A muddled history of complicated cocktails: Tiki bars

The enduring allure of the tiki bar is obvious: Nothing says escapism like heavily accessorized fruit-laden cocktails and island-inspired decor. It’s also obvious that the tiki bar is a cocktail of cultural appropriation. The motif, which trickled into Western culture in the early 1900s and has waxed and waned in popularity since, was created by taking a wide variety of Pacific cultures and “putting them all in a blender,” as Kalewa Correa, a curator at the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific Islander Center, [told NPR](. The twisting tale of the tiki trend is about nostalgia for a place that never existed, except in a shared fantasy. Today’s connoisseurs, who celebrate rejuvenated versions of drinks invented in California’s famed first establishments, are navigating the dark ‘n’ stormy waters of these contradictions. Grab your swizzle stick—let’s get stirring. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Obsession] Tiki bars July 24, 2018 Served with a twist --------------------------------------------------------------- The enduring allure of the tiki bar is obvious: Nothing says escapism like heavily accessorized fruit-laden cocktails and island-inspired decor. It’s also obvious that the tiki bar is a cocktail of cultural appropriation. The motif, which trickled into Western culture in the early 1900s and has waxed and waned in popularity since, was created by taking a wide variety of Pacific cultures and “putting them all in a blender,” as Kalewa Correa, a curator at the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific Islander Center, [told NPR](. The twisting tale of the tiki trend is about nostalgia for a place that never existed, except in a shared fantasy. Today’s connoisseurs, who celebrate rejuvenated versions of drinks invented in California’s famed first establishments, are navigating the dark ‘n’ stormy waters of these contradictions. Grab your swizzle stick—let’s get stirring. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Giphy By the digits [2:]( Zombie drinks Donn Beach limited his customers to per night [25:]( Trader Vic locations across the country at the company’s height [50:]( Staffers that Queen Elizabeth II treated to dinner and drinks at Trader Vic’s during her US visit in 1983. (She had a gin martini.) [1963:]( The year that Trader Vic’s debuted its first international outpost, opening in the basement of the Hilton Hotel in London [4,000:]( Members of the “Save the Tonga” Facebook group, dedicated to keeping San Francisco’s seminal tiki bar in business [$199:]( Cost for a bamboo bar from a Home Depot line of Tiki-inspired furnishings released in 2015 [150,000:]( Tiki mugs sold in 2017 by Tiki Farm, said to be the world’s largest manufacturer of tiki mugs [300,000:]( Tiki mugs Tiki Farm expects to sell in 2018 Origin story The original American tiki bar throwdown --------------------------------------------------------------- In 1933, Ernest Gantt, a world-traveling bootlegger, opened up a 24-seat bar in an old tailoring shop in Hollywood. Deemed “Don’s Beachcomber Cafe” after a former pseudonym, the bar was inspired by Gantt’s wanderlust and served as a showcase for the exotic ephemera he had collected from around the globe. (He served Chinese food with pineapple tossed in and [called it “Chicken Hawaiian.”]( Despite the impressive array of knick-knacks, it was the drinks that made the place truly unique. Gantt devised delicious recipes that blended spices, syrups, potent rums, and tart citrus juices—complex creations that were impossible to replicate. Word quickly spread, and eventually the list of famous fans included Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich. Gantt eventually expanded, erecting more bars and changing his name to Donn Beach. Of course, success begets imitators—enter Victor Bergeron. After observing Beach’s booming business, Bergeron transformed his own hole in the wall, a sailor-themed bar called Hinky Dink’s, into a similarly themed tropical hideaway. And, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle, Bergeron did it even better. In 1944, Caen [declared]( the bar, which Bergeron had re-dubbed Trader Vic’s, “best in the Bay Area.” The rivalry between Beach and Bergeron became palpable, causing them to go to extreme measures to guard their recipes. Bartender bribery became common enough that Beach began concocting his syrups in secrecy, providing them to bartenders in mysterious bottles with labels such as “Spices #4.” In fact, some of Don’s trade secrets were only uncovered within the last few years, thanks to serious sleuthing by tiki enthusiast and bar owner [Jeff “Beachbum” Berry](. While Beach was serving in WWII, his wife turned Don the Beachcomber into an empire, expanding his holdings to 16 locations—and when they got divorced, she retained control of the operations. Prevented from opening any businesses under the “Don the Beachcomber” banner, Beach retreated to Hawaii and focused on business there. Meanwhile, Trader Vic’s opened 25 locations across the US, bringing tiki to folks from Kansas City to Boston (and, eventually, in Europe as well). quotable “Fear ruled the day—fear of nuclear winter, fear of blacklisting during the Red Scare, fear of missing a payment on your 30-year-old mortgage, fear of not fitting in—and the faux-Polynesian fantasy, coupled with rum drinks, helped you forget all that for awhile.” — Jeff Beachbum Berry, the author of Sippin’ Safari, [to Vice]( just for starters... Tiki critiques --------------------------------------------------------------- “Tiki” takes its name from carved idols that traditionally symbolize deities and serve in sacred rituals—[very real cultural symbols]( for some Hawaiians, Samoans, and Maori. “If we were to put that into a context that Americans would understand, it would be like going into a Christian-themed bar,” Kalewa Correa [told NPR.]( Another controversial aspect of “Tiki culture” is its eroticization, and exoticization, of island women. The hula girls that were staples of tiki bar decor were always silent and smiling. As Allan Isaacs, American studies professor at Wesleyan University, puts it: the trend [“embodies the libidinal investment of economic and sexual come-on of Hawaii.”]