TIKI in the news...Past and Present

I couldn't find a TIki in the News thread , so I thought I'd start one.
The man in the upper left of this photo seems to be wearing a KONA-KAI t-shirt.
This image is from the files of the LAPD. It was taken the day the S.L.A house in Los Angeles burned down in a police siege.

See the section titled MOVE TO LA AND POLICE SHOOTOUT for a writeup of the event;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army

On 2010-03-05 01:13, mrsmiley wrote:
TIKI in the news...Past and Present

Well shit,
If this is present, I've got some horse bets to make!

Dunno... looks like it says KONA-KAT or KONA-KATS to me...

After a rather dramatic start to this thread (shoot-outs & police sieges?!), I offer a news article of a more pleasant nature...

Today's issue of "Tasting Table" (NYC Edition) had the email subject line of:
"TastingTable NYC: Your guide to the impending tiki boom"

and an article title of
"Pacific Crush - A new, old cocktail trend hits the bars"

It's a very short & simplistic introduction to NY tiki bars, but nice to see these spots (and tiki culture) getting a nod in a widely-distributed & well-respected newsletter.

You may read the full article here

Nice article with drink recipes and good pics of tiki mugs this month in INBIBE.

Drinks featured with recipes include LONDON BURNING by Terry Raley at Holland House Bar & Refuge, LAKA'S NECTAR by Susan Eggett at Forbidden Island, BITTER MAI TAI by Jeremy Oertel at Dram, SUFFERING TRAVIS by Ted Kilgore at Taste Bar, LINGUA FRANCA by Martin Cate at Smuggler's Cove, WICKED WAHINE by Brice Ginardi at Okolemaluna Lounge, TIKI-TI FIVE-O by Jeff Beachbum Berry for Tiki-Ti, and HAMILTON PARK SWIZZLE by Natalie Jacob at Lani Kai.

On 2010-03-05 01:13, mrsmiley wrote:
I couldn't find a TIki in the News thread , so I thought I'd start one.
The man in the upper left of this photo seems to be wearing a KONA-KAI t-shirt.
This image is from the files of the LAPD. It was taken the day the S.L.A house in Los Angeles burned down in a police siege.

See the section titled MOVE TO LA AND POLICE SHOOTOUT for a writeup of the event;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army

Dramatic photo from a dramatic event.
If I recall, the LAPD burned down the entire block long building.
But was Patty Hearst wearing a Tiki necklace?

Just saw this on Facebook today... Pretty cool story. I just wish they had a close-up of the tiki. :(

http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/feilding-herald/5607254/War-veteran-John-reunited-with-tiki-after-six-years

Enjoy!

Today's news, but not news to us thanks to our own Hakinathicklugi.

Mysterious tiki found in city yard

Related thread
Giant Redondo Beach Pier Barney West Tiki resurrected

On 2011-09-30 12:09, Unga Bunga wrote:
Today's news, but not news to us thanks to our own Hakinathicklugi.

Mysterious tiki found in city yard

Related thread
Giant Redondo Beach Pier Barney West Tiki resurrected

Hey, don't blame me. Tikiyaki started that thread.

Oh, you know how The Sperm Whale's signature is sometimes something like:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Maybe mine should be:
HHHHHHHUUUUUUUAAAAAAAACCCCCKKKKKKKKUUUUAAAAACCCCCCKKKKPTUI

Great picture shared by Vintage Los Angeles on Facebook today. It's the marquee for "Island in the Sun" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in July of 1957:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=140586249373148&id=121097987946929

Link works even if you're not on Facebook.

I just read this article from the Atlantic Monthly:

From Tiki to Tacky—and Back
A taste of cocktail Americana comes in from the cold.
By Wayne Curtis

Photo courtesy of Jeff Berry

America’s ongoing cocktail revival isn’t a single, monolithic scene, but rather a theme park composed of many small villages inhabited by historic reenactors. Faux 19th-century bartenders in sleeve garters and baroque facial hair ply their trade in pre-Prohibition bars. Women wearing cloche hats order sidecars at speakeasies. You can sip daiquiris to a rumba beat in an ersatz Cuban bar, or martinis served by Brylcreemed waiters at a Mad Men–styled lounge.

