That's just wrong! The un-Tiki thread:

Ok so I think I would really like your wife.
Not joking, she sounds like fun.

I'll wager you would. People like her and she collects friends like it's some kind of Pokemon competition (although she doesn't keep anyone in little red balls). She normally saves her tormenting for me. A song comes on that she knows I hate? She turns up the volume. Clothing I despise? I've got a gift coming. She makes up for it on occasion with surprises like the Creature from the Black Lagoon bust that I hung up in the tiki bar. And the tiki bar was actually her idea, although she's quick to point out it has since ballooned way beyond anything she expected. :lol:

I can't find my buddy Unga Bunga. He was a workcamper at Borrego Springs till it closed this summer, (too hot). Then, he dropped off the face of the earth. No return calls or texts. Dang I hope he alright.

Last he posted here was 19 days ago.

hiltiki, he did??

Yup

I just contacted JT

Cheers!

Unga Bunga LIVES

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming

On 2019-09-22 17:17, Jungle Trader wrote:
Unga Bunga LIVES

The hell is that?

Just a joke between two friends. :)

[ Edited by Johnny Dollar on 2022-04-27 09:24:56 ]

Just to underscore how times have changed in the twenty years TC has been around...

I made the mistake of seeing how this thread started and was horrified, definitely unacceptable/offensive posting language now (what was even the original context?!).

Don't want to cross into violating the rules on "political" discussion, just thought I'd point that out as a new user.

@J$: I pray that my new next-door neighbors never see those Tiki torches, since they've already uglied up the 'hood with their creepy garden gnome statues.

@SouthSeasKat: Ha! Thanks for sending me down that rabbithole. I'd forgotten how much fun this thread was back in the day, and I do love it when Bigbro starts pontificating in a thread. Granted, things got a bit heated at times, but it's a touchy subject that people have strong feelings about.

I was specifically referring to the use of the t-word, which is now considered incredibly offensive. Anyone under 40 is likely to consider it a slur.

I haven't seen it used so casually... front and center... in many years.

Then I'd strongly recommend that you not go poking around in the Bilge forum, because you'll likely find much worse.

Duly noted.

I'll just say that if younger folks do start percolating in, as will have to happen for Tiki culture to continue, we may want to be aware that my reaction will be/become/already is the norm. :)

Oh, I think we're all well-aware of how sensitive people are on social media nowadays, and we've already had folks trying to call us out for "cultural appropriation", Polynesiasploitation and other sins, both real and imagined. I don't think you're going to find much of an appetite for heavy-handed moderation either, although Hanford and the other mods will occasionally step in and tell people to cool it or delete posts containing personal attacks.

Also, I've been online since the days of Usenet back in the mid-80s, and the trolling and sh*t-posting there was far worse than anything I've ever read on TC. Unless someone is attacking me personally with ad hominems or comparing me to Hitler, I just ignore it and move on.

a wise man once said, a vegetarian should not go to a steakhouse just to complain about being offended :D

I've been online since 1996. I'm trying to be delicate in my commentary because of the rules on politics.

I'm also aware that there are necessarily changes to behavior communities should make so as to continue to be inclusive in practice and not just in claim. Just because I'm functionally new to TC as a can-now-speak-member doesn't mean I am new to TC as a reader or Tiki in general. I'm well aware of the debate over Tiki and cultural appropriation and feel that the long participation of Asian-Americans and Polynesians in the community from the beginning (the bartenders, the carvers, musicians like Tak Shindo) leaves such arguments wanting.

It is true this is the first time I had actually seen what started this thread. It's history, fine, I don't believe in hiding history. I was just expressing my shock at seeing it. I wasn't asking it be taken down, but I did think we might have to answer for it with newer members of the community. As well we should.

I don't think having that opinion is the same as a vegetarian going into a steakhouse and complaining about meat being served.

We're more enlightened on identity in 2022, that's all, and our Tiki community is more inclusive for it.

haha, that was awesome.

in other news: TIKI TRANSFORMERS

The "T" word? Really?

