Worst Tiki Bar ever

OMFG I was just browsing the web trying to dig up old photos or what not of some of the former tiki haunts in AZ. I came across the web page for this place in Scottsdale called Giligins Kon Tiki This is a pretty hideous and slightly adult page, view with extreme caution

http://www.giligins.com/bars_go_gos_ni/Page_27_Giligx.html

I am going to need therapy, I'm waiting for a giant Ku to come down from the heavens and just squash the Phoenix metro valley like a bug.

If there's ever a contest for the worst tiki bar in the world, I nominate this joint. Actually we got the runner up for that contest here in Phoenix too. It's called the Bikini Lounge it's conveniently located cross the street from a teen half way house that used to be the Bali Hi motel back in the day.

The Bikini isn't evil like this place in Scottsdale, it's simply an old school tiki bar that hasn't aged as well as the Kon Tiki down in Tucson (I suspect they both may have been opened by the same person back in the 60's)

I feel so dirty now, thanks for listening.

Steve

[ Edited by: Steve Kapu on 2002-11-15 10:47 ]

This one is not as bad as Gilligins but it still looks pretty bad. Not likely you will get much aloha or hear quality music out either of these places:

http://www.freakytiki.com/

I got this address from a tiki t-shirt that was on ebay.

Chongolio

Rock boom boom rock boom tick bang boom dunk dunk boom. Wasn't expecting all that. Dropped my glow sticks. BTW the vip lounge can handle up to 15 people. whew.

[ Edited by: Turbogod on 2002-11-15 12:28 ]

On 2002-11-15 11:06, Chongolio wrote:
This one is not as bad as Gilligins but it still looks pretty bad. Not likely you will get much aloha or hear quality music out either of these places:

http://www.freakytiki.com/

I got this address from a tiki t-shirt that was on ebay.

Chongolio

Yeah, but the sign sez: "$1.25 Drafts $1.50 Sake N Shooters"

sake??

And I thought ALL tiki bars had FOAM PARTY NIGHTS
oh yeah, and RoCk On!

On 2002-11-15 11:06, Chongolio wrote:
This one is not as bad as Gilligins but it still looks pretty bad. Not likely you will get much aloha or hear quality music out either of these places:

http://www.freakytiki.com/

Did you notice in the into movie - at the end it says:
"Are you ready to party?
So Our We!"

Zazz!

Hey, they stole those Tiki Masks from the Kon-Tiki Hotel in Phoenix!
I dunno, where is the difference between page 42 of the BOT, the menu illustration of "The Islands" in Phoenix, and what goes on at Gilligan's in Thailand (xept they don't drink Rum there)?
Seems they are livin' the life their grandparents only dreamed about....

I know I know, I do know better than that. But sometimes I see myself as the nerdy intellectual sitting at the bar, looking at my drink, proclaiming "Ah, I love life!", yet completely detached from all the partying going on around me.

But then again, I am glad that I am not of the mind to describe a beautiful country like this:
"...'cause Thailand is the world's greatest freakshow"!

Makes you think twice about the Bali nightclub bombing, as a Thai male I would be fed up with this, too.

Not that I want to defend that, actually they both are to be detested for laying destruction to an earthly paradise: Capitalist colonialism, as well as cowardly terrorism.

http://www.tikifish.com/thehut.html

I think that the worst tiki bar in the world has already been well documented here- on my website! Actually, I may be wrong, but I heard thy turned this place into a Tiki Bob's Cantina. Which isn't a step up.

Reading all of this out on the desert island of Dallas reminds me of Ferris Bueller's Day Off...

FERRIS

We can't pick up Sloane in your car, Cameron. Rooney'd never believe Mr. Peterson drives that piece of s***.

CAMERON

It's not a piece of s***.

FERRIS

It's a piece of s***. Don't worry about it. I don't even have a piece of s***. I have to envy yours.

My gawd! I used to live in Northern Arizona and the weird thing is, people in Phoenix really do act that way. I think it's from dehydration. Don't worry Sven, better to be thought a nerdy intellectual than to drop your drawers while swallowing a long-neck budweiser.

I think we act that way cause we have all the problems of LA and none of the Tiki bars. Man I need to open my own place, anyone got a truck full of cash I can borrow? :)

Steve

On 2002-11-15 15:34, Kailuageoff wrote:
My gawd! I used to live in Northern Arizona and the weird thing is, people in Phoenix really do act that way. I think it's from dehydration. Don't worry Sven, better to be thought a nerdy intellectual than to drop your drawers while swallowing a long-neck budweiser.

Uhhhhh......Whaaaaa?

http://www.kahunalounge.de/Raume/raume.html

While this is obviously NOT the worst tiki bar, as seen in this threat, it’s not helping much when you bring people there to give them an idea of the tiki bar concept.

