On 2011-03-06 22:14, bigbrotiki wrote:
The horror, the horror. That is so sad, indeed. Every Tikiphile's nightmare come true: A Sports Bar replacing an authentic Tiki Temple. Which, after surviving for decades, is irrevocably lost..

The trend started a long time ago. Legends is a very famous sports bar and it opened in 1979 at 5236 E. 2nd Street in the Belmont Shore neighborhood of Long Beach, CA. Previously at this location was...

Behold... the GOLDEN STONED Glazed Oki Doki Mug!

Thanks, again, Cam

"The rum's the thing..."

[ Edited by: Limbo Lizard 2011-03-10 12:27 ]

Looks GOOD! The Thirsty Two Ouncer!!!!

Are there tiki palaces in the future?

According to Disney Imagineers, yes. In Progress City, a model of what a city of the future will look like that use to be displayed in the Caraousel of Progress, there was a tiki palace.

Disney Imagineering: Progress City

"There's a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day...."

Great find Bushwich!

Here is a link to me original thread where I can see you have already posted this info! I am a total devotee of Progress City (And also a douchebag with nothing to contribute, according to leleliz) but I am surprised I never saw this stuff before. I actually don't remember seeing the tiki restaurant, but as I recall, you passed this diorama while on a moving escalator, so you did not have a chance to stop and really look at it in detail. Also, I was 7 years old at the time.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=32940&forum=13&hilite=progress%20city

Hey Cammo, Thanks for firing up an intersting, educational and entertaining thread..sorely missed on TC these days.. a pat on the back from over here..

On 2011-03-08 17:35, Cammo wrote:
A lot of issues came up during the main run of this thread.

I really didn’t expect it to get much notice, it was really designed as a tiny thread to just joke back and forth with MadDogMike, but man the TCers are quite a cerebral bunch and you folks should really be proud of yourselves.

Here’s the thing - what has happened to Tiki Palaces is scary, and according to the quotes below the direction our society is going in is even scarier. Comparing 1955 to 2011 is bound to be both divisive and illuminating no matter what the subject…

Anyway, here are the Hall of Fame Ultimate Quotes. All of these are to me essentially correct, and interesting as hell.

JeffBigTikiDude: (maybe the ultimate winner)
“I think that the answer is the Owners/Managers Have their heads up their collective asses.”

“…and the More I think about it.
the General Public has their heads up their asses,
and doesn't get Poly Pop/Tiki.”

BigBrotiki: (right on)
“Many folks equate anything vintage with 'dirty'. Not desirable for restaurants OR apartment buildings.”

Chip & Andy: (Great run-on stream of consciousness sentence, and anything with the words ‘Cranberry Accents’ is a winner)
“You have marketing and design departments full of ideas presenting their ideas to some middle level of management who put their two cents into the design before they give it to the next higher level of management who add their two cents and by the time it reaches the people who can say yes the idea has been flattened and homogenized so much as there is no character left but the top level management thinks its a good idea because they pay their marketing and design departments big bucks so they must know what they are doing when presenting this bland beige and dusty rose with cranberry accents plan.”

” …but, what is missing in most of today's 'Management' is Love.”
” Become cheerleaders for your local tiki bars and get people to go to them, show them how cool they are so they in turn bring others, and so on.”

“The bigger a company gets, the closer it gets to becoming a Corporation. The more Corporate it becomes the more it needs to make money to maintain its growth and eventually reaches a point where making money is the only goal.”

Mongoloid (interesting point, and interesting that the primary rule here on TC is that we cannot discuss religion, when we are talking about Tikis. I’ve always found it ridiculous and screamingly ethno-centric)
“The first thing that came to mind is that people can confuse tiki and consider and interperate it as a religious symbol and that by removing all tikis the hotel feels they will not be conflicting with someones beliefs and religion.”

Hakalugi:
“From a hotel restaurant perspective, and one that is somewhat isolated from other walking distance restaurants, the potential clientele is the people lodging at the hotel. The bean counter thinks he has a captive audience. Ideally the restaurant will move as many customers through the restaurant as fast as possible to maximize income. Any fancy decor or relaxing atmosphere only causes the diners to take their time, thus reducing the turnaround. Get rid of the great atmosphere and your diners per hour goes up!

