Post #106567 by johntiki on Thu, Aug 5, 2004 5:31 PM

On 2004-08-05 16:31, Trader Woody wrote:
What made people care about something that the world had shrugged off as a passing fad?

I can only answer for myself...what originally drew me to "tiki" was my interest in the popular culture and styles of the 20th Century...particularly the 1950's. I always had a thing for history, not the kind that you read about in crusty old books relating to which president signed this bill or passed this measure, but really about day to day customs, activities and pastimes that at their time were nothing more than mundane and commonplace. Or what I've always referred to as "popular history." For as long as I can remember I've wanted to experience what things were like decades before I was even born - such as driving a vintage car, listening to old time radio programs as well as old music, tasting a chocolate malted or a real vanilla Coke at a drug store soda fountain, etc. I have this insatiable desire to experience the past firsthand! When I got to legal drinking age nearly 13 years ago (damn that's scary) I got interested in the whole "cocktail culture" of the early 20th Century - I started collecting cocktail shakers, barware, vintage recipe books, all that stuff. Of course if you start at the heyday of vintage barware (post Prohibition) and follow its natural progression, it eventually leads to the offshoot from the cocktail family tree that is tiki. This was the epitome of cocktail cool - and exactly what I wanted to have in my "rumpus room."

But generally I think those who helped preserve tiki in its decline did so for nostalgia... or perhaps for its kitsch value. Interestingly enough, in some cases an interest that is started under the premise of being a joke suddenly becomes a deep affection! And personally I think those who do things as a goof unconsciously understand that what they're really doing is preserving a piece of "popular history" that is slowly disappearing.