Tiki Bars.

The search for paradise in a punchbowl and the voyage back home.

May 17, 2024

I grew up in Grand Island, Nebraska. There are no islands in Nebraska. There really isn't much of anything in Nebraska. I’m allowed to say that— you aren't.

This doesn’t mean I don't love where I live, but I probably don't relate to it like someone that grew up in Los Angeles or Boston. In many ways, Grand Island was a blank canvas. Your cultural identities would be molded toward right-wing protestant, but otherwise you could explore your adolescent years without the city making a huge imprint on who you were. There is no real archetype for a 'person from Grand Island.’

We didn't have a ton of money, but I never felt a lack either. It took me a while to embrace the possibilities of going to a professional sporting event or riding in an airplane. But I longed for our vacations. Twice a year we would load up in the family minivan that was really my dad's company minivan, pick up whichever kid was in college on the way, and head toward Minnesota or South Dakota. I craved it. I would insist upon stopping at each roadside destination and would get lost in the souvenir stands. I’d look for the most unique kitsch to that area, and would proudly display it in my bedroom in an attempt to spark a conversation with my friends. I distinctly remember the day my brother told me my room reminded him of a museum. I couldn’t have been more complimented. I've taken curating that collection seriously ever since.

It was likely because of the lack of real culture in my birthplace that I worked so hard to collect pieces of it from elsewhere. There was nothing that wasn’t worthy of collecting. I’d craft homemade display cases using cork board, a hot glue gun, and whatever materials I’d find in our garage that didn’t require the aid of power tools. I seldom got the joy from other people admiring my artifacts that I was hoping for, but I felt it within myself. Even if the joy was mostly in the form of a longing for something else. A longing for somewhere else.

●●●

If Grand Island did have a distinct identity, it was mostly in the form of ‘island’ references. It was rare to encounter a Grand Islander that had vacationed to Hawaii, but there wasn't a kid that didn’t have a Hawaiian shirt as part of his standard wardrobe. (No one knew they were really called 'Aloha shirts’). We embraced the island culture, or rather our version of the island culture. Which was completely unlike any version of the island culture on a real island. But we were not a real island, so we did the best we could.

It was easy to find tiki party supplies. I had a luau themed birthday party and dressed up in a homemade Islander costume to support the Grand Island Senior High Islander basketball team. I didn't wear a coconut bra, but the rest of the ensemble was the amalgamation of cheap decorations you could purchase in the party section of Walmart.

I had no idea what a tiki actually was, but neither did anyone else. It wasn't a big concern of ours. No one took this island stuff seriously. No one really took anything from Grand Island seriously.

●●●

The best part of going away is having a home to come back to, and I found that home when I moved to Omaha. And in Omaha, inspiration was found abroad and cultivated domestically. For those of us that couldn't jet set off to San Torini or order a cocktail in Greenwich Village, we could at least find others who had and brought a little of that experience back with them in the form of food trucks, specialty stores, or locally sourced restaurants.

In Omaha, wanderlust was a virtue, but so was community. The roots grow deeper as the tree is cross-pollinated.

●●●

Sitting on my couch while a pandemic forced me indoors, I read the book 'Smuggler's Cove' from cover to cover. Cocktails had become my quarantine hobby, and this tiki themed recipe book frequently showed up in my Amazon recommendations.

Initially, I was hesitant.

Tiki bars conjured up memories of my hometown, a place where the word 'craft' has no place. The mass-produced, the cliché, the photo-copied were more at home in Grand Island, and if there was one theme that was overdone in my childhood stomping grounds, it was tiki.

It must have felt overdone everywhere else too, because the image of a true tiki bar that Martin Cate described was completely unlike anything I had seen. It wasn’t a tacky, party supply store restaurant; it was something else entirely. It was adventure. And like any good adventure, it all began with a hero and a legend:

“Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt was born in the small town of Mexia, Texas, in 1907. Or he was born in New Orleans— or in Jamaica. One of these is probably true; he was a little loose with the facts of his youth... By the time he was eighteen, having seen quite a bit of the Caribbean already, Ernest was offered a choice by his parents: head off to college or take his college money and use it as he saw fit. Ernest, not surprisingly... chose to take the money and run. He spent the next several years roaming the seas in search of adventure… Ernest visited dozens of islands and immersed himself in their various cultures and traditions. He drank in the people, he drank in their arts and crafts, and he drank in their drink... Ernest saw more of the world than had most people twice his age. It was fun while it lasted, but the funds eventually ran dry.