But none of these villages approaches, in sheer rococo verve, the thatch-roofed splendor of tiki.

Tiki drinks have been around since 1934, when Don the Beachcomber opened in Los Angeles, followed shortly thereafter by Trader Vic’s in Oakland. The two became chains that expanded steadily, and together created a nationwide sensation that peaked in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Polynesian food and drink—or rather, “Polynesian” food and drink, because real islanders favored bland tubers and a beverage made with their own spit—became synonymous with the Big Night Out. Difficult as it is to recollect today, tiki was a highbrow phenomenon: Trader Vic’s in the Washington, D.C., Hilton, for instance, became a famed venue for mid-century power lunches.

Alas, the success of Don and Vic spawned a herd of garish strip-mall imitators, and it wasn’t long before tiki lapsed into kitsch, decadence, and decay. One can even pinpoint the precise nadir: in 1989, Donald Trump closed the Trader Vic’s at his Plaza Hotel in New York, declaring that it had “gotten tacky.”

But like John Travolta, ABBA, and Morris Lapidus, tiki slogged through its unfashionable period and eventually emerged on the other side. The tiki scene is now in full flower in locales as far-flung as New York, London, Moscow, and Bratislava, Slovakia.

“The common thread is the lifestyle,” says Christie White, who founded and runs the Hukilau, an annual tiki gathering in Fort Lauderdale. This year, the event attracted some 600 people who donned muumuus, fezzes, and Hawaiian shirts to listen to music from the Tikiyaki Orchestra and enjoy an aquatic performance by Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid.

But there’s another, less campy reason for the tiki resurgence. The original cocktails, it turns out, are very tasty.

“The drinks were bound to be rediscovered,” says Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, the author of the forthcoming Potions of the Caribbean and several other tiki books. “They’re just intrinsically good.”

What distinguishes a tiki drink is its complexity. The characteristic use of multiple rums—say, a white Martinique rum combined with a heavy Jamaican rum—creates initial intrigue. This base is tweaked, in many cases, with a hint of Pernod or falernum syrup, adding flavors that linger just barely at the threshold of perception. Tiki’s signature drink, the Mai Tai—unlike the sweet, fruity drinks that have subsequently borne its name—was originally a concoction of rums and fresh lime juice, given an ineffable twist with a dash of almond-flavored orgeat.

This year’s Hukilau was staged partially at the Mai-Kai Restaurant, which is the Angkor Wat of tiki culture. (Full disclosure: Berry and I appeared there on a panel together.) The restaurant opened in 1956 and has remained essentially unchanged ever since, an oasis of shrunken heads, tiki totems, and tiny waterfalls. Berry calls it “the last perfectly preserved example of mid-century Polynesian pop.”

Berry says the recent tiki trend began with a healthy dose of irony in the 1990s, and many thought it would prove another fleeting hipster fad. But then it collided with the broader cocktail renaissance. “Craft bartenders,” Berry explains, “knew how to make three- or four-ingredient drinks. This was a way for them to take on a 10- to 12-ingredient punch.”

Sitting at the Mai-Kai, sipping the bar’s Special Planter’s Punch—a pitch-perfect re-creation of a classic 1930s drink—I enjoyed a nostalgia every bit as complicated as the drink itself. I found myself pining for a Gauguinesque South Pacific that’s long since vanished, if it ever existed. Yet more than that, I found myself wistful for a mid-century America where one could slip away, for a moment, by walking over a low bridge into a damp fake grotto and ordering a subtle rum drink served in an Easter Island–head mug.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/from-tiki-to-tacky-and-back/8666/

Copyright © 2011 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

Great article SoccerTiki.

Thanks