Some of the cocktails are ok, sometimes…

In another thread I did read that Berlin will get it’s own Trader Vic’s!
Then, when somebody asks me about a tiki bar, I have a bonafide place to show them! …oh and the great food!

KK

http://www.kahunalounge.de/Raume/raume.html

While this is obviously NOT the worst tiki bar, as seen in this threat, it’s not helping much when you bring people there to give them an idea of the tiki bar concept.

Some of the cocktails are ok, sometimes…

In another thread I did read that Berlin will get it’s own Trader Vic’s!
Then, when somebody asks me about a tiki bar, I have a bonafide place to show them! …oh and the great food!

KK

I thought twice about post this BASHING of a so called Tiki Bar. Since the REAL Tiki Community is pretty close knit and I didn't feel like stepping on any toes. I searched and searched but couldn't find a single posting by name. Next I figured that there HAD TO BE a thread on the WORST TIKI BAR EVER!, and thankfully I was correct!

I am surprised that there has not been a single posting on this thread since 2002!
A sign that on the whole Tiki Bars are improving?
Oddly enough not a single one of the old links lead anywhere....all out of business I hope!

So here's the story of Mrs.Mojo and my disappointing adventures last night.
After a day of running around in South San Francisco and antique shopping Mrs.Mojo decides she wants to go to our favorite British Pub, Mr. Pickwick's, (British owned and operated), in Concord. It's the middle of commute traffic on a rainy night, we drive 40 miles, (which take 2 1/2 hours in traffic), head into the restaurant and as soon as we're seated and handed menus we notice something is WRONG! All but 3 of the TRADITIONAL BRITISH FARE has been removed from the menu which now is more hamburgers and hot dogs! Turns out they were just bought by new owners a week ago who turned it into a SPORTS BAR!
It was late and we were too tired and hungry to look elsewhere so we begrudgingly ordered and had dinner, (with plans to NEVER return).

We thought things were turning in our favor when our waitress, knowing our displeasure and having talked to us about Tiki, recommended a Tiki Bar in Walnut Creek called, "TIKI TOM'S".
How could I NOT have heard of this Tiki Bar I thought?
From where we were it was only another 6 miles away so I thought we would finish off our disappointing dinner with a wonderful Tiki Cocktail in a nice relaxing Tiki Bar!
I realized we were in for trouble before we got to the door as I could hear the thundering beat of some sorta Hip Hop/Modern crap blasting out of the building and into the street!
We passed by some 20 something year olds, drunk and smoking in front, and headed into the barrage of sound.
This place was as much a MEAT MARKET as any that I remembered from my youth.

Looking around it had a few carved Tikis, Bali style "Tiki" masks hanging on the walls, a couple of surf boards, a small waterfall/pond near the front door, about 6 Tiki mugs on the liquor shelves along with some small carved imported Tikis, lets not forget the GIANT Big Screen TV playing in the background or the HORRIFIC music that we had to shout over just to order a drink.
All in all the weakest attempt I had ever seen at a Tiki Bar.....you could have done all their decorating in about an hour with a budget of $300.

Our bartender, a young lady with an entertaining shirt, (the ones with something stupid written on them so that you actually have an excuse for looking at her chest!), and a lacey pink thong that either rode too high or her pants too low between her mid-rift shirt, (WOW, was I ordering a drink at Coyote Ugly? :o ), spent the entire time she was mixing our drinks chatting up with two young men and shaking her rump while not using a single measuring device to mix our drinks, just a splash of this and a pour of that.
While they did "appear" to use fresh ingredients and juices the mix was so piss poor that neither of our drinks was very good.

Finally the noise drove us out. The part that really sucks is that they mentioned to my wife that they have some sorta Hawaiian Dance troupe on Fridays and Saturdays.....since my wife teaches dance she wants to come back to see the show......probably HIP HOP HULA is it's anything like the rest of the place! :x
That means I may have more to add to this post along with photos next time.....aaaarrrgg, next time! :(

Oh man, that sounds just like Tiki Bob's in Dallas' West End district.

Oh you poor thangs!!!! And going back for more. Yes.....we need pictures of your torture at so-called Tiki establishment. Don't get any flaming drinks there...they probably don't even have a fire-alarm. :(

While I completely agree and would have had exactly the same reaction than Dr. Tiki Mojo's to his experience, I was just struck with the irony that, to the post WWII generation, going to a Tiki Bar (more often than not) was just about what he witnessed at Tiki Tom's:

Gettin' plastered and gettin' laid (or fantasizing about it)! 50s Americans did not go there for the ART. The mugs were throwaway items, and all the other stuff (that seems so intricate and baroque to us nowadays) was just window dressing to them...and often not only to the customers, but to the proprietors as well.