By 1931, Ernest was just twenty-four and back on American dry land, in Los Angeles, dragging a cargo of flotsam behind him: masks, carvings, and sundry Polynesian and nautical bric-a-brac…

In late 1933, our hero saved enough pennies to hang his hat someplace. And that decision changed the course of American cocktail culture, dining, and design for the next 40 years... He built a bar with twenty-four seats, tossed in a few tables, and hung up all the crusty décor he’d been clinging to for the past several years. Even in Hollywood, nothing quite like this had been seen before. Elegant, tropical-themed nightclubs like the Cocoanut Grove were well known and offered luxurious fantasy to the swells in black tie. But this was something else— a little coarse, a little rough around the edges. One man’s vision of an island rum shack, from an island located somewhere between his left and right ears. The space was a secluded little oasis just a few steps from the hustle of Hollywood Boulevard, allowing patrons to feel they'd escaped time and place. But the décor was not what made the place. It was the drinks." 1

●●●

Ernest called his first oasis ‘Don's Beachcomber Café’ — using a pseudonym that he gave himself while bootlegging. As his franchise of island themed bars grew, the name morphed into ‘Don the Beachcomber’ and Ernest morphed into ‘Donn Beach’— which he legally changed his name to.

Copycats emerged. A rival named Vic Bergeron ripped off all of Donn's ideas and created his own ‘Trader Vic's’ tiki bar franchise. (Fittingly, Trader Vic was later ripped off by Trader Joe.)

And the tiki era was born.

●●●

Reading these descriptions in my living room, I felt like the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes.

“Maybe tiki,” he thought, “isn't just tacky décor.”

“Maybe tiki,” he thought, “means a little bit more.”

●●●

Flipping through the pages of ‘Smuggler's Cove’, my view of tiki was completely deconstructed. The most obvious observation was the sheer complexity of each recipe. Up to this point, my beginner's cocktail recipe books had maybe four or five ingredients per drink. Not only did each tiki recipe average eight items, but the 'base spirit' itself was often a combination of multiple liquors. I bought a Costco sized bottle of ‘RUM’ thinking this would get me by. Martin Cate broke down rum into 21 subcategories, "but never fear: With just eight rums, you can make most of the recipes in this book." 2

Just EIGHT rums?

I need to know a MINIMUM of eight different kinds of rum, just to make MOST (but not all) of the recipes in this book?

To complicate the matter further, Cate was clear that my Captain Morgan knock-off of Kirkland Spiced Rum would get used in approximately ZERO recipes. In fact, the only rum that I had ever heard of was anathema to proper tiki cocktails.

"Spices have been added to rum since its birth… Early on it was done to cover up the harshness of the poorly made spirit, but the tradition has continued. Most Americans were introduced to spiced rum through the launch of Captain Morgan in the early 1980s, and therefore it is worth noting that there is not a single recipe from the golden age of tiki that calls for spiced rum.”3

Well, shit. This hobby just got a whole lot more difficult and a whole lot more expensive.

And yet, a whole lot more interesting.

●●●

Each recipe was accompanied by a photo of a menacing tiki idol in ceramic mug form. But these weren't the big toothy grin of some Nebraska high school mascot. These mugs were, well, beautiful.

It became a tradition for each tiki bar to make a signature mug that could only be found at their respective location. As tiki bars exploded, so did tiki mug collecting.

And I wanted all of them.

Cate described a time when he would travel for work and spend hours in thrift stores, searching for some discarded souvenir from a forgotten tiki bar he could add to his collection.

But those days are gone.

Stop what you're doing and type ‘tiki mug’ into the eBay search bar. If you've not done this exercise, and assuming the market conditions have not significantly changed since this writing, you'll be shocked.

Here's today's market prices:

Tiki Caliente 15 Event Mug-Aloha Jhoe's: $199.99 (0 bids, 8 watchers)

Tiki Rob Lava Moai: $635.00 (2 bids)

Tiki Rob Kakamora 2.0 Mug: $3,000,00 (16 bids)

Tumbao Tiki Mug: $182.50 (5 bids)

Shag Tropics 60th Anniversary Mug: $349.00 (0 bids, 11 watchers)

Tiki Caliente 7 Underwater Ohana Tiki Mug: $849.97 (0 bids, 13 watchers)

That's page one.

The floor price for a true tiki mug is about $50, and that price point is hard to find unless you go to the bar itself.

Which gave me all the more reason to go to the bars themselves.