Flawed in almost every respect...”

Aquarj:
“However, today's cultural landscape is far more eclectic, and it's possible to see a Forbidden Island or Smuggler's Cove thriving without being in the mainstream.”

“My neighbor wanted to paint his house, re-do his driveway, and change a bathroom. The city not only vetoed specific color choices on the exterior AND interior, but even dictated the colors he could choose from. They're essentially thinking about the lowest common denominator for all planning decisions, where the least offensive always trumps all else.”

“So imagine an owner facing massive impending renovation costs and dwindling attendance coupled with their own fatigue running the day to day enterprise. They're stuck.”

“The regulatory barriers to entry in most forms of the hospitality business have made it very difficult or almost impossible for the "lone visionary" to create a destination, or even take over and preserve the spirit in an existing place. It's not only the financing, but also the willingness to operate under all the modern constraints of safety, liability, staffing, etc. Only a rare individual has the capacity for all that, PLUS the execution of the day to day things that attract visitors, like good food and drinks. (Another reason to laud modern proprietors of Smuggler's Cove, Forbidden Island, Tonga Hut, Tiki Ti, the Mai Kai) All combined, this is a big reason why "Mom & Pops" are disappearing, and being replaced by much larger corporate entities with the consolidated capital to handle facilities costs, the teams of lawyers to handle and internally oversee all the modern legal and regulatory crap, and the economies of scale for the tasks of running the business.”

and . . .

“It could be that the Hanalei management wants to attract different kinds of conferences by having more of a blank canvas in their own decor. If you'd like to host conferences for any group, ranging from the National Seed & Fertilizer Society, to the Hermit Crab Lovers of North America, and the Fraternal Order of Glacial Ice Climbers, perhaps you want to de-emphasize your own theming so that visitors can transform the place into a seed, crab, or ice mecca for the duration of their conference.”

Gabbahey: (…and home is boring)
"DoubleTree has embarked on a multi-million dollar product enhancement initiative to reinvigorate the hotel experience and provide today's travelers with more of the residential feeling they enjoy at home."

Babalu:
Quote: “Fueling the growth, says Americas brand chief Gina LaBarre, is a combination of the chain’s refurbishing program, its mix of targeted amenities and services and its emphasis on what she calls “value over excess.”

Lucas Vigor:
“Actually, WE are all to blame.”

“Those cats had style, and a sense of whimsy....plus an exploratory spirit of adventure...who knows?”

Tiki Lee’s
“When you make your establishment look like everyone else's with a bland, neutral tone to the color, decor, style, etc., it's makes it easier to sell to other corperations who might be interested in buying the place if the present owners want to dump the property. If a potential buyer can buy a property that looks really similar to their other properties, the cost to make it "their own" is minimal, and thusly, very attractive.”

TikiG:
“Another snoop/scoop reveals that the property was audited by the parent company...recommended changes included consolidation of the restaurant into a full-service one with larger seating capacity, upgrades to the rooms into a higher class to stay competitive with surrounding hotel competition and to set it apart from Motel 6 - a neighbor, addition of conference rooms etc. because the Hanalei is a business conference hotel first and foremost, not a "book-by-the-night" motel."

MadDogMike:
“Just to add a little fuel to the fire and play devil's advocate - we look at the wonton destruction of Tiki Palaces and cringe in horror but we need to put the shoe on the other foot. Consider the fictitious "Fred's Fish Shack"; built in the 50s, it holds a dear spot in someone's heart because they went there on their first date. So they embark on a quest to save the place as a historical landmark. But the damned place is an eyesore and the food never was any good anyway. The only reason it stayed open was because Fred's wife had a day job that supported Fred's dream of owning a fish shack. It's located on prime real estate stands in the way of progress, it needs to be torn down to build - yes - ugly condos or another Walgreen's. So a few determined people and a good lawyer will stand in the way of progress for years, much to the dismay of 99% of the surrounding population.”

