Post #81030 by Humuhumu on Mon, Mar 15, 2004 5:08 PM

It is with a mixture of relief, anticipation, anxiety and joy that I present to you: Critiki. I’m not a mother, but I imagine this is what it feels like to send your child off to their first day of school.

When I found Tiki Central in August of 2002, almost immediately I knew how I wanted to make my own contribution to the community. Others provide wonderful music for us, mix delicious drinks, create inspiring artwork; I’m no good at those things. But there is something I am good at – databases. After much begging & pleading with my then-husband, I bought a web server and began developing Critiki in December of 2002. Now, 15 months later, it’s still not ready to roll out, but I’m doing it anyway. It’s time to let Critiki begin growing in new ways.

Critiki is a database of tiki locations all around the world (450+ at this writing).

Each location at a minimum has the name and the city, but for many locations I have much more information, including:

• Street Address
• Link to a map
• Website link
• Email link
• Phone number
• Hours of operation
• Link to Tiki Central Locating Tiki thread
• Descriptive paragraph
• Photo Galleries, including photographs, postcards, menus, matchbooks, etc. (280+ images at this writing)

Locations are categorized by the type of location, including bars, restaurants, attractions, apartment buildings, home bars, bowling alleys… you can browse by category, or by region. You can also do a text search on the location name or the city.

In the future, you will be able to add your own “critiki” of a location – a number-based rating system for each location, where you can individually rate your personal experiences with the drinks, food, service, music, etc. What Critiki is not for, however, is discussion or text-based reviews of locations. That kind of community-based content belongs at Tiki Central, which is why I’ve included a link to an appropriate Tiki Central thread for many locations. If you want to discuss a particular location in Critiki, start a thread on Tiki Central (make sure to search first to make sure one doesn’t already exist!) and I’ll create a link on Critiki.

I am hopeful that this will become a comprehensive archive of information about our favorite tiki locations (and some of the places we want to avoid, too!).

You’ll notice that some specific information, like the street address, is not available until you unlock it. This requires registration, and proving that you have a copy of James Teitelbaum’s Tiki Road Trip. Why is that? Because what I’ve done here is create a sort of next-generation version of James’ ground-breaking Tiki Bar Review Pages. I did not use any information he gathered, either from his web pages or his book. After going through all the hard work I know he had to do before me, I really respect how much effort went into his creation, and to show respect, I would like to ensure that those who use Critiki pick up a copy of James’ book. Most of my target audience already has, anyway, so it’s hardly a hardship. At some point, James & I will sync up our lists and help each other out, so that both Critiki and the next edition of Tiki Road Trip can offer the very best information.

Some of the information I have in Critiki is already out of date. Feel free to email me with corrections (don’t post them here on TC – there are too many and it’ll be no fun to slog through, plus it’ll be embarrassing for me!). Also, if you have photographs of locations, or even better, photographs or scans of related items (mugs, menus, postcards), I would love to represent them in Critiki. Visit the Critiki website to learn more about how to do that (don’t email them to me – my inbox can’t handle it).

I need to give mighty massive thanks to a couple of people for their help with Critiki.

First, I need to thank James Teitelbaum, for being so helpful and supportive. I had no way of knowing how he would respond when I first told him about my project, and I am so thankful that rather than be disappointed at the news of a new tiki location website on the horizon, he was not just open to it, but truly enthusiastic.

Next, I need to thank puamana & Selector Lopaka, not only for their support and enthusiasm for the project as I was working on it, but especially for putting so much hard work into scanning puamana’s menu, postcard and matchbook collection. The items represented in Critiki from puamana’s collection are only a small fraction of what she has, and it already brings these golden age locations to life.

I also would like to thank all of the wonderful TCers – too many to mention individually – who have opened up their hometowns to me and joined me on my tiki travels. I look forward to many more travels in the future.

Critiki is still pretty rough around the edges, and there are many improvements still to come – the aforementioned critiki rating system, and also improved search capabilities, and the ability to see which locations are rated highest in the different categories. Also, the registration & unlocking process seems a touch buggy and needs work (if it gives you guff, try going back to the main page – if you can’t get yourself registered and unlocked, throw me an email and I’ll get you set up). As I get settled in my new hometown and continue my travels, these improvements will likely come in small dollops, but they’ll continue. Most of the work at this point is dedicated to keeping the content up-to-date.

I hope that you find Critiki useful. That would make me very, very happy.

And now... Critiki.

The best tiki bar is the one that's within stumbling distance of your bed
The Humuhumu Room

[ Edited by: Humuhumu 2009-03-07 20:05 ]

[ Edited by: Humuhumu 2009-03-29 10:09 ]