Tiki bar by Wes Bailey

Tiki bar construction is a bit weird — it’s an effort to intentionally create something that looks a little haphazard, a little goofy, and frankly… a little ugly. Now of course, I find it beautiful — and you probably do, too — but you have to admit, it’s not likely to wind up in the pages of House Beautiful.

I just got a really nice email from a professional woodworker who normally specializes in a much more conventionally refined style, and was asked to create one of these delightful little monsters for the first time:

My name is Wes Bailey, and I am a furniture maker in Atlanta, GA. A few months back, a client came to me and requested that I design and build a Tiki Bar for his basemant renovation. I must confess that, at the time, I was woefully unaware of the well-established sub culture of the Tikiphile. So I did some internet research and came across your terrific site, which helped give me the requisite inspiration to deliver the goods! It turned out great, the customer loved it and hasn’t been sober since, so I view that as a real success.

I have to admit, it makes me warm & squishy. I get lots & lots of really wonderful emails along the lines of this one, and they always make my day… but this one is a favorite because, well, I just really like the bar he built. A lot of credit goes to the owner, who has done a great job decorating the room. But the bar itself is really nice, especially for a right-out-of-the-gate effort. Tikis: check. Not too clean in the design, but still with a sense of balance: check. Organic feel: check. I especially like the detour from the standard thatch roof: wood slats that look like they’ve been through a hell of a storm, and loved it. It floats my outrigger.

• Wes Bailey, Fine Craftsman

Volcano lamp by Kahaka

Bay-area artist Kahaka makes some of the best lamps for tiki bars out there. He makes them custom, and uses bamboo and tapa cloth, re-creating some of the best traditional styles, and also coming up with some of his own. His lamps have been hung in professional and home tiki bars around the globe, including the Kahiki Moon in Vermont, the Tabou Tiki Room in Berlin, Kona Club in Oakland and Forbiden Island in Alameda. This lamp is in a volcano shape, with tapa cloth sides, and crosscut bamboo rings for the base, and can be seen hanging at Forbidden Island.

Eight-sided lamp by Kahaka

Like the ones mentioned in my post about Orchids of Hawaii lamps, Kahaka’s lamps are very much in line with the lamps I mentioned in my Perfect Tiki Bar: the Lighting article; unlike Orchids of Hawaii, which is long out-of-business, Kahaka’s lamps can be purchased today. Lamps like these go a long way to setting the perfect, exotic mood, and are a must-have item for a good tiki bar. A photo gallery of Kahaka’s work can be seen on Yahoo, and he also has a thread of his creations on Tiki Central. If you’d like to have Kahaka create one of his wonderful lamps for your home or restaurant, you can contact him at jchadgreenwood@aol.com, or by sending him a PM on Tiki Central.

• SWAG TIKI LAMPS [Yahoo! Photos]
• Kahaka’s Tapa Lamps - New Stuff (8/2) [Tiki Central]
• Perfect Tiki Bar: The Lighting [Humu Kon Tiki]
• Lamps by Orchids of Hawaii [Humu Kon Tiki]

The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter,
a CD compilation (out of print)

This is the third installment in my ongoing series on what makes the Perfect Tiki Bar; my earlier entries addressed The Lighting and The Drinks. The Music… this one’s a bit of a tougher nut to crack.

You see, as far as I’m aware, we don’t really have a record (pardon the pun) of what music was played. We have postcards, photographs, menus, and in some cases still-standing restaurants to give us an idea of what the decor, food and drinks at these places were like, but when it comes to the music that was played, it mostly comes down to rememberances of patrons and employees. And apparently, the music wasn’t really memorable, as it’s not something you hear a lot about. The music of the era gets relatively little coverage in Sven Kirsten’s Book of Tiki.

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Orchids of Hawaii lamp, from the collection of tikijackelope

There’s an excellent thread on Tiki Central about Orchids of Hawaii lamps, thanks largely to tikijackalope, who travels to and photographs tiki bars nearly/perhaps as much as I do. Most are familiar with Orchids of Hawaii’s many mug designs, but OOH was also used by Polynesian restaurants for other elements of decor, most notably the lamps. OOH produced a broad variety of designs, many using bamboo, tapa, shells, and brightly colored resin panels. Tikijackalope has acquired many lamps, and has also posted scans of an old Orchids of Hawaii catalog showing some of the designs they had available. Another Tiki Central thread also has great OOH lamp images; recently, the Kahiki in Columbus, Ohio got rid of much of their remaining decor, including a number of lamps. Many of them have been posted on Tiki Central by tikiskip. Today, Orchids of Hawaii is no more, but similar designs can be purchased from Oceanic Arts in Whittier, California, and several crafty folks have made their own. Lamps of this sort are exactly the sort of light fixture I had in mind when I wrote my Perfect Tiki Bar: The Lighting article.

• Orchids of Hawaii lamps (image heavy) [Tiki Central]
• The Kahiki is selling off the rest of their stuff [Tiki Central]
• Oceanic Arts [Critiki]
• Orchids of Hawaii [Ooga-Mooga]
• Perfect Tiki Bar: The Lighting [Humu Kon Tiki]

A tasty & delicious tropical drink,
courtesy of Martiki

The previous installment in my Perfect Tiki Bar series touched on the importance of lighting; today I’m going to try to tackle the primary raison d’etre of tiki bars — the drinks. I will not succeed, but perhaps a nice dent will be made.

