Aku Tiki Lounge (Villager Motel), Lincoln, NE (bar)

Name:Aku Tiki Lounge (Villager Motel)
Type:bar
Street:5200 O Street
City:Lincoln
State:NE
Zip:68510
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct

Description:
I have this postcard from the Aku Tiki Lounge at the Villager Motel. Not much more history than that.

Here is a close up of the lounge.

A nice little ashtray from the lounge.

DC

The Aku Tiki must have had it going on, they had the ashtray and a mug.

DC

The Villager Motel was built in 1967. The Aku Tiki Lounge was the attached restaurant lounge. Originally called the Quality Court Motel. It went through many upgrades and ended with 200 guest rooms. The building is still there as The Village Courtyard and Gardens with the attached restaurant called Sadies. By the looks of the hotels website it has been heavily remodeled but one never knows what might be left.

"Anyone who has ever seen them is thereafter haunted as if by a feverish dream" Karl Woermann

[ Edited by: uncle trav 2009-08-15 15:07 ]

As I drove by the old Villager today there was a new fence put up around it to keep out interlopers as they... tear it down. So, no more.

Came across this menu from the Villager Motel on ebay.

The Aku Tiki Lounge appears to have had a Tonga Room at one point in time! More of the Tiki Transmission Tradition.

Kind of wacky 70's style graphics!

The drink in the signature mug was called the Aku Tiki Special - take home the mug to remember your voyage to the Villager!

Sad to hear the place was torn down.

DC

Do you own this, or did you just see that the item was presently on eBay?

Potato,

I attempted to buy the menu on ebay a while back but only got the images.

DC

I'm from Lincoln and have been in search of information about this place for a long time. I have the mug, but can't find any pictures from inside the place except the postcard posted above. I would pay dearly for a menu...

Let's fire up the Time Machine for the Nebraska Tiki Bar Crawl - I think we should start at the Mt. Fuji Inn / Mai Tai Lounge in Omaha and then head Southwest for an hour or so to The Aku Tiki Lounge where we could call it a night at the Villager Motel.

Whew, that was fun! :lol: ( ok maybe not but now I know that Omaha and Lincoln are an hour apart. ) :wink:

Bora Boris, there is a Tiki Meet-Up planned for September 25 at the Mt Fuji Inn, but, um, the Villager is demolished, so I hope that time machine is fired up.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=36829&forum=1&18

I wish the Aku Tiki was still running. If so, I'd be there right now, but I'm sure we'd love it if you could make the trek to Omaha in September for the Mt Fuji Inn!

Fnord.

[ Edited by: Potato. 2010-08-01 15:43 ]

Thanks Potato,

I'm in Los Angeles with no travel plans for the rest of the year however Tikitastic is going to be coming though Omaha on his road trip around August 15th and I've let him know that a stop at the Mt Fuji Inn is a must.

I'm going to bump this and see if anyone else on this forum somehow has any memorabilia about the Aku Tiki. Especially looking for menu scans and recipes from the Aku.

Potato,

No menu sightings, but I did find this nice architectural drawing of the exterior of the Aku Tiki Lounge.

The architectural firm was Dunbar and Dunn out of Omaha.

Some pretty cool mid-century modern lines on the building and the sign.

DC

Incredible building!

No menu sightings, but I did find this nice architectural drawing of the exterior of the Aku Tiki Lounge.

Where do you find this amazing stuff?! I'd love a print of something like that, but Dunbar appears to no longer exist.

My buddy who grew up in Nebraska has a lone tiki mug displayed with his football stuff. His parents got it from the the Aku lounge in the villager motel.

It's the typical 3 face bucket mug, with no markings of the Aku on it. Which makes me wonder how many other mugs they had with no markings.

This article is about one of the musicians that played at the lounge who recently passed. While it's not directly about the lounge, it gives some insight of the atmosphere...

http://www.lincolnrecovery.org/id218.html