Home bars...by the muggler

Why I Like Home Tiki Bars
By TheMuggler

Tiki Central 500 word minimum essay
Professor H. Lemoore

I like home tiki bars because they are a lot of fun. You can keep all your bottles nice and neat in one place and whenever you want to make a drink like a fabulous Mai Tai or a tangy Zombie everything you need is in one handy place. Home tiki bars are the ideal way to make tiki drinks, which require a large amount of rums and mixers. Without a home tiki bar, these rums and mixers will take up too much room in your house and then other family members will complain and say things like “we look like alcoholics with all this rum lying around,” and “you are forbidden from buying any more liquor until you finish what you already have.” Home tiki bars give you a reason to have so many liquors because a good host always keeps his or her home tiki bar well stocked.

Home tiki bars are also fun because you can decorate them to reflect your own tiki tastes. You can put tiki masks on the walls or you can frame old tiki music album covers and hang them up for décor. You can light up a pufferfish and hang it from the ceiling too. It is important that you keep many ceramic tiki mugs available for both decoration and use in your home tiki bar. In some places, it is considered an insult to serve a tiki drink in a non-tiki drinking appliance. Dim lighting is very important as well. Nautical items like starfish and nets and floats also make great home tiki bar decorations. Decorating a home tiki bar is one of the most fun parts of owning a home tiki bar.

Home tiki bars make a great addition to any house. After a hard day at school it would be nice to relax at my own home tiki bar and pretend that I am fishing in a lagoon in Bora Bora, or sitting on the beach at Waikiki, looking at all the pretty hula girls. Home tiki bars help you escape into a fantasy world of your own creation, where you are the “big kahuna” as they say in Hawaii. If you are having trouble escaping with the help of the tiki bar setting, the liquor is always available to help.

Music is a very important aspect of a home tiki bar. It is very important to have the right mood setting music to insure maximum effect. Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Arthur Lyman are the most popular choices for home tiki bars but there are many artists whose music will enhance the home tiki bar. Under no circumstances should a home tiki bar owner play Jimmy Buffet music as that will ruin the effect of the home tiki bar and possibly cause your guests to drink too much to escape the poor music.

In conclusion, I would like to say that everyone should have a home tiki bar because they are very, very, very, very, very, very nice.

Freaks, Geeks, and Strange Girls

I'll drink to that.
http://www.audioautographs.com/bar.htm

A Tiki Cheers To You

[ Edited by: Unga Bunga on 2003-12-10 13:52 ]

Thank you and I must say an excellent essay.

So any one know of any websites or have any personal accounts on building a bar or cabana? How much did you spend and how long it did it take?

There are quite a few pics of home bars over on Creating Tiki and also on the TC Photo Archives; Some may be somewhat helpful. There are some members here with ones that will knock your socks off, and that's both big budget and small budget, large or small space. Any home bar is a labor of love and a work in progress almost indefinitely..

indeed that essay deserves a gold star. and some Planters Gold Rum Pyrat XO Reserve.

heya Unkle John

if this helps at all, when I designed my dad's bar (not tiki, more euro-moderne), an excellent resource was one of those 1950's 1960's do-it-yourself handyman books. i think popular mechanics put one out, but there had to be several. aside from the cheap secondhand price and swell graphics, they had the basic layout for how to frame one up and the important dimensions. my dad's was basically framed up out of 2x4's with plywood sheathing, then a nice plywood veneer that he stained. there should be no reason that the same constuction couldn't be veneered with split bamboo, etc. so that's my free (and worth every cent of it) advice, hit yer local used book store.

later unk!
$

On 2003-12-10 14:18, Johnny Dollar wrote:

heya Unkle John

if this helps at all, when I designed my dad's bar (not tiki, more euro-moderne), an excellent resource was one of those 1950's 1960's do-it-yourself handyman books.

No doubt Tikifish (eBay: fishstique) will have one at some point.

I do have alot of old PM "red do-it-yourself" books. Unfrtunatley they really don't show a lot of bar ideas. I have a few ideas of my own, but having trouble to get it into words. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction though.

As for the essay, I liked it. I mean it actually pointed to my veiws of a home bar to a "T". I live in a small town, and really never liked going into a public bar because of the limitations of amount and recipies.
I don't condone public tiki bars, infact if we had some in safer neighborhoods... i would go more.
In my bar, I make the rules, I make the drinks, I play what I want to play. That's why I love my bar. Now all I need to do is get it more tiki in appearance.

I hear you! I am forced to build my own bar because all of my rum and liquors have taken over the pantry. I am at the stage where I need to buy tools. I'll have a bar soon!

Cheers,

KT

I was forced to build my own bar because the price of rum & liquors took over my bank account! As a very wise man once said: "necessity is the Mother(s) of Invention".

I enjoyed the thoughtful essay. I'm new to tiki and I've just started accumulating a few liquors and mixes for my own drinks at home. I could easily see how my small pantry could fill up quickly if I continue on this obsession at this pace! The home tiki bar sounds like a wonderful idea, however, the space in my home is completely filled. I have started to create a small “tiki alter” on my patio which includes some tropical plants, seashells, fish nets, and of course a tiki. I am interested in building a small portable tiki bar for use outside. I would like to find any plans for either a knock-down design, or a roll-away style on casters that I could keep in the garage. If any of you have some ideas, let me know!

Mahalo,
TikiSteve

TikiSteve, you need to find something like this. You could fill the bottom up with rums and mixes and put your mugs in the tray.
The tray is removable.

WOW!

I just copied the essay and plan to, now, paste it into Quark, pretty it up with some Clip Art and Tiki Fonts and Hang it on the Fridge where my wife will have to see it several times a day! It is composed of such flawless logic that it cannot help but to positively inspire her to expidite our progress toward the construction of a new structure! Hmmmmmmmmmm...
Thanks, fellas!

On 2003-12-15 21:03, Traitor Vic wrote:
WOW!

I just copied the essay and plan to, now, paste it into Quark, pretty it up with some Clip Art and Tiki Fonts and Hang it on the Fridge where my wife will have to see it several times a day! It is composed of such flawless logic that it cannot help but to positively inspire her to expidite our progress toward the construction of a new structure! Hmmmmmmmmmm...
Thanks, fellas!

I'm pleased to see my essay having such a positive impact in TC society! It was fun to write, even if I had to stretch a bit to get to 500 words. And it is exactly 500 words. Mr. Lemoore is a real stickler for those word counts, you know.

:wink: