vintage home tiki bars - how they rolled back in the day.

On 2017-05-19 13:36, Tipsy McStagger wrote:
Let's not get ahead of ourselves -this was on my radar and I planned on posting pics and info here tomorrow for this place

Looking forward to seeing this!

greetings once again !!! this weekend there was an estate sale in lincolnwood illinois - It too featured a vintage tiki basement theme. I managed to get some pics as well as lift a few off their listing page. Lincolnwood has always been a hot bed of tiki back in the day. the famous hoe king lo was just blocks from this location - they used to serve monogramed drinks out of bumatay mugs there. The basement was big but only one of the rooms was tiki - the bigger room held a pool table and some basic rumpus room stuff. two interesting things about this place - the corner had a huge working fountain hand made by the owners with lights and all. The bar itself was built over a player piano that sat nested under and behind the bar with the bar top built over it. So on with the tour !!!

when you hit the bottom of the stairs you turn left through these beads into the room-

at the bottom of the stairs is a cool display of plastic fish and a window well turned into a fake aquarium

walking in the room you face the bar - seating area to your left.

some highlights of the room plus the corner fountain area

this cool pair of old asian statuary was located in the yard.

i had to include this - giant hand painted mural (not wall paper) in the living room - like you are looking over a balcony down to the city of venice or something.

thats all for now - see you at the next sale, hopefully with another vintage tiki bar in it.

[ Edited by: Tipsy McStagger 2017-05-20 09:28 ]

Great stuff!

On 2017-05-20 09:25, Tipsy McStagger wrote:
...

i had to include this - giant hand painted mural (not wall paper) in the living room - like you are looking over a balcony down to the city of venice or something.

Without seeing close up details, from here I'm guessing Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong?

I weep at all this greatness disappearing! How MANY of these were there, in the Chicago area alone? We will never know...

On 2017-05-22 10:58, bigbrotiki wrote:
I weep at all this greatness disappearing! How MANY of these were there, in the Chicago area alone? We will never know...

There's going to be so much more - i drive through these neighborhoods and think "which one of you has the witco trove, waiting to be discovered ?" I know it's there - the odds are good . But where ? And when ?

Thanks Tipsy..I F'in love this stuff. I KNOW you will find more. A good amount of original owners homes are appearing up here...more traditional Rec/Rumpus rooms...cool nevertheless.

From an estate sale in Berea, Ohio. Nice basement bar.

From behind the bar. Notice the vintage mini fridge.

Saw these slides on eBay

I’d guess that the slides are from the early 60’s. I too wore them narrow ties like the gentleman in the second slide.
Mahalo Jon

We need to revive this topic, one of our favorite 'newer' threads

On 2019-06-17 15:46, mike and marie wrote:
We need to revive this topic, one of our favorite 'newer' threads

Agreed! I absolutely love this thread! Love seeing all the vintage home bars! Has a lovely feeling of nostalgia to it but also a sense of sadness that these items are lost forever! As tipsy said thankfully we have this thread to be able to remember them!

In tipsy we trust !!!

One of my favorite home bars I ever saw wasn't SUPER tiki, although it did have bamboo trim around the full 'rumpus room' kitchen. When I say FULL kitchen, I mean it.
They had an indoor rotisserie bbq, a convection oven, a regular stove and range, a microwave, full fridge, and double sinks. And this was IN ADDITION to the actual full wet bar-
which stretched all across the short wall of the basement (probably 20') with a red vinyl padded rail.

The really amazing parts were the full sized shuffleboard court laid into the VCT flooring and the full sized single lane bowling alley in the basement.

Sadly, the upper level of the house had been renovated in the mid-70s and probably early to mid-90s, and any original charm upstairs had long been destroyed.

:(

I LOVED that basement...

I wish I'd gotten pictures of it.

“The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.”

[ Edited by: Sandbartender 2019-09-25 13:38 ]

I wish you got pictures too !!

On 2019-09-25 13:43, Tipsy McStagger wrote:
I wish you got pictures too !!

I've been kicking myself for NOT taking pix of this for nearly 20 years now.

The really sad part is some normie probably bought the house because the upper level was "all up to date" and probably demolished
the glorious basement bar and rumpus room.

It's now probably a theater room and an extra bedroom with a 'walk-out' window (to keep up with housing code).

In all of our house viewing before we bought, this basement was the best.

There was another house that was MCM time-capsule perfection, but it was in a mega-expensive part of town and it needed EVERYTHING to be
either fixed or replaced. The property tax alone was nearly $15k a year, and that was back in 2002. It's probably $22-24k a year at this point.

Also the yard was like .17 of an acre and you were staring from your bedroom into the neighbor's kitchen, and the next neighbor down was getting the same
treatment from this houses kitchen.

Fantastic space, awful situation. :(