( Reuters/Henry Romero Pop quiz What’s the meaning behind the famous tiki drink “Three Dots and a Dash”? Three shots of rum and a dash of juiceThree cherries and a pineapple spearBraille for “tiki”Morse code for “V” Correct. A Don the Beachcomber original, the “V” referenced “victory.” Incorrect. Three cherries and a pineapple spear are often used to garnish the drink. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. brief history [Early 1900s:]( Returning from forays into what was then called the “South Seas,” explorers tell embellished tales that inspire authors like Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson to write fantastical adventure stories that launch a Western fascination with the fantasy of Polynesia. [1936:]( Dorothy Lamour wears an Edith Head-designed sarong in The Jungle Princess, the first of several South Seas-themed “sarong roles” that defined the actress’s career. [1946:]( The Museum of Modern Art in New York runs the first major exhibition of original South Seas art, which Life magazine features (the pages of which will later be a popular tiki bar decoration). Trader Vic’s would copy its icon—a mask from Papua New Guinea—from the MoMa catalog. [1947:]( Thor Heyerdahl completes the Kon Tiki raft expedition from Peru to French Polynesia; the subsequent book and documentary become hits. [1955:]( The quintessential tiki pop culture as we think of it today arises for a brief but dominant decade. The aesthetic developed alongside mid-century modernism, characterized by the minimalist designs of [Charles and Ray Eames](. In contrast, tiki designers were [trying to recreate Eden]( as glass-and-steel skyscrapers became the norm, [tiki culture]( let people enjoy a little piece of paradise. [1958:]( The musical South Pacific is released as a movie, causing a revival of its ubiquitous soundtrack. [1960s:]( Tiki starts to go out of style as people start to realize it’s kinda racist—and with the Vietnam War, “palm trees didn’t remind us of innocence anymore,” Polynesian pop culture expert Humuhumu Trott tells Vice. [1989:]( Manhattan landlord Donald Trump closes a Trader Vic’s outlet that had “gotten tacky.” [2002:]( The New York Times attributes the return of tiki bars to “the stress brought on by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001… fear of travel and need for emotional escape.” Murky Meanings What, exactly, makes something a tiki drink? --------------------------------------------------------------- Like your vision after a few rum-laden drinks, the definition of “tiki drink” is a bit blurry. If you ask three tiki aficionados what makes a tiki drink, you’ll get three different answers. [According to]( expert Humuhumu Trott, founder of [Critiki.com]( true tiki cocktails are restricted to those created in a tiki bar, “with an eye to the role they would play in this theater, the immersive, transporting world of the Polynesian themed establishment.” By these standards, some drinks that many people would associate with tiki bars, including Singapore Slings, Jungle Birds, and Painkillers, are not tiki drinks. Tiki aficionado Martin Cate, owner of Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco and one of the people responsible for tiki’s recent revival, prefers to define “exotic cocktails” not by their location of origin, but by Donn Beach’s original criteria: The palette must include sour, sweet, spirit (often rum, but not always), weak, and spice components. One thing most tikiphiles can agree on: Though piña coladas and margaritas are exotic delights, they’re [not]( tiki tipples (wrong flavor palate and wrong culture, respectively), and to declare otherwise is an invitation to debate a tiki enthusiast. AP Photo/Eric Risberg True Meanings A tiki drink glossary --------------------------------------------------------------- Demerara: A syrup made from demerara cane sugar, lending a deeper, richer flavor to drinks. Don’s Mix: One of Donn Beach’s original secret syrups, made by combining cinnamon syrup and white grapefruit juice. Falernum: A cordial made from steeping almonds, cloves, anise, ginger, and allspice in a rum base. Herbstura: A concoction made from a 1:1 ratio of Angostura bitters and Herbsaint anise liqueur, most often dashed into drinks to add an earthy undertone. Orgeat: Almond syrup flavored with orange flower water. Pimento dram: A liqueur flavored with allspice berries, aka pimentos—not the olive kind. Swizzle: A drink-mixing technique that uses a swizzle stick (a long post with spokes sticking off at the end) and an ice-filled cup to create a layer of frost on the glass. Quick question [What’s with the mugs?]( Watch this! Many modern-day bartenders are giving the Mai Tai a bad name. Here’s how to do it properly, according to Martin Cate. A true tikigate Tricky Dick’s tiki room --------------------------------------------------------------- During his tenure as POTUS, Richard Nixon was a regular at Trader Vic’s in the basement of the Statler-Hilton hotel mere blocks away from the White House. According to the [Wall Street Journal]( his drink of choice, the Mai Tai, became a somewhat official drink of the administration. The tropical hideaway was Nixon’s go-to regardless of the occasion. Henry Kissinger reported that cabinet members often found themselves there at the behest of the president, but Vic’s was also the scene of Nixon’s Valentine’s Day dinner with his wife Pat in 1973. And when he found himself embroiled in the Watergate scandal, Nixon turned to his favorite haunt for solace, slipping in around 3 am to [commiserate]( with the lone bartender Vic’s kept late just for him. Giphy Poll Tiki drinks: Down the hatch or pass ‘em up? [Click here to vote]( Don’t skimp on the umbrellasWho can resist a “Suffering Bastard”?I prefer simpler tipples The fine print In yesterday’s poll on [eclipses]( 68% of you said you find them fascinating (but 10% get terrified). Today’s email was written by [Stacy Conradt]( with [Whet Moser]( and [Aisha Hassan]( edited by [Jessanne Collins]( and produced by [Luiz Romero](. 🍹😍🗯LET'S TALK! Discuss this topic now with other [Obsession Obsessives on Reddit](. 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