Please correct me if I'm wrong in my assumption, but I suppose you mean to write "trannie"? Then write it. It's on the original poster that started this thread. It's a word, or at least a contraction of a word. Pussy-footing around hiding behind imprecise initials can only cause confusion. (No offence intended or implied to felines of any gender...)

The new generation seekers of permanent offence don't own it to demand its expulsion from the English language either. It has been a commonly used word for a very long time before it was more recently "appropriated", again as a contraction of a term. However the original usage dates back to the 60's at least.

If you ever find yourself in Australia then you might still hear a transistor radio being referred to as a "trannie". Many of the post modern generation might need to research that in this day of the seemingly permanent implantation of those damn Petrie dish earbuds. Statements such as "Can you bring a trannie to the worksite" should not be any cause for alarm. No gender-bending new apprentice will appear. Tradies here, and I suspect in many other countries usually have a portable radio blaring over all the industrial noise. Australians do have a way of shortening so many words.

Or if you were ever to venture in an automotive work shop, (sounds unlikely I know but...) you might hear a mechanic say he's working on a "trannie". Try to remain calm! No need for a safe space or any complaints to the Lavender Speech Mafia.

He is just referring to the transmission of a vehicle. (Look it up!) And he/she has been doing so for a decade or more without committing any linguistic felony. No one takes offence because it's just a word and everybody knows what it means. And it's a word still in common usage to many STILL LIVING people who may also I hasten to add, happen to be under FORTY.

Hardly TABOO....there I got a Tiki word in!

I left the conversation back in April. I considered my piece on this said and I thought we'd moved on.

The word is a slur in the context it is used in the image in the first post. For historical reasons, I never advocated it be taken down, but I did feel I had the right to express that it was surprising and upsetting to me (and to others). And that's all I was doing.

It's wholly incomparable to the same-sounding shortening of transmission or transister, but I think you know that, and your comments are not in good faith. I've spent time in Australia and I was an automotive journalist and have worked on my own vehicles. I'm not offended by the use of such shortenings in their appropriate context. I am offended by the use of a slur, and no, I will not follow you in saying it just as I do not use other slurs.

It was a problem 40 years ago, and it's a problem now. And it makes some people feel unwelcome. That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it, and I won't have anything else to say on it.

Being too old at this point and time I have seen a lot, and way back there was a joke book that had polish jokes on one side and Italian jokes one the other, so it was half and half.

But it was no big deal the jokes were not that good and even Italians would tell them and fake laugh making fun of the stupid joke.

Frank Sinatra would tell Italian jokes.

As I thought about TV shows in the say 60s and 70s I found that the joking and idiots of the shows were white men mostly.

The white cop on Sandford and son (my dad loved that show) the white guy married to the black woman on The Jefferson's, heck how mad should I be about Homer Simpson, Fat white guy shame much?

The thing is we all get a shot of poking at, be it for fun or to shame be mean to.

I was in the stock room of a kitchen that was mostly black, and somebody came in and asked if "we had any crackers" I said "right here" and everybody laughed.

Hope I did not offend the one or two white guys that worked there with me, you want to be outright offended with no doubts go work in an all-black kitchen at OSU you will be offended and threatened too.

Whites have been called Eurasians, crackers heck my union representative called me a "white devil" over the years where's the outrage about that? Nothing was done to that union representative, and I said nothing to her at all.

Utopia is not coming, everybody getting along with no hate is a movie that Disney is going to put out, and even that movie will have some veiled hate aimed at white men the same as everything new Disney puts out.

I don't want to engage in a debate here. For one thing, it's against the rules to engage in protracted political debate. I was expressing a feeling and a concern, and a mostly passing observation in my first reply. And as I have found Tiki culture to be welcoming, I even expressed belief that things had changed for the better. I still do.

And then I left the conversation, six months ago. I'm not going to debate the points I raised, but I will express surprise that I seem to be less free to express a view than others here. Who is really trying to stifle expression here?

I'm not a child nor a young adult. I'm now into middle-age. I don't need to be lectured on the past or the supposed oversensitivity of the youth, or patronised with the belief that my views are due to youth I no longer have.

