Kooper is Outraged!!!

Hey Tiki Fans...you need to give journalist Chris Roberts a serve over his dismissive comments about Tiki and the Tonga room. Lets show him how important the Tonga Room is !!

Make sure you comment and tell Chris Roberts how you feel about his comments, I am outraged and think that we need to stand up and show this man the amazing Tiki Culture that exists.

At the bottom of the article is a comment section...get to it gang!

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/10/tonga_room_execution_stayed_do.php

Tonga Room Execution Stayed. Does Anyone Care? by Chris Roberts

Like smoking at work, camel hair coats and a budget surplus, tiki bars are relics of a bygone era, of when Cesar Chavez Street was called Army, when nobody in San Francisco knew what a bike lane was, and organ meat was nothing more than fodder for the cows that we turned into delicious 15-cent hamburgers.

That's why we can't understand the flap over the Tonga Room. Sure, the Fairmont Hotel's tiki bar is... unique, but the hotel wants it out of its ground floor. Now. But this is San Francisco, and the Tiki Lounge was declared historic back in May, meaning all parts of it must be preserved. That didn't help the decision-making ability of the Planning Commission on Thursday, who booted a decision on what to do with the Polynesian Lounge until January 2011.

Evidently, enough people care to bother the Planning Commission with this issue for three hours yesterday. Members of the public issuing comment at public comment were roughly split on the issue, according to reports in our newspapers of record.

"We all know the Tonga Room is about as Polynesian as Hawaiian pizza," said one, according to the Chronicle's food blog. This is true, because Hawaiian pizza was either invented in Canada or in Italy, and either way it has nothing to do with an historic preservation label slapped on postwar kitsch.

Whatever happens to the Tonga Room, it's going to happen somewhere else. The Fairmont's owners reiterated their desire to get the Tonga Room the hell out of its property. (There is a mystery benefactor who has claimed he or she will move the bar in its entirety to an undisclosed location in SF, so there's that.)

So if you want to pay a cover in order to sit underneath a faux bamboo canopy and sip a Singapore Sling, now's the time. In the meantime, you can find us at Trad'r Sam's (shortly before you find us dead from alcohol poisoning), where you get a similar experience for 1/10 of the price.

Koop, I checked out this article you came across. I disagreed enough that I had to write a letter and leave a comment on the article. Maybe this guy has never needed to escape a little from his perfect life. Well, I have "escaped" a few times. Ok, maybe weekly. Ok, maybe daily. But theres no better place than a tiki bar to enjoy an over the top cocktail and the dim lighting of well thought out indoor tropical oasis.

Come on TC'ers. Go read this article and then post your feedback.

Done. The guy's a clown. Thanx for the tip.

Ditto here, left a comment. This guy is a low class clown.

it seems like we should be able to generate more than 31 comments?

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/10/tonga_room_execution_stayed_do.php

You can also send a letter to the editor questioning Chris' article

and then encourage folks to go!

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=36733&forum=17&hilite=tonga%20room

Why do I get the feeling that Chris Roberts is waiting on pins and needles for the Tonga Room to close, so that he and his FauxHawk sporting "City" foodie douchebag friends can dine in "the next Gary Danko" restaurant at $300+ a plate, then bash it on Yelp because the waiter couldn't tell him if the grapes in their $80 per glass Chardonnay were grown on the sunny side of the vineyard or not?

Seems like that's really what the Fairmont wants as well.

In case you don't get the author's leaning from the column title, the abbreviated tag in the scrolling topic list makes it even more clear:

Tonga Room Just Won't Die

The author's first response in the comments takes the same tone:

I contribute to historic preservation organizations, and do generally support historic preservation. That said, I am afraid that whatever makes the Tonga Room special is lost on me. I have been to the venue on a handful of occasions, and I simply found it to be an over-priced, kitschy bar, and not a particularly unique one at that (the Tiki-theme has certainly been done elsewhere). I wouldn't bat an eyelash if it were torn down, and I don't think that any of the qualities which truly make San Francisco special would be diminished in the least if it were demolished. Even with its new historic designation, its future is far from certain, and I will leave it at that.

I don't think this guy Roberts really goes to Trad'r Sam's either, and I don't think he really cares if the tiki theme survives elsewhere. If he did, he would understand the significance of the Tonga Room. More likely, he probably only researched the subject enough to ape his SFWeekly peers, who set the earlier precedent of being too cool for "kitsch." Like in this column, another SFWeekly "opinion-maker" places considerable weight on the comments of an old guy he found who doesn't care if the Tonga Room vanishes. Roberts is reusing not only the photo, but also the point of view from this and other SFWeekly columns. He was probably just expecting a pat on the back for sticking to the SFWeekly's prevailing winds, before going back to his "snitch" columns about pot.

-Randy

On 2010-10-26 17:35, aquarj wrote:
Tonga Room Just Won't Die

The author's first response in the comments takes the same tone:

[i]I contribute to historic preservation organizations, and do generally support historic preservation.

This guy is a two-faced liar!
If this was true, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Done!

Here is my contribution to the venting of collective outrage:

"Hello Chris,

According to a group of Tongan women seated across from me the last time I was at the Tonga Room, the Tongan royal family dines there when they visit San Francisco. If the Tonga Room is good enough for them, then it's certainly good enough for the rest of us.

By the way, I'm from New Zealand, so I actually do know what authentic Polynesian cuisine is, but that's not why you go to a tiki bar or restaurant, any more than you would go to McDonalds expecting authentic Scottish cuisine, so it seems your ethnographic approach is somewhat disingenuous."

That was fun - who can we gang up on next?

CN