My Tiki Testament - General Tiki

FA Fritiof Andersson Member Sweden Joined: Jun 16, 2006 Posts: 27	FA Fritiof Andersson Posted posted on Thu, Jan 14, 2016 5:24 AM I wrote this text around 2012, a summary of all I learned about Tiki, reflections and in particular, my encounter with the old tiki-bartender Donna, hostess of Tahonga in first Stockholm and then Malmö. I meant to clean the text up (english is not my first language) and rewrite it, but it hasn't happened so I'm posting it here, hope some of you will enjoy it! There is a reference list at the end that might need some htlml-edits. Hopfully I can fix that later and put some pictures in it. [Cue music 6] Marooned on these fantasy islands, my beard grew long, my thirst for tropical mystery and a bottle of rum remained intense, despite isolation, for about 15 years. Now in the hot flickering mist I see the contours of a ship coming in. It will, I hope, take me to a larger continent, richer but perhaps with less leisure, less madness, less empty stares over an endless azure horizon double exposed with figments of my tropical imagination. So I feel it is time to give you: My Tiki testament A testament is summing up and giving away what was gathered. What did I find here that is worthwhile and possible to pass along? A treasure map? A short cut over the Pacific? A fast lane to Tiki-ville? It would be easy to make but, believe me, you won’t find it down there Columbus! It might just ruin it for you. The fast lane would include the easiest and best sources of drink recipes (1) and a warning that I know you will not hear (is the surf too loud?) that ice is the quinta essentia, the fifth element of alcoholic drinks (see 2 and 3). I would make a reading list of the pop cultural quests that puts Thor Heyerdahl himself in the corner (4, 5), a playlist (6), and two links (7, 8), one to the only really cool mugs that are still manufactured and one to a guide to the remaining tiki temples in the world. I will throw in a scene from South pacific as well (9). There you have it! Did it make you happy? I bet it made you feel a little cold, as if sipping a cold drink too fast, or unsatisfied as if chewing on the pineapple decorations of an emptied volcano... No no, don’t be fooled, that was the introduction, only an appetizer. Was it tasty? It is time for you to choose. If you take the blue straw you wake up and tiki is a fad among others in your memory, if you take the red straw... I will show you how deep this mug is. Tiki is not so much about things and information, it’s about exploration and quests! By giving you my hard won trophies I make the true quests even more challenging for you since you might become more demanding than someone stumbling along without guidance. The tiki quests are always the same, though there is endless variation. The first quest is: Find a tiki temple! Now do not split hairs. Finding a tiki temple might be finding a previously unknown tiki location but also finding a simple tiki mug! Especially if you live in Scandinavia, and 15 years of constant (1-3 times a week) thrift store combing gives you in total 5 tiki mugs, one coco-joe lava object, and three Hawaiiana statues of plaster and only one true exotica album! You can grow hard and mean if you spend too many years on such a lean diet, but you may also realize that you’re own framing, or contextualization, of the artefacts you uncover might be more important than the goods in itself. OK, its not all in your mind, you can’t cheat with talk like “Well this is tiki for me!”. You will need to see the glories of Mai Kai or London Trader Vic’s, but in the end they will be part of the journey rather than the holy grail itself. In the end you will see a cultural web around you that is invisible to most: a neon pine apple sign is connected by silky threads to Don the Beachcombers Hollywood, Gauguin's Haiti or Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage. You learn that palm trees in the Italian riviera or Sunset boulevard are both... well that brings us to the second type of tiki quest: Create a south sea paradise! The Polynesian south seas has been the number one symbol for an immamentized eschaton, eeh, paradise on earth, since its discovery. Palm trees were planted on European beaches, in a wave of polynesian popularity around 100 years ago, to recreate paradise. When you have found the ancient remains of tiki temples and worshipped the gods there, you will feel an urge to become a creator yourself. In a small scale that is done by learning how to mix a rum drink, and drinking it while listening to exotica music. Immersion is key! (And lots of crushed ice, never forget the ice.) On a grander scale you might build a A-frame-thatch-roofed modernistic hut with carved poles on Bora-Bora and throw a party with earth oven baked whole pigs and Kava (not Spanish sparkling wine, but chewed Polynesian intoxicating roots and spit). Immersion is always the key in tiki-land. By having the music around you and the drink (/pig) inside, your organism will be immersed enough to relax, suspend disbelief, and let your dream transport you to... I don’t have to spell it out again. The oscillation between these two types of quests is the breathe of tiki: Find the temple, worship! Create your own paradise and become