John-O (RIGHT ON Johnny!!!!)
“Why all the hate for "the corporations" ?? From a historic standpoint, Tiki was always by "The Man" and for "The Man".

“It amazes me how "anti-business" so many people here are. Let's say someone owns a struggling (yet profitable) mid-century Tiki business and then a large corporation offers to buy the land or location. If the owner takes up that offer to ensure the financial security of their family, is that "selling out" and being greedy or just being smart in our capitalist society ?

What would you do in a similar situation ?

Places like the Mai Kai and Tiki-Ti are anomolies and we should cherish them for as long as they exist, but we shouldn't expect others to "finance" our Tiki fix at a detriment to their cash flow.”

“It's all our own fault anyway. We spend all our time drinking in bars when we should be forming Political Action Committees and having representation in Washington D.C. !”

Tiki Trav (CORRECT!)
“…but for the record, I thought it was just to fit more seats where those pesky bridges/waterfalls were...”

Tom Slick
“ALL of the big casino/hotels are rethinking, replanning, rebranding, and leading to eventual remodeling, and losing All theme. ALL of the new resorts that have been built in the last 4 years are plain jane/brass & glass painted in white, with marble floors. There is no more "theming" in Vegas, on the Corporate level, unless that theme is representative of Wealthy or Rich.”

Limbo Lizard
“Beige is business, and doesn't attract criticism of expenditures like dense tiki decor and drinks named, e.g., "Vicious Virgin" would.”

“As we defend the prudence of our management judgment, and how the problems could not have been foreseen,… the LAST thing we need is someone whipping out a 2-year-old picture of our executives gathered around a table, with a roasted pig in the middle, and one of them being served a big flaming bowl of alcohol by a scantily attired maiden (or cocktails by Playboy bunnies).”

And . . .

Thanks to all the players!

Great summary, Cammo.

I will add another reason: FADS.

Hotel chains now are all trying to be the "W" and feature high-design contemporary lobbies. One glaring example is the "grand-dame" St. Francis in San Francisco, possibly the most the respected hotel in the City, which demolished its historic, trademark "Compass Room" in favor of a sleek, all-white restaurant which appears to be a replica of the restaurant in the ultra-hip Delano in Miami Beach.

The Hanalei, the SF Fairmont, New York's Palace, etc., all exemplify this unfortunate trend.
This unfortunate trend also is corroborated by Big Bro's theory that Tiki is considered vintage, which requires being remodeled to be brought up-to-date.

Yeah, and we have a place just off Little Italy in downtown San Diego called the Glass Door. It has maybe the coolest view and location in the whole city, but is going for a sort of Lounge Moderne look that really doesn't work; it just isn't very well done. (It doesn't help that the food isn't all that great either.)

Basically, they shot themselves in the foot because almost nobody goes there now. Give it a few years and they'll redo the look anyway.

On 2011-03-07 03:23, RevBambooBen wrote:
....

Ugh.

I heard that Buster's Beach House in the LBC is turning into a sports bar also!
Although not "Tiki" but OA lamps and Bamboo Ben decor.

Ugh.

Buster's Beach House in Long Beach, CA has not looked anything like a beach house for years now and as of July 3rd, it will cease to exist and be replaced by an Irish Pub kind of place.

Malarkey's Irish Pub

On 2013-06-27 13:05, King Bushwich the 33rd wrote:

On 2011-03-07 03:23, RevBambooBen wrote:
....

Ugh.

I heard that Buster's Beach House in the LBC is turning into a sports bar also!
Although not "Tiki" but OA lamps and Bamboo Ben decor.

Ugh.

Buster's Beach House in Long Beach, CA has not looked anything like a beach house for years now and as of July 3rd, it will cease to exist and be replaced by an Irish Pub kind of place.

Malarkey's Irish Pub

Ugh!

Hey is that the same "Malarkey's" that use to be on Newport Blvd.
in Costa Mesa, then moved to Campus Ave.?

Man that place was a real dive (Frat boy hell!)

[ Edited by: Atomic Tiki Punk 2013-06-28 10:14 ]

Not to derail this threat too much but that Progress City link was amazing,

Thanks

Ownership's interest in maximizing profits seemingly all too often requires bulldozing a Tiki Mecca, like The International
Market Place, to create a more lucrative venture.