I'm remembering to uncheck "notify me when users post a reply."

Please return to posts of plastic Tiki mug IP tie-ins. We can all agree that if anything is offensive, that is!

[ Edited by SouthSeasKat on 2022-10-27 07:40:34 ]

I agree with you

I will simply say, and this is not directed at anyone in particular, that taking offence does not automatically make you right.

I love Tiki. I love Transformers. I do not love "Tiki Transformers."

I still wonder why just about everything else is allowed to be a self-contained genre with definite parameters, but for some strange reason "TIKI" has now got to be fluid and "inclusive"?

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2022-11-06 21:30:04 ]

Tiki has always been fluid, if not all-encompassing. It was inspired by Pacific Polynesia, but used Caribbean rum in its drinks. Exotica was hardly Polynesian, incorporating American jazz, African, and Latin musics. Meanwhile, surf rock was not found much in the original era (that was kid stuff), but is deeply embedded into tiki-land now. From the earliest days of tiki restaurants, non-Polynesian Asian foods have been served: first Chinese was common, now Japanese sushi. Etc., etc.

Since tiki is an aesthetic, not a “genuine” culture (whatever that means) it’s always been guided by whatever people want it to be, for better or worse.

So going along with those elastic parameters, walking into a bar advertised as being a "Tiki Bar" and finding clown masks and space rockets everywhere should be OK? We should not be disappointed that the original aesthetic that brings us here has been so diluted and bastardised as to now be virtually meaningless? A tiki bar without "tikis"??? Just looking at those member's work here who have created their own Tiki Bar, their selected decor is remarkably uniform. Hardly "fluid". "Surf Rock" is in fact its own genre (and welcome to it) but I'd argue the point until we ran out of rum that it's NOT "tiki".

But it's the new mandate isn't it! Emotion over Fact. We hear it a lot nowadays from The Millennials and their fragile successors. It goes along the lines of: "I am, (or this is), a certain thing, purely because I say it is or think it is. End of story. Never mind what science says. Anyone disagreeing, questioning or failing to completely conform to my statement is a Fascist/Nazi or something-phobic and I will demand your cancellation if not your death."

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2022-11-05 21:50:50 ]

“So going along with those elastic parameters, walking into a bar advertised as being a "Tiki Bar" and finding clown masks and space rockets everywhere should be OK?…A tiki bar without "tikis"???” No, it’s not ok! There’s still the issue of: if the new directions in tiki are good or bad. No question that stuff is lame. I was just pointing out that since the tiki aesthetic was not based on any actual traditions, but was largely an invention of post-war America, there has always been a degree of fluidity. Today’s “real” tiki is pretty different from the suit-and-tie wearing, dumpling-eating ‘50s Polynesian restaurant diner. They didn’t have tiki conventions, zines, radio shows, mug vendors, etc. That’s all modern, but the good kind of fluidity. I understand that surf music might not seem tiki to some, but that’s mostly what you’re going to hear at any tiki festival, so…

The question is whether a change seems like a reasonable evolution or whether it seems like it was shoe-horned in. I think MrFab is on the right track here. I think Tiki as a subculture is very much a real subculture, but it's one driven, ultimately, by aspects of fantasy combined with commercialisation of bits and pieces of whatever was viewed as "exotic" in the mid-century. Over the waves of Tiki, borders have continued to be porous. I think we recognise a still general framework of Tiki, but the borderlands means we see small changes to that framework and a blurriness in certain areas (pirates, general nautical, the influence of Disney given Boomer and X memories of the Enchanted Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, Adventureland in general, and films like Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson).

Since so many recent infusions in the current wave are driven by Xers and even a few late Boomers, I fail to understand the purpose of bringing up Millennials and Zoomers. True, there are increasing members of Millennial and Zoomers in the tiki space, but this current wave is driven by X. The involvement of Disney, Transformers, Horror, Star Wars, etc, etc, etc... That's not Millennials or Zoomers. That's Xers.

Southseaskat it feels like you gravitate to the prickly posts.

