Tiki? The more it drifts towards pirates the less Tiki it might feel, sure. The more it drifts towards Tiki Lite the less Tiki it might feel, sure. But are those pirate and Tiki Lite bars more Tiki than a clown Tiki bar? Next year, my wife and I are going to Yosemite with a few nights in San Francisco, so I've been doing some research: Smuggler's Cove and Trader Vic's and Tonga Room and Last Rites and Zombie Village and Pagan Idol all appear to be very different from each other. Which ones are Tiki bars and which ones aren't? This year we're going to the Grand Canyon via Phoenix and are planning to visit UnderTow. Is that a Tiki bar or not? What's its percentages?

It's art, and I don't think there's a line or a percentage at which it is or isn't a Tiki bar anymore. It's something you get a feel for. This is especially true when you start getting into spaces that are as deeply personal as someone's home Tiki bar.

What I also don't like about Sven's prescriptive map, with all due respect to Sven and the incredible documentation he's put together in his books, is that there's no room for any originality or novelty in it. You have to conform to a strict guideline that would inevitably result in identical, cookie cutter establishments. That's great if you want Tiki bars to basically be McDonald's franchises. But as I pointed out way back when this thread began, having some original, novel "hook" is what elevates a Tiki bar from good to great in my estimation.

And I ask you to go to this thread and tell me is it a tiki bar?

His bar was not finished, so I think any judgment was premature and unnecessary. And if someone is more into South Seas pirate aesthetics than you are, so what? Personally, I'm more into lush jungly aesthetics than either pirates or bamboo beachcomber huts. If Rainforest Cafe were less tacky, that would be closer to my ideal Tiki bar, or if they actually served drinks from the Dole Whip stand at the Enchanted Tiki Room. I don't think it's necessary to be telling people they're wrong when they express what interests them in the broad sphere of kitschy tropical escapism.

[ Edited by: EnchantedTikiGoth 2019-07-07 09:21 ]