Yet sometimes, like the Tonga Room at the SF Fairmonte, or Don the Beachcomber in Sunst Beach, developers do not prevail, often because local govenments, whether by zoning rules or unions, say "no."

Other times, like LA Live Trader Vic's, Mickey Finz, Bali Hai or, for a brief glorious moment - Taboo Cove at the Venetian, developers latch onto Tiki to keep the profits rolling.

Tiki does have a future thanks to folks like us. So while we are losing vintage tiki we are fortunately also gaining "new" tiki. No need for me to post a list of new venues here...

Indeed. I hadn't read that far back on Imagineering Disney yet. Thanks for the bump/link.

On 2011-03-11 14:23, King Bushwich the 33rd wrote:
Are there tiki palaces in the future?

According to Disney Imagineers, yes. In Progress City, a model of what a city of the future will look like that use to be displayed in the Caraousel of Progress, there was a tiki palace.

Disney Imagineering: Progress City

"There's a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day...."

Another makeover at DCA with Pixar Pier

MiceChat: Pixar Pier

It ain't tiki but a planned building seems inspired by tiki palace of Progress City!?

Nice! I have mentioned in a few other posts that Disney Imagineers and show designers have a huge soft spot in their hearts for tiki and Polynesian pop. Both Trader Sam's are proof of that, Moana, Aulani, and now possibly this too. There's also Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily as well. I'm sure others here can point out more.

One more thought -- this design hit me as just a wee bit reminiscent of the old Hawaiian Punch village at SeaWorld San Diego. Could be my mind playing tricks on me, but I'll have to go back and look at old SeaWorld pics and see if there's any real similarity.

The Incredibles design work was heavily influenced by MCM, so there are clearly elements of that in this rendering, along with generous borrowing from tiki design. Looks great--I hope it comes to fruition.

That's a good addition - MCM - yes! "The Incredibles" is on my to-watch list since I've only seen it once in its original theatrical release. I remember there are some great caricatures of real-life people in the film - Edna Mode, for example, and among others, is brilliant.

Why Destroy Tiki Palaces?

I think it is hard to find the kind of love and dedication for the place you work or even the kind of pride in your job that there was back in the heyday of tiki.

The kind of work and extra effort needed for a place like the Kahiki is just nowhere to be found these days.

One of the new tiki joints I went to had those cheep plastic outdoor chairs for seating INSIDE!
The old tiki joints would not even use those outside on a patio, or in the backroom or office.

One place had no mint for the Mai Tais.

The old places would go far and wide to find the décor or make it themselves.
Now I mostly hear how cheaply they got some tiki online, this did not surprise me as they looked cheep.

The kind of class that people had back in the day is gone, think of that Mai Kai host seater guy at Mai Kai.
He has style and class plus pride in his work, and the place he works.

Some of the new tiki joints I have been to just don't have this. many say we should support any tiki joint to keep tiki alive but I feel that these type of not so great places just crap on what I loved about the old places and could taint the image and style that the old tiki joints had.

So in short the new places if done badly are just another nail in the coffin of cool old classic tiki and for me are not what I'm lookin for and they help defame tiki.

Why Destroy Tiki Palaces? because what made them great is getting harder and harder to find
and the product they sell is no longer that great.

But then Pride, quality, and even class and style is hard to find in any product or business these days.

Skip, you made some good points, and made me think... I would add that today the audience is very different as well. In mid-century America we had lots of veterans who easily rolled with out-of-the-way holes-in-the-wall from their travels, with a hodge-podge of furnishings within a fairly cohesive and identifiable theme. Today we see places which are often created from scratch, and it's very different because of how different the guests personal "connections" to that stuff is. Today's bar guests see entertainment and booze when they go. The mid-century bar guest had a greater degree of familiarity with, and connection to, the subject matter, and then they saw the entertainment and booze.

Cheers to you, sir!!!

Great points Skip, taken w/ validity as you are someone who has operated a food-service business.

