Insignia from the French Foreign Legion’s
5ème RMP
A thought crossed my mind today… in the past few years, most of the countries of western Europe have seen a tiki bar or two open: Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland each have at least one, Germany has a half-dozen of them, the UK has a bunch, and Spain of course has more than their fair share. But as far as I can tell, France comes up with a great big goose egg. I once found a family pizza place that had tiki masks in relief in the cement outside the building, but that’s been it so far. Of course, France has its stamp all over Polynesia — Tahiti and the other islands of French Polynesia in particular, where French is the official language.
Why is this so? Is there Polynesian Pop in France and I’m just missing it? Do rum-based drinks hold little interest in wine-lovin’ France? Are the French just so over the whole Polynesian Pop thing, preferring their tiki a bit more legit?
On a related but different note: on Tiki Central, tikipedia recently posted a picture of a lovely insignia (slightly different from the one pictured here) for the 5ème Regiment Mixte du Pacifique, a division of the French Foreign Legion that was deployed to French Polynesia from 1963 until the unit was disbanded in 2000.
- French Foreign Legion Tiki [Tiki Central]
- 5ème Regt Mixte du Pacifique [The IVA's Regimental Pages]
January 29th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
to answer you, I’ll quote Mr Victor Bergeron himself : “We’ve been asked to build restaurant in Italy, France, Switzerland and many other countries, but we haven’t done it because I don’t think they’d like our food and what we’re doing”.
Maybe he’s true, but you don’t know how much I’m missing a tiki bar in Paris.
There is several tahitian restaurants in France, as there’s a lot of Tahitian living in the metropole, but no real tiki bar. I think french likes too much their wine, and beer.
Strange thing also is that we have lots of rum through french colonies (guadeloupe and Martinique mostly…), and lots of Liquor comes from France, so a tiki bar would not have been hard to do.
If you need a tiki bar to come to France, just come to my home tiki bar, and I’ll mix you a french drink !
January 29th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
When I make it to France someday, I’ll make your home bar my first stop. Well, maybe my second stop, after a visit to a cheese shop.
Good point about the French access to rum. Oh well, more for you!
Let me know if you want your home bar added to Critiki. You could be the tiki ambassador for France!
January 30th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
While France may not have any tiki bars, they certainly have some incredible collections of Polynesan art on display at the Louvre and Musée du Quai Branly.
January 30th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the tip on the Quai Branly! Looks very cool, I’ve added it to Critiki.
January 31st, 2007 at 5:53 am
You’re welcome. I haven’t been to the Branly’s new location yet, but I saw part of its collection in the Louvre a couple of years back. Simply incredible.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
true. there’s a nice collection in the new museum of Branly. Most of it was in the definct “Musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie”.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:41 am
La Nouvelle-Calédonie est une île à TIKI aussi
March 26th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
je suis francais et j’adore la culture tiki merci pour ce genre de site
November 29th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Abosolutely right ! There is a disastrous lack of Tiki interest in France. It’s like if people don’t even know about Polynesia or don’t care!
Maybe in the heydays of Tiki, when the Americans started to fly to Hawaii so easily, the French couldn’t afford to go to Tahiti, which is very far from France. So it never really took off here… Being french myself, I also believe that most of us French are too boring to enjoy kitch things, and we’re so busy trying to be cool that we forget about having fun…
A tous les Français Tikiphiles, unissons nous et répandons le message !
Le seul endroit Tiki que je connaisse c’est le village de vacances Kon Tiki à St Tropez.
Et encore, reste à vérifier si l’esprit correspond à la déco… Mahalo !