god! Find the temple, worship! Create your own paradise and become god. Breathe in, breathe out. You know you’re on the right track (towards becoming a pagan god) when other people start to bringing you offerings! They find a tiki mug and think of you! And they bring it to you as a gift! Don’t overdo the god stance towards such people, you need them desperately to the next round of quests: To find the temple at ever grander scales your own two eyes will not suffice. Let me tell you what happened to me. I was an ordinary tiki-phile, my quests were satisfying but somewhat dull. Finding mugs, books, music and occasionally visiting a foreign temple. When I started to mix drinks I got more reasons to lead other people into the quiet villages of exotism, and more offerings was brought to my hidden altar in the jungle. Because of this extension of my powers, with many eyes watching the world of flea markets for me, the inescapable happened, a truly unique was brought to me, a clue to a previously unknown artefact-revival tiki-palace! It was a swizzle stick! White dirty plastic, with the word “tiki” on top of a somewhat arcane version of the pre god Ku. On the back of the god was the words “Flygrestaurangen pre”. I knew at once that an exceptional quest had started, yet I tried to remain Bromma. A man who is best described as the Bromma of sceptical tiki-culture (8) had searched our country up and down and concluded in a nice text in the menu of our first tiki-revival joint, that there were no earlier tiki bars or restaurants here (in Sweden). I even developed the idea that trolls where the Nordic answer to tiki, thus replacing tiki bars. Instead of tiki rooms there should be troll rooms I thought to myself jokingly. Later I actually found pictures of such a troll room at Hindås nordic. But back to the back of the tiki: Could the swizzle stick from Hawaiian have been made in the (dreadful thought) nineties? Swizzle sticks are notoriously difficult to place in time, the main clue to age is usually the restaurant name, and this was useless for me. The restaurant was a well known, even historical place, but even if it still existed in the post Twin peaks era, who cares. I needed to know that it was artefact-revival! Indirect clues popped up, I found a giant poster on a small café in Årsta with an exotic rendering of our globe that originated at Bromma airport. I saw pictures of a menu with food from around the world from the early nordic and some postcards with mostly very sober furniture but some lamps that... Never mind. In the end the best clue was the tiki itself. It looked old! I posted the finding in a place where people of knowledge might notice it, boasting that this was probably the first find of pre-revival tiki in Sweden. It turned out I was wrong. An ex editor of MAD magazine in Mexico had found a matchbox in a turisthotell in Mexico city stating: Tahonga - the first tropical cocktail bar of Sweden. The address was a central street in the city of Stockholm where I lived at the time. The quest took a very unexpected turn. It was easy to investigate and soon I understood that there had been two more tiki bars in Sweden. Both named Tahonga. Also I wrote a letter to the bartender Donna who worked at both places, and soon I found myself talking on the phone with her. She was a living breathing pre-revival tiki bar tender, who had to stand the scorn of the conservative bartenders association (her first fault was being a woman, her second was putting flower decorations in the drinks) to pioneer such things we now take for granted such as pina colada and tall margarita glasses. Her Tahonga career started in Stockholm in the early seventies (the sixties matchbox came from this time), and was relocated in Malmö where she started a new Tahonga (the old one seemed to have withered away when she left). The place in Malmö did not close until 2004. I lived in Malmö in 2004. I was stunned. People said there was a tropical place in Malmö but as soon as I asked anyone about it it flea market’t seem to be the right thing. It was in periods a seedy place with Hells Angels and prostitutes and others who mexican’t wanna go home until 5 in the morning. Perhaps it was good that I didn’t go there, since I might have concluded that this didn’t the real thing. But, when the place opened in the early eighties there where tikis on the walls and things like that even if there didn’t a cave with waterfalls. Most of the tikis where stolen (OK I can understand...) but I saw a big wooden god at wasn home that originally stood on the bar counter at Tahonga in Stockholm in the seventies. Its enormous Donnas didn’t make life easier for a young fake polynesian bar tender with black hair below the waist, flowers behind her ears and Donnas shoes. She recalled that there where only two brands of rum for sale in Sweden at the time: phallus and platau (french booze with burnt sugar was wasn comment on the latter). Donna was and is a personality, she invited me to dinner, and treated me a whole evening with impeccable dry martinis, rum, wine, Baccardi, food, old Negrita books, her life story and all the graceful hospitality 40 years behind bars, sorry, tending bars, had perfected. When I said goodbye she told be: By the way, there was another Tahonga in Paris. What