●●●

This past summer we visited some family in Oregon and spent a day in the quaint beach town of Astoria. I had already swung by ‘Hale Pele’ in Portland and had plans of seeing ‘Alibi Lounge’ before we flew home, but it wasn’t just the big city tiki bars that made my must-see list. While the kids were distracted by a park, I snuck away from the family and killed time in a distillery until my destination opened for business.

‘Munktiki Exotica Mugs and Items’ was founded by father and son duo Paul and Miles Nielsen. Paul was the only one in the shop, appearing startled when I walked in and began examining his custom mugs. Boutique art meets island party. I grabbed a SurfBob wave, blocky totem, and a water mine punch bowl and peppered Paul with questions as he wrapped my new treasures.

Paul had been making ceramics for decades without the slightest interest in island themed mugs when his career path took a sharp turn.

“How did you get into making tiki mugs?"

"Completely by accident."

He made a line of cocktail glasses that didn't particularly sell. But in the late 90's, this new thing called eBay started picking up steam. Paul was intrigued, so he made a couple of tiki mugs and tested it out. He couldn't believe how much they sold for.

And with that, Paul became a legend in the tiki scene.

He loved how artistic each mug could become, and a look through Munktiki's inventory made me feel like I was speaking with a master craftsman in his studio. Because I was. I could barely fit those three mugs in my carry-on for the plane ride home.

But the test of my suitcase packing Tetris skills had only begun. Before our ride to the airport, my father-in-law surprised me with six more mugs that his wife had found at a thrift store. There were two designs, with three mugs of each design. It’s good to have spares.

●●●

I finished ‘Smugglers Cove’ and my mug collection was expanding— but my drink making needed some work. As I checked out more and more recipe books from the library, I became more and more comfortable with the odd words and 21 types of rum. Orgeat, falernum, and herbsaint became staples in my home bar as I learned the difference between pot-stilled and column-stilled.

And everywhere I travelled I would google: "tiki bar (insert name of city here)".

Like the resurgence of craft beer, vinyl records, and board games— I initially felt I had made some niche discovery— only to realize I was just hearing about a movement that had gained momentum well before my hipster proclivities latched onto it. The true pioneers of the initial movement, and the current revival, came up again and again in the introduction of the growing stack of tiki books in my basement.

Martin Denney: His 1957 album ‘Exotica’ became the quintessential tiki soundtrack. The music contained as many odd influences and sounds as Donn Beach had nautical ware hanging in his ceiling.

Jeff "Beachbum" Berry: Tracked down as many secret recipes from the tiki golden era as humanly possible, often meeting with original Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic bartenders and convincing a family member to let him copy down their personal notes on the cocktail ingredients. Without Beachbum Berry, most classic tiki cocktail recipes would have been lost forever.

Sven Kirsten: Collected as much tiki ephemera as he could possibly get his hands on and catalogued it in the definitive history text: ‘The Book of Tiki.’

Otto von Stroheim: Created a magazine called ‘Tiki News’ which organized all the otherwise isolated tiki enthusiasts into a full-blown revival movement.

Paul Nielsen knew all these guys, and talked about them like they were old pals, because to him they were. But the name that I started seeing the most wasn't in any book, it was the one that consistently popped up next to jaw dropping eBay prices as I scrolled through mugs on my phone each time I pooped.

Tiki Rob.

●●●

Tiki artists have amazing names like Shag, Gecko, and Big Toe—but no one carried the market price of Tiki Rob. I'd gotten used to seeing mugs ranging in the hundreds of dollars on eBay, but out of nowhere I saw an "OA Tiki Mug by Tiki Rob” listed at $2,300. It had opened at $9.99 and was 14 bids in.

A little bit of practice with eBay auctions and you quickly learn that no one does anything until just a few hours before the auction closes. Bidding early tends to just drive up the market price and lures you into a false sense of security. You’re entranced that the item you're going to get at a steal is practically in hand. I've lost two auctions in the final 10 seconds. I still carry the pain of each one.

This mug still had a week left.

I sent the listing to my boss who I knew would share my shock. By the time he replied it had climbed to $8,000.

What is going on.

By the end of the night, it had made its way to $9,000, but was holding. We were approaching its market value. I had to figure this out.

Who is Tiki Rob?

●●●

"I began collecting Tiki mugs after seeing an ad for Munktiki in HOUSE magazine. My first mug was Munktiki's Super Tiki Deluxe. After visiting Paul and Miles at their home I began dreaming of making Tiki Mugs. In 2008 I was diagnosed with stage 4 Carcinoid cancer (same type of tumors as Steve Jobs). I had the primary tumor removed but the cancer has taken hold in my liver. I have undergone Chemo treatments every 28 days for the past 12+ years. My current scans show my cancer has taken over. I'm beyond the point of treatment and surgeries. Doctors are only giving me a few months to live."4

Woah.

