Montana Tiki Bar makes GQ top 10 bars in the world

A friend from Montana was in the office today and told me about a tiki bar called Sip-N-Dip being named one of the 10 best bars in the world. Here's a link to the local newspaper story.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20030208/localnews/943699.html
Anybody been there?

Sorry, wrong forum for this topic... maybe they have a mug or a matchbook.

http://www.ohairemotorinn.com/aboutus/
http://www.davidmsc.com/MT/archives/000564.html
http://members.shaw.ca/destructive_girls/sip.html

..i'm not noticing anything all that great about it other than the aquarium. gq is weird.

That's not an aquarium matey! Aaaargh, that be a swimming pool. BUt, it doesn't look all that appealing to me either. Maybe the cowgirls go skinny-dipping in there....

According to my neighbor, they also picked a bar I go to with some regularity here in Birmingham - The Garage.
It's nice because of a large outdoor area where during they day someone has been working on various restoration projects, there are all sorts of weird old things laying about, but if it's one of the best bars in the world "a bar worth flying to visit," then I'm afraid the world is significantly less interesting than I thought it was. But the staff of GQ has seen it all right?

I find it hard to believe that any bar called "Sip-N-Dip" could get top 10 in their local mall retailers annual awards, never mind pitting themselves against the great bars of the world. Then again, having live mermaids sure beats ambience, expert mixologists, and the sublety that mark out the worlds finest drinking establishments.

Trader Woody

I received a half dozen emails circa 1996-1997, back in the early days of the Tiki Bar Review Pages, talking about how great a Tiki bar this place supposedly is.

That said, none of the people who emailed me could come up with an address or phone number for them, and even a web search revealed nothing (all those apostrophies probably confused the search engines and the phone directory sites).

Interesting that there is such a dearth of data on this place on the web after all (thanks for the links).
Based on this picture http://www.davidmsc.com/MT/archives/000564.html it doesn't look too bad. One of the other links mentions that the bartender collects Aloha shirts, and there is a pic of a mermaid-gal swimming in the pool behind the bar. Seems pretty cool, for Montana!

That one of the comments on this web page compared it to David Lynch is never a bad sign in my book, either.

As for the name - Sip'n'Dip - true, it is not very Tiki, but neither is The Alibi, Chef Shangri-La, or Omni Hut, and all of those places rock.

Note that one of the other web sites linked to above (thanks for those links) says that the decor was "purchased in 1965 from a party warehouse in Los Angeles". I wonder if this is Oceanic Arts?

I volunteer to check out out! I'll be driving home to Oakland from Chicago post Exotica 2003. We plan to visit much of the Wyoming and Montana mountain areas.

My buddy Robert from Great Falls had a Grandmother who worked there and he used to swim in the pool as a kid. He says it's a dive and the pool is lame but they've been fixing it up lately. On the other hand he's not into tiki so who knows? Definitely not a classical tiki bar or fine dining establishment. I'll be checking it out in a couple of weeks when we go up there to get a mounted elk head and party a bit. GQ is a bunch o' preppie losers so what the hell would they know about anything? By the way I just got back from San Francisco and got to check out the Tonga room, Trader Vic's, The Aloha hut and Hawaii West, where it appears they have removed the aged thatch from above the bar, also went to Trader Dicks at the Nugget in Reno. Man I love that Tiki Road Trip book. My Wahine, Nicole was also converted to tiki on this trip and we found some cheap tiki mugs in China town. All in all a good time.
Yahey and Aloha from the Mt. state.
Sneaky

On 2003-06-01 10:32, tikibars wrote:

As for the name - Sip'n'Dip - true, it is not very Tiki, but neither is The Alibi, Chef Shangri-La, or Omni Hut, and all of those places rock.

Well, I never said that a Tiki bar had to have a Tiki name. The gist of my post was the fact that there are recognised great bars in this world and the grim fact is that not that many Tiki bars are in reach of the top 10. (They are to us, of course. We have refined tastes) But could an unknown Tiki bar beat out the classic Tiki bars to be one of the world's top ten? Doubtful.

I'm not saying this isn't a terrific place, but who knows? Until we see some evidence, the image of a crappy frat bar will remain in our frontal lobes.

"Dip n' sip" Sheesh.

Trader Woody