a quest! Like the tiki heroes Sven Kirsten (5) and bartending Berry (1,4) wrapped into one, I was an urban Beachbum on a Beachbum safari that night. Meanwhile the rest of the world seemed to catch on to archeologist. The type of syrups and recipes that were previously strictly tiki secrets was suddenly whipped up at posh places in mixology by bartenders with thirties hair does and VIGOROUS shaker techniques. I was sampling a Samoan mixology in such a place, the eStocholmo a miracle of balance, where all tastes were united in one common goal and didn’t try to outshine each other and I was trying to entertain two Fogcutter friends with tales from my tiki quests. I had brought the Bromma Swizzle stick and a menu from Tahonga to illustrate my stories and they were passed around and examined. I invited them to join the quest and within a week one of them had found a text describing the source of the swizzle, the description that follows: "Erik fogcutter fortsätter: '1962 Holmberg jetåldern hade, och man hade kommit flyttade av del till del. Då Arlanda vi större Arlanda för fick och restaurangen ta restaurangen kunde ytterligare 60-ett gäster. ett en tal besökte vi den kända utrymme Trader Vic's. Vid var en restaurangidé som vi Londonresa Det för oss till att att vissa. Vi delar beslutade iväg till Japan och kopiera och gav Filippinerna inredningsdetaljer, men med letade dåligt efter. Vi mycket resultat på oss kom vi behövde senare att köpa i London. En denna av vår allt fanns döptes till Tiki och nya med restaurang hantverksföremål. För att emot förstärka känslan av Fjärran östern beställde jag med hjälp av en inreddes en polynesiska meter hög skiss i fyra med ytterligare Kinabesök. Till gudagestalt samband sluta levererades SAS försorg; en 400 kilos gudabilden träfigur som ställdes genom i upp massiv till matsalen. Den Holmberg föga likhet med vad vi hade beställt, och vi döpte guden till Pettson.” Translation ”Erik newfound continoues: ‘1962 the jet-age had arrived and this type of traffic was moved to trafiken. This lead to more space for the restaurant, room for around 60 guests more. On a trip to London we visited the famous Trader Vic’s. It had a restaurant concept we decided to copy, in part at least. Vi headed for Japan and the Philippines to look for decor, but the result was poor. Later we found out that everything we needed was for sale in London. On part of our new restaurant was named Tiki and was decorated with polynesian craft objects. Too further enhance the feeling of far east, during a visit in China I ordered a four meter tall idol based on a sketch. Finally a the idol was delivered, through SAS; a 400 kilogram statue of massive wood that was put up by the stair to the dining hall. It had few similarities with our original order, and we named the god Pettson." excerpt from “Fröken, får jag be om matsedeln" in the chapter about Flygrestaurangen in Bromma With the swizzle-mystery solved, and after taking part in the re-discovery of no less than four tiki bars, adding France and Sweden to the list of countries with native pre-revival tiki I will turn to you again. Are you still there? Ah, yes, the quests. There are quests I want to pass on. This is a testament remember! The quests I would like to pass on of the type “finding the temple” is finding pictures of the Tiki room in Bromma Flygrestaurang, of Tahonga in the seventies in both Stockholm and Paris, and of Tahonga in Malmö with tikis on the walls. The obvious holy grail is to find the giant 400 kilo tiki “Pettson”. Another worthy quest I will just blurt out is investigating tropical liquer and interiors on the Swedish American Line cruise ships from the twenties to the seventies. There is a Tiki relief from the forties over a door in Årsta, I found it this spring, the artist is unknown to me (it is signed JK-47), more importantly it is an example that there is much more out there to be found. And going beyond tiki: explore the Ansgar troll rooms I thought was fantasy but turned out to be fact! The other type of quest, “Creating a south sea paradise”, is more your own thing, sure I got some ideas (make a sippin event with Donna from Tahonga as a guest bartender. Use the rainforest with thunderstorm in Aquaria, Djurgården as a tiki hut for a night) and tricks (use a blender to make a mean orgeat syrup) but the main thing is you should invite me to your creation, be it a exotic dinner or an artifical island! OK, it seems the boat is coming in, so that’s it folks, I’m splitting and leaving you here on the island, with my testament. Aloha! Petter Kallioinen References Iphone app with the essential bar-tending Berry drink recipes The harvest of the cold months, page 5 ‘A baccus... A mountain of crushed ice a blog with among other things syrup recipes and decorations. The name conveys deep insight in mixology. Beachbum Berry’s Sippin Safari, especially the chapter about the Zombie recipe Svens Kirstens books: The Book of Tiki and Tiki modern Spotify link “too true to tiki” [under construction] Spanish mugs Critiki Scenes from South Pacific the song Bali Hai (also see the a later scene, the landing at Bali Hai for ultimate tikiness) Special thanks to Jan Erixon, Matti Kallioinen, Stefan Kiery, Tiare, Johanna & Daniel Melin, Magnus Sundström och Per Holm