BUT think about this, the first Trader Vics had a Frankenstein on its matchbook I think it was. And in the dining room/bar of the first Trader Vics they had a sled and a tricycle hanging in them.

This was told from a Time Life magazine.

The mugs had fairy like gremlins on them too with names like B52 and "killroy was here".

So, has tiki gone full circle back to what the heck ya got?

I think whatever x or z generation you bring up there are a few that just have a different idea of tiki and that for me and a lot of old time TCers that's not what we like, I often wonder if it's not a bit of "I'll post this stupid turd that should piss off those stiff old tiki Nazis".

That or they just have bad taste.

So, the gen Xers on TC are like Bamboo Ben, Tiki Diablo, Sven, Crazy Al, Spike, (Benzart might be before gen x) know I missed a ton but pretty old skool tiki right there.

I think ol Trader Vic was just trying to decorate his bar and that's what he had laying around.

Many of the people who started the first tiki bars could give a crap about tiki, they just wanted the money.

So to continue the discussion I'll add this FWIW. How many here have travelled/driven out of their way to attend a venue ADVERTISED as being a "Tiki Bar"? I've done exactly this on more than one occasion, only to find that in fact it's REALLY nothing of the sort.

In my humble opinion, just putting a few cheap Balinese masks up on a wall amongst your other crap doesn't make a place "tiki".....or maybe it does under the new aesthetic we are now supposed to embrace? I think it's more like trying to cash in on the new interest without spending any money doing it justice. Disappointing to say the least, not to mention the matter of false advertising.

I wouldn't say that, unless you also apply it to yourself!

Most of the folks I see on YouTube and on the blogs are Xers. Notably, Ray and the people he interviews. They're all Xers.

I've never even met a Zoomer (that would be current teenagers and early twenty somethings, maybe even younger than that) interested in Tiki and not seen one on any of these shows or blogs. There are very few Millennials (late twenties late thirties). I'm on the transition point between X and Millennial, but identify more with the former.

I think Millennials do not care, and Zoomers will actively hate. It's Millennial children that will end up picking up the Tiki mantle, if we base that on X picking it up from the Greatest.

"I wouldn't say that, unless you also apply it to yourself!'

I do a bit not as much as I used to, BUT I do make an effort to add more tiki related and positive stuff than the prickly stuff.

What would you say is your most tiki related post or thread? Mine would be the one I did here with all the Kahiki stuff and info, or light building threads.

I am sorry SouthSeaskat I thought that you were looking for the stuff that is not PC or racist type things and posted mostly on those threads, it looks like I was wrong, and I apologize.

And on the owners of the old places Bill Sapp did not even keep anything from the Kahiki when he sold it and said when they put in the Kahiki "they went to other places like Dons and Trader Vics, and they were the places doing all the business, so they went with that"

Bill was kinda shocked about how people like us on TC were so into what they did at the Kahiki and the collecting etc.

So back then it was not a matter of a love of tiki but just a decor to make money.

Back then there were MANY theme type restaurants Spanish with the bull fighting was hot back then and you had the English looking joints, heck even Chinese restaurants were kind of a new thing.

[ Edited by tikiskip on 2022-11-07 03:37:21 ]

Perhaps you've confused me with someone else? I've posted multiple travel threads, also shared my own space.

I also re-engaged in this thread because we were back to discussing the general framework of Tikiness, and not speaking about topics which may have been... uncomfortable for some. I said, admittedly somewhat tongue in cheek, that we should go back to that framework discussion ("transformers aren't tiki"), and we did!

I think there's been a miscommunication or misunderstanding, and for whatever part I've played in it, I apologise.

Myself representing the Boomer Class here and living by the mandate to "Destroy all Hipsters!" and my daily greeting of "Get off my Lanai you Hottentot Potentates!"

I think I am mellowing in my old age, so saying there is Tiki on Facebook/Meta made me laugh maniacally, now get off my Lanai!

Now, try unseeing this:

GROG NEED THIS!!!

GROG need that in tank top with one sholderstrap.

That shirt is so awful that I actually love it.

I was hoping to find a tiki bar on a recent trip to Miami. Didn’t happen.