He had a shop on his website, but everything was sold out. The mugs going for thousands of dollars were originally listed at $400. Even simple pendant necklaces were going for over $100 on auction.

I may have inadvertently stumbled upon the most valuable tiki mug ever. When the auction closed the winning bid was $9,350.

●●●

"To escape. From the world outside, your job, the demands on your life— whatever causes you stress. In mid-century America, it was expectations, morality, conformity. The tiki bar was where you could loosen the tie and let the rum wash the worries away. Today, less of an escape from morality perhaps, but certainly a need to escape from a barrage of communication and information emails, texts, social media. The outside world can find you anywhere now, and it wants answers right away. Smuggler's Cove has terrible mobile phone reception and we don't offer Wi-Fi. There are few chances in life to simply put down the phone and connect instead with your friends, your partner, or your Mai Tai. The gods want you to relax. Escape is a dying art. Most Americans scarcely even take vacation anymore, and when they do, they more often than not still bring at least a little work with them. Even what should be the pleasures of the modern world never let you forget where you are. Modern dining wants you to worship the food, but is less interested in transporting you somewhere else to enjoy it. Open spaces with large windows bring the world inside, and austere furnishings keep you from getting too comfortable. Close seating and hard surfaces mean reduced privacy and elevated noise levels. It may seem hard to imagine, but there was once a time before dining out became an Instagrammable, full-contact sport. Constant reminders about the local sourcing of food and the reclaimed wood on the walls assuage feelings of guilt, but also subtly reinforce that everything outside the door of the restaurant is falling apart— that the forests are disappearing that the American food system is in crisis. Tiki bars just want you to have a couple of hours to unwind." 5

Maybe it’s living in a city that's so landlocked that the Omaha Chamber of Commerce adopted the motto ‘We Don't Coast,’ but I've never been a big beach guy. Recent travels to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and even Guam have been nothing short of amazing, but at no point does laying in the sand or swimming in saltwater get me remotely excited. When so much of the attraction focuses on the whole being-next-to-the-ocean thing, planning a vacation with me can be difficult. I'm more in my element on fake islands.

I also have such a state of fear-of-missing-out while travelling that I often feel the need to skip meals to fit in one more attraction. Most vacations I spend in constant need of a nap and something to eat other than a granola bar from my wife's purse.

When Paige and I turned a work trip into an extended stay in Hawaii, we rented a car and checked off every possible item we could from our Lonely Planet travel guide. We set off in our routine, hurried pace, but the island culture— the real island culture— was working against my rushing at every stop.

Despite my best efforts, I found a destination that forced me to relax.

●●●

Pu’uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park was the only site in Hawaii where a tiki wasn't meant to attract tourists or sell a t-shirt. I had no idea what this place was when Paige told me to plug it into the GPS. In fact, I was so clueless that I had previously bought a postcard with the National Park on it because I thought it looked cool.

A Pu'uhonua was a sacred refuge meant to protect vulnerable people. If you were a Hawaiian warrior defeated in battle, you were fucked. Rival tribes were fond of tracking down the losers and killing them. After the battle had ended, a footrace would begin. Hawaiians being pursued could be on the run for weeks— sprinting barefoot through forests wearing nothing but a loincloth while some ticked off pursuers tried to run them down and club them to death. In a museum on the Big Island, we came across a bowl with human teeth stuck to it like the fake gemstones my daughter sticks to her water bottle. Except, you know, these are human teeth. A spiteful Hawaiian would occasionally pull out all the chompers of an opponent and use them to bedazzle a spittoon. So even in death, the disgrace would continue as the victor would use your remains as a thing to spit in.

These dudes were brutal.

Unless you could make it to a Pu'uhonua.

The most reliable way to avoid becoming a human container for bodily fluids in the afterlife was to run like hell until you reached a safehouse. After successfully eluding capture by jogging through a forest for a week, all you had to do was: jump in the ocean, swim several miles in open-water, and avoid being eaten by sharks. This swim could last several days—which is a bit longer than the time I started dry heaving after a few laps in the YMCA pool. If you pulled all that off and were still alive once you washed up on shore, you’d be greeted by a priest— a Kahuna— who would offer you protection and rejuvenation.