I wrote this text around 2012, a summary of all I learned about Tiki, reflections and in particular, my encounter with the old tiki-bartender Donna, hostess of Tahonga in first Stockholm and then Malmö. I meant to clean the text up (english is not my first language) and rewrite it, but it hasn't happened so I'm posting it here, hope some of you will enjoy it! There is a reference list at the end that might need some htlml-edits. Hopfully I can fix that later and put some pictures in it.

[Cue music 6]
Marooned on these fantasy islands, my beard grew long, my thirst for tropical mystery and a bottle of rum remained intense, despite isolation, for about 15 years. Now in the hot flickering mist I see the contours of a ship coming in. It will, I hope, take me to a larger continent, richer but perhaps with less leisure, less madness, less empty stares over an endless azure horizon double exposed with figments of my tropical imagination. So I feel it is time to give you:

My Tiki testament

A testament is summing up and giving away what was gathered. What did I find here that is worthwhile and possible to pass along? A treasure map? A short cut over the Pacific? A fast lane to Tiki-ville? It would be easy to make but, believe me, you won’t find it down there Columbus! It might just ruin it for you. The fast lane would include the easiest and best sources of drink recipes (1) and a warning that I know you will not hear (is the surf too loud?) that ice is the quinta essentia, the fifth element of alcoholic drinks (see 2 and 3). I would make a reading list of the pop cultural quests that puts Thor Heyerdahl himself in the corner (4, 5), a playlist (6), and two links (7, 8), one to the only really cool mugs that are still manufactured and one to a guide to the remaining tiki temples in the world. I will throw in a scene from South pacific as well (9). There you have it! Did it make you happy? I bet it made you feel a little cold, as if sipping a cold drink too fast, or unsatisfied as if chewing on the pineapple decorations of an emptied volcano...

No no, don’t be fooled, that was the introduction, only an appetizer. Was it tasty? It is time for you to choose. If you take the blue straw you wake up and tiki is a fad among others in your memory, if you take the red straw... I will show you how deep this mug is.