First, some tropical drink fundamentals. Tropical drinks, by and large, use rum as their base liquor. This is becuase during the rise of the tropical drink, rum was inexpensive and widely available. Unlike other liquors like gin and scotch, it tends to not lend itself to straight sipping (though there are some rums that make good sipping rums). A few fruit juices, a few dashes of flavored syrups, and a little (or a lot) of rum, and the result was a drink that was inexpensive in materials (if not in labor), and uniquely tasty. It was a delicate art, and when made by the right hands, a tropical drink was divine — it’s no wonder the demand for them swept the nation.

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In “Pefect Tiki Bar: The Lighting,” I briefly touched on how to make light bulbs look like flame:

Flame-look flicker bulbs can be purchased, but their wattage is so low that they really are not useful for light at all. Disneyland uses special trickery to allow bulbs of any sort to flicker like flame. The electrical controls can be expensive, but someone who knows what they’re doing can tackle the project for under a hundred dollars.

I’ve learned of an electrical control called SimFlame that can be purchased for just over a hundred dollars, and it is essentially three control boxes in one: one box will control three bulbs (up to 100 watts each), with each one getting a different flame pattern. That’s important, because if you have more than one bulb controlled by only one source of “flicker,” then the bulbs look more like they’re throbbing. That can look great if the effect you’re shooting for is a room lit by a rusty old generator, but it looks a little creepy if you’re trying to make it look like fire. I don’t have one of these control boxes yet myself, but the website has video of them in action, and they look very promising.

• SimFlame
• Perfect Tiki Bar: The Lighting [Humu Kon Tiki]

I am often asked what defines a good tiki bar. It’s a question I love to answer, but it’s not one I love to answer in a brief soundbyte, for there are a myriad of elements that have to come together for a tiki bar to be ideal. I’ll address them individually in my Perfect Tiki Bar series, starting today with Lighting.

A good tiki bar doesn’t have much light. A tiki bar should feel exotic, mysterious… like the visitor isn’t quite sure what he’s stepped into, and even how to step back out again. The room should feel intimate, and yet should also feel like there is no end — low lighting is the only way to make that happen.

The way to achieve this is through the use of flame, low-wattage bulbs, colored lights, and fixtures that restrict much light from getting out.

Flame is a risky endeavor in a tiki bar, where flammable organic elements abound. People who are drinking are not to be trusted with candles, but flames in drinks — now that’s good sport. Some locations have had grand tiki fireplaces, and fire dancer shows are also part of the tradition. Flame-look flicker bulbs can be purchased, but their wattage is so low that they really are not useful for light at all. Disneyland uses special trickery to allow bulbs of any sort to flicker like flame. The electrical controls can be expensive, but someone who knows what they’re doing can tackle the project for under a hundred dollars.

Low-wattage bulbs are the most effective way to produce good tiki bar lighting. 15- or 30-watt bulbs will often do the trick. The key is to have enough light fixtures to make the low wattage work. A good tiki bar will have a ceiling that is nearly encrusted with low-wattage light fixtures.

All these light fixtures would look a bit dull without some variety, and that’s where colored lights and unusual fixtures come in. Any color of the rainbow will look right in a tiki bar, as long as the light level is low. Reds in particular will make everyone in the room look more attractive, and moody spots of green and blue add mystery.

Good tiki light fixtures look unconventional, and give off a restricted amount of light. The most prized tiki light fixture is a glass float — these large round glass balls were used on ships, and used to drift onto shore with their sides nicely blasted into a frosted look by the elements. They were once plentiful, but are now rare, with original floats going for well over a hundred dollars. Today, faux-floats are produced without light fixtures. Drilling one for use as a lamp can be tricky without proper equipment, many opt to instead mount the light on the outside of the float, and mask it with bamboo. Another popular tiki light fixture is the pufferfish lamp. It is not difficult to make a pufferfish lamp yourself, but it can be messy and smelly. Other lamp styles include old fish traps, bamboo bird cages, and frames wrapped in tapa cloth.

When crafting a moody, low-light environment, it becomes especially important to consider how bright light can affect it. Windows of course kill the scene, at least until nightfall. Neon is the scourge of the tiki bar, it’s far too bright and harsh. The worst offender is that mighty false idol, the television set. Nothing can ruin a tiki bar quite like a television set can. Even when showing supposedly tiki-friendly tropical scenes, like an old surf movie or a Hawaii travelogue, the screen is too bright. Even a television showing scenes that are dark is surprisingly bright. Worse, the moving scenes distract the visitor, and remove any sense of the exotic. Savvy tikiphiles are equipped with a device like TV-B-Gone, a small keychain device that works like a television remote, and can turn off virtually any television set.

There are lots of projects relating to lighting that can be done at home inexpensively, and in the future I’ll spotlight some places where you can learn to do that.

• TV-B-Gone