Today IMHO, some of the "new" places offer plenty of "hip service"...um, I mean "lip service", where talk of original and true to spec classic Tiki and cocktails w/ very high "craft" prices are offered and when they are experienced or reviewed, they miss the mark....often. Again, beating that damn dead horse, talk of "service" is always blabbed about but quickly forgotten. Just as Skip was saying (and a convo w/ my Wife this morning about no one wanting to take over a very successful restaurant) people don't have (or don't want to have) the nut-busting work ethic these places require. It takes more than $ (although PLENTY is needed) it takes a desire to carve out a niche position in your market and keep pushing until you feel you maybe can see the forest through the trees, THEN, keep pushing harder.

"I would add that today the audience is very different as well."

That is a great point, I often wonder if what we want in a bar restaurant is what most people don't want.

I for one see restaurants that people RAVE about that truly suck.
But then I am a good cook and my mom was a great cook so I have had good food and know it when I see/taste it.

Same with a drink, I have had the best boozes there is, and drinks from the Mai Kai and Tiki Ti so I've had the best.
So when you come at me with your 12 or 14 dollar hand crafted Mai Tai it better be dam good, cuz I've paid 6 bucks for a bad Mai Tai before and two bad Mai Tai is better than one ok hand crafted 12 or 14 dollar Mai Tai.

More drunkie = better.

PS at home I use very good booze and not the cheap stuff, and get Havana club for $36.00 bucks per bottle.
That would be three and a half hand crafted yuppie Mai Tai or one full bottle of Havana club 7 year.

On 2017-11-08 10:35, tikiskip wrote:
That is a great point, I often wonder if what we want in a bar restaurant is what most people don't want.

• and -
  I for one see restaurants that people RAVE about that truly suck.

Yup, it's sad. Sometimes you just want to visit a nice tropical place where you can escape and chill with good drinks and have a conversation with who you're with. Now we can't seem to have a bar without sports or news TVs blaring, or distracting us. Thank the tiki gods for the exceptions out there!

"Now we can't seem to have a bar without sports or news TVs blaring, or distracting us."

..or, suck ass music too loud.

The devolution and then destruction of Tiki is nothing special.

In other words it's not something that happened just to Tiki. Everything has been changing, as it always does, and some things change for the worse. In the west, over the past half century (or, really, longer), a lot of factors or elements that would sustain Tiki or Tiki-like things that we like have been deteriorating and even outright going away. If things continue has they have been we can expect even more major, surprising changes to the world in the coming decade. Tiki was exotic, primal, tribal ... a perfect escape for a civilized, cultured and literate society. But that was then; now the west is more tribal and primal itself and Tiki just doesn't fit in. Look at the people in old photos of any good restaurants or lounges ... you can tell that they come from a different world ... a different civilization. It has ended. No architect or deep-pocketed investor can bring something like that back today. It's not a matter of constructing, collecting, or decorating. The people are the key factor and the one that's missing. The way to bring back Tiki palaces and fantastic places that are even better than anything that has come before is to change the surrounding civilization. So, how do you do that? Who knows. But do it, and you're golden.

"Tiki palaces and fantastic places that are even better than anything that has come before is to change the surrounding civilization."

We do have a few successes in the new tiki joint arena as well though, places like Three Dots and a Dash and Forbidden island to name a few.

So it can be done right in this time and still thrive.
What places like the Kahiki had was the love gained by longevity.
That is they had been around so long people loved the place and would forgive many not so good things.

The food at the end was ok, and the drinks were depending on who made it strong, not so great, or good.

But it was fun.

Dam what would the rent be for a Kahiki or Mai Kai these days!

The official reason given for tearing down the Kahiki was it was in need of a lot of work so he sold it rather than repair it.

I think the reason was the million bucks he got for the place.

On 2017-11-08 10:35, tikiskip wrote:
That is a great point, I often wonder if what we want in a bar restaurant is what most people don't want.

I for one see restaurants that people RAVE about that truly suck.