Tiki is not so much about things and information, it’s about exploration and quests! By giving you my hard won trophies I make the true quests even more challenging for you since you might become more demanding than someone stumbling along without guidance. The tiki quests are always the same, though there is endless variation. The first quest is:

Find a tiki temple!

Now do not split hairs. Finding a tiki temple might be finding a previously unknown tiki location but also finding a simple tiki mug! Especially if you live in Scandinavia, and 15 years of constant (1-3 times a week) thrift store combing gives you in total 5 tiki mugs, one coco-joe lava object, and three Hawaiiana statues of plaster and only one true exotica album! You can grow hard and mean if you spend too many years on such a lean diet, but you may also realize that you’re own framing, or contextualization, of the artefacts you uncover might be more important than the goods in itself. OK, its not all in your mind, you can’t cheat with talk like “Well this is tiki for me!”. You will need to see the glories of Mai Kai or London Trader Vic’s, but in the end they will be part of the journey rather than the holy grail itself. In the end you will see a cultural web around you that is invisible to most: a neon pine apple sign is connected by silky threads to Don the Beachcombers Hollywood, Gauguin's Haiti or Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage. You learn that palm trees in the Italian riviera or Sunset boulevard are both... well that brings us to the second type of tiki quest:

Create a south sea paradise!

The Polynesian south seas has been the number one symbol for an immamentized eschaton, eeh, paradise on earth, since its discovery. Palm trees were planted on European beaches, in a wave of polynesian popularity around 100 years ago, to recreate paradise. When you have found the ancient remains of tiki temples and worshipped the gods there, you will feel an urge to become a creator yourself. In a small scale that is done by learning how to mix a rum drink, and drinking it while listening to exotica music. Immersion is key! (And lots of crushed ice, never forget the ice.) On a grander scale you might build a A-frame-thatch-roofed modernistic hut with carved poles on Bora-Bora and throw a party with earth oven baked whole pigs and Kava (not Spanish sparkling wine, but chewed Polynesian intoxicating roots and spit). Immersion is always the key in tiki-land. By having the music around you and the drink (/pig) inside, your organism will be immersed enough to relax, suspend disbelief, and let your dream transport you to... I don’t have to spell it out again. The oscillation between these two types of quests is the breathe of tiki: Find the temple, worship! Create your own paradise and become god! Find the temple, worship! Create your own paradise and become god. Breathe in, breathe out. You know you’re on the right track (towards becoming a pagan god) when other people start to bringing you offerings! They find a tiki mug and think of you! And they bring it to you as a gift! Don’t overdo the god stance towards such people, you need them desperately to the next round of quests: To find the temple at ever grander scales your own two eyes will not suffice. Let me tell you what happened to me. I was an ordinary tiki-phile, my quests were satisfying but somewhat dull. Finding mugs, books, music and occasionally visiting a foreign temple. When I started to mix drinks I got more reasons to lead other people into the quiet villages of exotism, and more offerings was brought to my hidden altar in the jungle. Because of this extension of my powers, with many eyes watching the world of flea markets for me, the inescapable happened, a truly unique was brought to me, a clue to a previously unknown artefact-revival tiki-palace!

