Placing Tiki Bars in Their Proper Category

Are there proper category names that are generally accepted for the different types of tiki bars? It seems to me that if there were, we could end the arguments about what is and isn't a tiki bar when we could say it's THIS type of tiki bar, and everyone could then determine whether they liked that particular style or not. For starters I offer these (all of which need their definitions more finely tuned):

1. Classic - Your complete Don Beach-imagined Polynesian fantasy
2. Nautical - As much clipper ship materials (rigging, ship wheel, portholes) as Polynesian decor
3. Caribbean - Maybe it's got a tiki in the corner, or a Polynesian mask or two, but plays reggae music, serves more hurricanes and pina coladas than mai tais, etc.
4. Hybrid - Has tiki bar decor elements (bamboo, tikis, etc.) but doubles as a sports bar, rock club, etc.
5. Asian - A Chinese or Filipino or other Asian restaurant that serves tiki drinks and perhaps has other tiki bar style decor.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Angry denouncements? Dirty jokes?

I believe that form of categorizing ignores the time line of the evolution of Tiki as a style, which explains its various manifestations quite well:

1.) Don The Beachcomber style bamboo bars in the 30s and 40s: Pre-Tiki Polynesian pop
(It has to be differentiated that Don himself never really used Tikis much)
But 50s and 60s Bars that employed all the Poly pop concepts that Don invented --AND lotsa Tikis!-- are the CLASSIC Tiki Bars.

2.) The amount of Nautical decor employed very simply determines if a place is a Nautical bar, or a Tiki bar.
Example: The Mai Kai with its Molokai Bar-A Tiki Bar
The Wreck Bar at the Yankee Clipper - A Nautical Bar (NOT a Tiki Bar)

3.) Carribean? Those never were Tiki Bars. One Florida Tiki doesn't make a place a Tiki bar

4.) "Hybrid"??? If it doubles as a Sports Bar, it is a bad example of the misuse of Tiki , or simply Tiki (Revival) Devolution

5.) Asian. Just because there are more of those places left on the East coast than classic Tiki places it does not make them good examples of Tiki style, most of them are pre-fab examples of late 70s and 80s Tiki devolution.

I am not negating the right of folks to like each one of these manifestations for their own personal reasons, but these labels are not how I would categorize them in the big Tiki scheme of things. These 5 categories simply are good and bad examples of the style, with some being non-Tiki.

Back in the 1990s, when I was running the Tiki Bar Review Pages web site, I had five categories that I divided Tiki bars into.

By the time the site evolved into "Tiki Road Trip I" in 2003, it was beyond clear to me that there were too many hybrids, sub-categories, and exceptions to make such quantization useful or manageable.

Santa Monica Press pressured me to keep the categories for the book, but by "TRT2" in 2007, I had long since jettisoned notions of compartmentalizing these things.

Carolus Linnaeus would roll over in his grave if we tried to find a genus and species for every type of Tiki bar; I say we just enjoy a mai tai and not get too academic here.

Let's not be analicious...

On 2009-07-28 18:24, Sneakytiki wrote:
Let's not be analicious...

Hey now... if tiki wasn't analicious - would any of us be dining here!?

I generally go for the following categories when mentally labeling tiki bars:

1.) Good/Great tiki bar

2.) "The best tiki bar we have in this city, which isn't saying much, but some of their drinks are ok - if you watch the bartender to make sure he doesn't put grenadine in your Mai Tai."

3.) Sh*tty, fake "tiki" bar.

I think the third (and really the second) category would count as "Devolution."

While I enjoy the academic approach I notice that most Tiki peoples I talk with rate things similarly to Formikahini's post above. The main three categories I most encounter are:

1. It's so great!

2. Eh.

3. (Eye roll combined with head shake.)

:) I guess that means there is no desire to categorize Tiki bars in genres, then. But remember: Those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past in the future! ...or something like that.

Woofmutt: Exactly! :lol:

And BigBro, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who put everybody into categories and those who don't.

On 2009-07-28 19:30, twitch wrote:

On 2009-07-28 18:24, Sneakytiki wrote:
Let's not be analicious...

Hey now... if tiki wasn't analicious - would any of us be dining here!?

So does that mean that Tiki Central is analicious?

"I guess that means there is no desire to categorize Tiki bars in genres, then. But remember: Those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past in the future! ...or something like that."-bigbrotiki-

I like to think I'm making tomorrow's mistakes today.

But seriously folks...

I'd guess the majority of the Tiki Central regulars have a genuine interest in Tiki bar categorization such as the Evolution of Polynesian Pop image bigbrotiki posted above (Where'd yuh find that, bigbrotiki, some old book or somethin?) or arriano's suggested categories.

But I think for many it's less an intellectual interest and more of an internal awareness. Whether consciously or not we know there are various categories as there are places we'd possibly never set foot in (A hot pink and electric yellow joint called Cabana Jack's Parrot Shack or The White Sands Room in Lee's Chinese Special Family Buffet) if there wasn't a chance that they might fall into one of these un-named categories.

Seems to me there are really only two categories at this point: open and closed. In other words, those we really need to support, and those we no longer have the option of supporting.

I really don't decipher someone else's opinion about a Tiki bar, until I go see it for myself.
Categorize it? Check it out for yourself.
That's just me.

On 2009-07-29 11:33, Formikahini wrote:
Woofmutt: Exactly! :lol:

And BigBro, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who put everybody into categories and those who don't.

Hey, it wasn't ME who proposed Tiki categories here...I was just playing devil's advocate -- waitaminnit, that's a joke, right?
I believe James is right in a way, it's too complex of a situation to simplify....but that ain't gonna keep me from the fun of theorizing and talking about it, it's ma game! And I really DID like the TIPSY factor. :)

Tiki Bars, just like pornography
you know it when you see it

If it wasn't for Asia or "nautical" we probably wouldn't have noticed Tiki until 40 or 50 years after the Wright Bros.' nifty invention became popular. Hmm?

I could do the "Carribean" tiki thing but, Corona is piss, the same goes for Land Shark. I'd rather drink Guinness. :blush:

Rum as we think it came from the Carribean. You know how us tiki dorks love our rum!

I think that "tiki" bars are a muddled idea. I do believe that there has been a "devolution" of tiki bars. I meant marketing. :) Any chance a group can be pigeon-holed, market it!!

Tiki forbid that any tikis were made in America by non-Polynesians in the last 30 years. That would just not be tiki. Or would it be devolutioned? Maybe so.

If it is in "Locating Tiki" then give it a go.

It's unfortunate "Polynesian Pop" is not quite as catchy (or maybe it is...) as "Tiki Bar" as it seems far more what this is all about - and that tiki is certainly just that - a subcategory. I know, heresy, but it's not as if all roads lead to tiki (reminds me of the art historical "all roads leading to Modernism"), but more so a view of Exoticism>Asian Exoticism>Polynesian Pop>Tiki. Exoticism has been around forever and a day, Asian Exoticism of the type we are considering since - oh, let's say around 1600 and the rise of the East India Company, and Polynesian Pop has its beginnings in the 18th and, mainly, 19th centuries, before tiki picks up steam, per Big Bro, post-1945, specifically in the late 50s and into the 60s.

Where one begins and the other ends is a pretty thankless debate. After all, even Paul Gauguin had his "tiki mugs." Of a sort...

GK

Grand Kahu

"We've come for your liver."

[ Edited by: Grand Kahu 2009-08-24 22:56 ]

I agree that tiki is like porn, you just know it when it you see it.