There's a new bar/restaurant here in New Braunfels, the Downtowner, that has gone with nightly themes for its drinks. They have Tiki Sundays, so The Wife and I went a couple weeks ago to check them out. The place is in an old rock shop (seriously--they sold minerals, semi-precious stones, geodes, amethyst etc.) with a lot of space. Unfortunately, they remodeled it with the industrial look so popular today--polished concrete floors, flat walls, unfinished ceiling with duct work exposed, etc. Nothing inherently wrong with that, except for the fact that it was LOUD. In these places even the smallest sound echoes around, so that you have to talk louder and louder just to be heard. Their tiki "decor" was a dozen paper accordion-style pineapples scattered around the place, along with some Party City leis. The drink menu was limited, with half a dozen less common tiki drinks (no Mai Tai, for example) and two bar originals that looked like they had potential. I can't recall what we ordered, but I do recall they were good. Not great, but they significantly exceeded my expectations. Good enough that we were inclined to order another round, but left instead. The place was so damn loud it was giving us both headaches.

The drinks were good, but there was zero atmosphere. We're not the type of folks who go to bars to drink, we go to relax and enjoy the atmosphere. For us, putting up with the noise and tension was not worth it for the good, reasonably-priced drinks. I made a foray to the restroom--one of the few quiet places there--and realized they were piping in reggae music over the PA. It's reggae, yeah, but I give them points for making the effort to switch it off the top 40 they normally play. But my larger point is that I couldn't even hear it in the main bar area. And there were younger 20-somethings there who were ordering these respectably-crafted tiki drinks and videoing each other with their phones as they raced to see who could drink theirs down the fastest. No. Just no. These aren't shots or slammers. They're defeating the entire purpose of tiki cocktails.

And here's the kicker: Just yesterday some of The Wife's friends were raving about how much they loved the place, and how they go there every chance they get. The Wife said she found the drinks good, but the atmosphere terrible. "Really?" they replied in surprise. "We hadn't noticed."

There you go.

======
On 2017-11-09 09:59, Prikli Pear wrote:
The Wife said she found the drinks good, but the atmosphere terrible. "Really?" they replied in surprise. "We hadn't noticed."

There you go.

Right on the nose - low standards of the general public is one of the problems. I have a similar problem with friends who love EVERY FREAKIN' MOVIE that comes out, and then they think I'm a hard-ass when I say a certain film sucked. (I can usually tell them in detail why it was bad.)

How can we turn this around? People are both very easy to please, and on top of that they have very low standards. They literally don't know what they don't know.

On 2017-11-09 10:13, AceExplorer wrote:

On 2017-11-09 09:59, Prikli Pear wrote:
The Wife said she found the drinks good, but the atmosphere terrible. "Really?" they replied in surprise. "We hadn't noticed."

There you go.

Right on the nose - low standards of the general public is one of the problems. I have a similar problem with friends who love EVERY FREAKIN' MOVIE that comes out, and then they think I'm a hard-ass when I say a certain film sucked. (I can usually tell them in detail why it was bad.)

How can we turn this around? People are both very easy to please, and on top of that they have very low standards. They literally don't know what they don't know.

They are looking for the next shiny thing, or somewhere their friends deem "hip"....then it's on to something else.

"The place was so damn loud it was giving us both headaches."

Ha! at the Windward Passage restaurant that we go to often it is not loud and you can talk in fact often people at the bar talk back and forth to each other like 15 feet away from each other.

BUT one night it did get loud I think there were some younger people there that night.
Well the bartender banged on the CO2 tank and yelled use your indoor voices!

I thought that was a bit much as it's not a dam Library.

It could have been me as I can get a bit loud when I drink, The wife said it was not me that time though.

On 2017-11-09 11:34, tikiskip wrote:
I thought that was a bit much as it's not a dam Library.

In this case it was more of the space than the people. Even a modest volume echoes and amplifies in the hard-surfaced environment of the Downtowner. I've been other places like that, and I've been other places with loud crowds that are comfortable because the noise doesn't carry. Hale Pele was packed and noisy each time we went, but we could still carry on a conversation even if we couldn't quite make out what music was playing. There are some simple steps that can be taken to break up those hard surfaces and improve the acoustics, but that's never taken into consideration during remodels. Too many people just figure "That's the way it is."