Post #266637 by Cammo on Tue, Nov 14, 2006 10:52 AM

Look, the Book of Tiki is an amazing thing and it's almost impossible to find some aspect of Tiki that it doesn't discuss, but Sven had a lot of hard editorial decisions to make and had to leave some stuff out. I think it was always intended to get people interested, not be an end in itself, right, Bro?

Some of the things it doesn't really deal with, not much anyway;

• Exotica Music
• Hawaiian Tourism and Statehood
• Elvis!
• African influences (Trader Horn probably originated the term, masks, etc.)
• Early movies like Tabu, Hurricane, etc.
• Hey, there's only 3 drink recipes in the whole thing!

Also, my most prized possesion when I was 12 was a skull mug ($2.99) from Disneyworld. In the summer we'd make Kool-Aid punch (mix Blueberry and Cherry) and drink it all day from ice-filled brandy snifters & my skull mug. Was that Tiki enough, or just Freaky enough?

And - I asked my parents last year if they had ever been to a Tiki bar, you know folks, one of those Tropical bars, back in the day. They had no idea what I was talking about; then a slow glimmer of recognition grew over my mom's face, and she described this tropical bar they used to go to back in '55 in Mexico that was overlooking a beach and served rum and fruit drinks, and endless bottles of Mexican beer in the moonlight under the swaying palms.

I suddenly realized that she was talking about a REAL tropical bar...