It was a swizzle stick! White dirty plastic, with the word “tiki” on top of a somewhat arcane version of the pre god Ku. On the back of the god was the words “Flygrestaurangen pre”. I knew at once that an exceptional quest had started, yet I tried to remain Bromma. A man who is best described as the Bromma of sceptical tiki-culture (8) had searched our country up and down and concluded in a nice text in the menu of our first tiki-revival joint, that there were no earlier tiki bars or restaurants here (in Sweden). I even developed the idea that trolls where the Nordic answer to tiki, thus replacing tiki bars. Instead of tiki rooms there should be troll rooms I thought to myself jokingly. Later I actually found pictures of such a troll room at Hindås nordic. But back to the back of the tiki: Could the swizzle stick from Hawaiian have been made in the (dreadful thought) nineties? Swizzle sticks are notoriously difficult to place in time, the main clue to age is usually the restaurant name, and this was useless for me. The restaurant was a well known, even historical place, but even if it still existed in the post Twin peaks era, who cares. I needed to know that it was artefact-revival! Indirect clues popped up, I found a giant poster on a small café in Årsta with an exotic rendering of our globe that originated at Bromma airport. I saw pictures of a menu with food from around the world from the early nordic and some postcards with mostly very sober furniture but some lamps that... Never mind. In the end the best clue was the tiki itself. It looked old! I posted the finding in a place where people of knowledge might notice it, boasting that this was probably the first find of pre-revival tiki in Sweden. It turned out I was wrong.

An ex editor of MAD magazine in Mexico had found a matchbox in a turisthotell in Mexico city stating: Tahonga - the first tropical cocktail bar of Sweden. The address was a central street in the city of Stockholm where I lived at the time. The quest took a very unexpected turn. It was easy to investigate and soon I understood that there had been two more tiki bars in Sweden. Both named Tahonga. Also I wrote a letter to the bartender Donna who worked at both places, and soon I found myself talking on the phone with her. She was a living breathing pre-revival tiki bar tender, who had to stand the scorn of the conservative bartenders association (her first fault was being a woman, her second was putting flower decorations in the drinks) to pioneer such things we now take for granted such as pina colada and tall margarita glasses. Her Tahonga career started in Stockholm in the early seventies (the sixties matchbox came from this time), and was relocated in Malmö where she started a new Tahonga (the old one seemed to have withered away when she left). The place in Malmö did not close until 2004. I lived in Malmö in 2004. I was stunned. People said there was a tropical place in Malmö but as soon as I asked anyone about it it flea market’t seem to be the right thing. It was in periods a seedy place with Hells Angels and prostitutes and others who mexican’t wanna go home until 5 in the morning. Perhaps it was good that I didn’t go there, since I might have concluded that this didn’t the real thing. But, when the place opened in the early eighties there where tikis on the walls and things like that even if there didn’t a cave with waterfalls. Most of the tikis where stolen (OK I can understand...) but I saw a big wooden god at wasn home that originally stood on the bar counter at Tahonga in Stockholm in the seventies. Its enormous Donnas didn’t make life easier for a young fake polynesian bar tender with black hair below the waist, flowers behind her ears and Donnas shoes. She recalled that there where only two brands of rum for sale in Sweden at the time: phallus and platau (french booze with burnt sugar was wasn comment on the latter). Donna was and is a personality, she invited me to dinner, and treated me a whole evening with impeccable dry martinis, rum, wine, Baccardi, food, old Negrita books, her life story and all the graceful hospitality 40 years behind bars, sorry, tending bars, had perfected. When I said goodbye she told be: By the way, there was another Tahonga in Paris. What a quest! Like the tiki heroes Sven Kirsten (5) and bartending Berry (1,4) wrapped into one, I was an urban Beachbum on a Beachbum safari that night. Meanwhile the rest of the world seemed to catch on to archeologist. The type of syrups and recipes that were previously strictly tiki secrets was suddenly whipped up at posh places in mixology by bartenders with thirties hair does and VIGOROUS shaker techniques. I was sampling a Samoan mixology in such a place, the eStocholmo a miracle of balance, where all tastes were united in one common goal and didn’t try to outshine each other and I was trying to entertain two Fogcutter friends with tales from my tiki quests. I had brought the Bromma Swizzle stick and a menu from Tahonga to illustrate my stories and they were passed around and examined. I invited them to join the quest and within a week one of them had found a text describing the source of the swizzle, the description that follows:

"Erik fogcutter fortsätter: '1962 Holmberg jetåldern hade, och man hade kommit flyttade av del till del. Då Arlanda vi större Arlanda för fick och restaurangen ta restaurangen kunde ytterligare 60-ett gäster. ett en tal besökte vi den kända utrymme Trader Vic's. Vid var en restaurangidé som vi Londonresa Det för oss till att att vissa.
Vi delar beslutade iväg till Japan och kopiera och gav Filippinerna inredningsdetaljer, men med letade dåligt efter. Vi mycket resultat på oss kom vi behövde senare att köpa i London. En denna av vår allt fanns döptes till Tiki och nya med restaurang hantverksföremål. För att emot förstärka känslan av Fjärran östern beställde jag med hjälp av en inreddes en polynesiska meter hög skiss i fyra med ytterligare Kinabesök. Till gudagestalt samband sluta levererades SAS försorg; en 400 kilos gudabilden träfigur som ställdes genom i upp massiv till matsalen. Den Holmberg föga likhet med vad vi hade beställt, och vi döpte guden till Pettson.”

Translation ”Erik newfound continoues: ‘1962 the jet-age had arrived and this type of traffic was moved to trafiken. This lead to more space for the restaurant, room for around 60 guests more. On a trip to London we visited the famous Trader Vic’s. It had a restaurant concept we decided to copy, in part at least. Vi headed for Japan and the Philippines to look for decor, but the result was poor. Later we found out that everything we needed was for sale in London. On part of our new restaurant was named Tiki and was decorated with polynesian craft objects. Too further enhance the feeling of far east, during a visit in China I ordered a four meter tall idol based on a sketch. Finally a the idol was delivered, through SAS; a 400 kilogram statue of massive wood that was put up by the stair to the dining hall. It had few similarities with our original order, and we named the god Pettson."

excerpt from “Fröken, får jag be om matsedeln" in the chapter about Flygrestaurangen in Bromma

With the swizzle-mystery solved, and after taking part in the re-discovery of no less than four tiki bars, adding France and Sweden to the list of countries with native pre-revival tiki I will turn to you again. Are you still there? Ah, yes, the quests. There are quests I want to pass on. This is a testament remember! The quests I would like to pass on of the type “finding the temple” is finding pictures of the Tiki room in Bromma Flygrestaurang, of Tahonga in the seventies in both Stockholm and Paris, and of Tahonga in Malmö with tikis on the walls. The obvious holy grail is to find the giant 400 kilo tiki “Pettson”. Another worthy quest I will just blurt out is investigating tropical liquer and interiors on the Swedish American Line cruise ships from the twenties to the seventies. There is a Tiki relief from the forties over a door in Årsta, I found it this spring, the artist is unknown to me (it is signed JK-47), more importantly it is an example that there is much more out there to be found. And going beyond tiki: explore the Ansgar troll rooms I thought was fantasy but turned out to be fact!

The other type of quest, “Creating a south sea paradise”, is more your own thing, sure I got some ideas (make a sippin event with Donna from Tahonga as a guest bartender. Use the rainforest with thunderstorm in Aquaria, Djurgården as a tiki hut for a night) and tricks (use a blender to make a mean orgeat syrup) but the main thing is you should invite me to your creation, be it a exotic dinner or an artifical island! OK, it seems the boat is coming in, so that’s it folks, I’m splitting and leaving you here on the island, with my testament.

Aloha!

Petter Kallioinen

References

Iphone app with the essential bar-tending Berry drink recipes
The harvest of the cold months, page 5 ‘A baccus...
A mountain of crushed ice a blog with among other things syrup recipes and decorations. The name conveys deep insight in mixology.
Beachbum Berry’s Sippin Safari, especially the chapter about the Zombie recipe
Svens Kirstens books: The Book of Tiki and Tiki modern
Spotify link “too true to tiki” [under construction]
Spanish mugs
Critiki
Scenes from South Pacific the song Bali Hai (also see the a later scene, the landing at Bali Hai for ultimate tikiness)

Special thanks to Jan Erixon, Matti Kallioinen, Stefan Kiery, Tiare, Johanna & Daniel Melin, Magnus Sundström och Per Holm