If any of us went to a Tiki temple as children, it was of course the art and concepts that really impressed us, because A.) we couldn't drink, and B.) we had no interest in sex.

We Tikiphiles today are really like archeology professors "observing" the primitive customs of the past. And, rightfully, mourning the loss of style and culture today.

Not that I mind observing, I am 51 now, and I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

And, to counteract any posts that are aghast at my musings, I KNOW that style and culture and fun are not excluding one another, proof: Vintage Tiki culture.

Good piont BigBro, that places sounds like Tiki Bob's in Michigan. Maybe all places that start tiki and end with a guys name sucks.

I agree with your assertion, Sven, to a point... tiki bars have also always been about escapism. What has made tiki bars endure over time is that they're still providing that rare sense of escape to another world. Places to get drunk & screw are hardly hard to come by anymore.

Back then, they were escaping from a stiff, formal world into a place where they could drink a little more and become sensual savages. Tiki bars are the still the same escape today into drinking a little more and becoming sensual savages, but the world we're escaping from is hardly as stiff & formal. To me, tiki bars provide an escape to a place where sensuality rules over overt sexuality, where we can explore our savage side without sacrificing our dignity.

Where those merry souls who make drinking a pleasure -
Who achieve contentedness long before capacity
And who, whenever they drink, prove able to carry it, enjoy it,
And remain gentlemen.

Vic Bergeron may have been engaging in a bit of wishful thinking when he hung that in his bars, but it does illustrate what he wanted out of his place -- for men to still remain gentlemen. To me, it's a big part of the distinction of what makes a good tiki bar, and the get-drunk-and-screw tiki bars of today are missing the point.

I know, I was just thinking aloud...not all my musings are pearls of wisdom, really...

And when

On 2006-12-15 08:19, bigbrotiki wrote:

We Tikiphiles today are really like archeology professors "observing" the primitive customs of the past.

..he was really talking about his own detached behavior (which is, occasionally, interrupted by field experiments)

On 2006-12-15 08:27, teaKEY wrote:
Good piont BigBro, that places sounds like Tiki Bob's in Michigan. Maybe all places that start tiki and end with a guys name sucks.

Perhaps in the 21st Century...but before, the tradition was started by Victor Bergeron with Trader VIC'S, and it is interesting to note that most of the places that followed in his footsteps in San Francisco and the bay area did so with the same "nickname" concept:

Skipper KENT'S
Tiki BOB'S
Tiburon TOMMIE'S

...which reminds me, wasn't there a Tiki Bar called "So-and-so's HUT" in Walnut Creek?...with little Tiki, but a great mural? I remember seeing the postcard...

On 2006-12-15 16:26, bigbrotiki wrote:
...which reminds me, wasn't there a Tiki Bar called "So-and-so's HUT" in Walnut Creek?...with little Tiki, but a great mural? I remember seeing the postcard...

Mrs.Mojo and I will keep & eye out for it. We only live about 20-30 minutes away.

About San Francisco's "Tiki Bob's", I seem to recall all the photos I'd seen of it made it look more like the old "PLAYBOY" clubs, with the waitresses serving in their under garments to an all male clientele, with some Tiki mugs and Polynesian Cocktails to fit the name. :o

I've got a Tiny's Hut in Critiki, but I don't know anything about it, and I don't even remember where I got the info I have -- a Google for "Tiny's Hut" only turns up my Critiki entry (not even any TC hits). Maybe someone gave me the address off the postcard, or maybe I got the address off the old Yahoo! TC. The address I've got is 1716 N. Main St, Walnut Creek; looks like that address has been House of Sake for a while now.

On 2006-12-15 22:48, Dr.TikiMojo wrote:

About San Francisco's "Tiki Bob's", I seem to recall all the photos I'd seen of it made it look more like the old "PLAYBOY" clubs, with the waitresses serving in their under garments to an all male clientele, with some Tiki mugs and Polynesian Cocktails to fit the name. :o

That was Tiki Bob's Mainland Rendezvous, Bob Bryant's 2nd downtown joint, which was very sparsely decorated, the Tahitian print table cloths seem to have been the whole extent of its "Tiki" decor.

The original Tiki Bob's itself, down a block from the S.F. Trader Vic's, was nicer, but not THAT amazing, so I chose to not use the interior I had of it in the BOT.

I remember TikiDiablo mentioned Jacks, tiki bar at Fisherman's Wharf, with painted thatch and tikis, which he said wasn't even fit for drunken tourists.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=8257&forum=1