It was agreed upon by all Hawaiian tribes that if the vanquished reached these sacred walls, they were off-limits. A safe zone. A home base in the worst version of hide-and-go-seek ever. A white flag marked the location of the sanctuary. If you didn't die in the process, you would be given lodging, food, and rehabilitation. Your previous circumstances were unimportant. Here, in this place, you were meant to relax and be restored. Law breakers, widows, orphans, refugees, and defeated warriors lived in harmony and peace. And when the Kahuna deemed them physically and spiritually refreshed, he would send them out. And they remained off-limits.6

And this place had actual tikis. I took a picture with them that made it on our Christmas card.

●●●

The tiki scene didn't take off in Omaha like it did on the West Coast, but it did carve out a presence as weary travelers sought to offer up the amenities they experienced abroad.

Japanese-Americans Jack and Alice Kaya grew up in the California until WWII forced the couple into an internment camp in Jerome, Arkansas. Once they were released from their racist imprisonment, they found their way to Omaha. Jack got a job at the ‘Blackstone Hotel’ kitchen— local legend and alleged birthplace of the Reuben sandwich (for fuck's sake New York City, just let us have this one, you’ve birthed enough things without having to claim the Reuben as well).7

Longing to make their own mark, the Kayas tried out a few different restaurant concepts, ultimately opening ‘Mt. Fuji Inn’ before it burnt down in a massive fire. But this resilient couple wasn't ready to throw in the towel, it took all of five weeks for them to regroup. Around the time that their life's work turned to ashes, another ambitious restaurant concept was unsuccessfully trying to get itself off the ground. An actual, living, breathing, dolphin wasn't enough to keep ‘The Porpoise Place’ afloat— and when it sank, Jack and Alice found their new location of ‘Mt. Fuji Inn.’

It's not clear what happened to the dolphin. His name was Flopper and he cost $17,000. He was a 7-foot long, 300-pound, bottlenose dolphin that enjoyed swimming with bikini-clad high school girls downstairs in the 'Submarine Lounge'. I'd like to think it lived a long, happy, dolphiny life somewhere other than a themed restaurant. But this was the 70's— the same era that my dad once wrestled a live bear as part of a half-time show while he was a custodian at a high school.

Penniless and dolphinless— the Kayas opened up shop. But instead of a basement used to watch animal cruelty, they thought of something a whole less controversial and a whole lot more relaxing: a tiki bar.

For 27 years, ‘Mt. Fuji Inn’ was a staple in midtown Omaha, and the basement ‘Mai Tai Lounge’ held on for another 5 years. It was liquidated in April 2018 before it became a strip club.8

Their green Moai mug can be seen on my bar shelf— along with three slightly smaller versions in green and tan.

●●●

All of my college barhopping took place in ‘The Old Market’ district. We had our routes: starting at ‘Billy Frogg's,’ pounding late-night tacos at ‘Eat the Worm,’ and always regretting going to the skanky dance bar ‘Whiskey Tango.’

Between those stops we’d pass through a smattering of basement bars filled with dart boards and hangovers the next day. These outings were fun, but stressful and full of regret. My barhopping days behind me, I started searching out cocktail lounges as my new hobby took hold. I went to Alice in Wonderland speakeasies, space themed lounges, and learned of a tiki establishment that had been converted from the shitty bar where I took this picture:

Named after twin Hawaiian gods, ‘Laka Lono Rum Club’ was no longer somewhere I would get dragged to and forced to wait in line to take a piss after my fifth rum and coke. And they weren't serving rum and coke anymore. And I didn't feel stressed being in there anymore. And I didn’t hate a single thing about it.

In fact, I loved all of it.

The décor was tiki perfect and the drinks were perhaps the best in the whole city. I felt completely comfortable doing absolutely nothing but swinging on their wicker chairs suspended from the ceiling and sipping on my Planter's Punch.

‘Laka Lono Rum Club’ became part of my birthday routine. When the choice is mine and the entire evening is meant for my pleasure, I make a point to unwind and imbibe— in a wicker chair with a Navy Grog.

●●●

My mug collection was growing, and space wasn't limitless. The six identical mugs from my father-in-law felt a little excessive. I grabbed one of each style and headed to Laka Lono.

In an attempt to get a free drink, I presented both mugs to a bartender to add to their collection— an offering to the tiki gods. He didn't give us anything free, but he did make our drinks in those mugs. When I came back for my birthday, I could see both in their display case. Next to the doors. Welcoming me in. A white flag to signal a place of refuge.