First, let’s get this out of the way: the outstanding bars on this list are not ordinary by any measure, but one… they are not tiki bars. These establishments are part of a new class of cocktailing, where constructing a beverage is paid the same attention as that given to preparing a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

But they are not tiki bars.

You won’t find them in Critiki, and they may very well be off your radar. They may not even be able to make tiki drinks any time, any day, as the ingredients required are notoriously numerous and fussy. But each location on this list has at least one bartender on staff who shares your passion, and wants to make your Nui Nui dreams come true. Some have regular or periodic tiki nights, some even have dedicated tiki sections of their menu. When it comes to tiki drinks, frankly these places are going to deliver better than most any tiki bar out there. Encourage them, won’t you?

Drink – 348 Congress St., Boston, MA
Drink keeps a number of flavored syrups around just for making tiki drinks–prepared for them with love and care by none other than Randy Wong of Waitiki!

Death & Company – 433 East 6th St., Manhattan, New York, NY
Though Brian Miller, a driving force behind Death & Co.’s tiki drinks, has moved on, his imprint lingers. Tiki drinks, and tiki-leaning beverages, can still be found on the menu.

Please Don’t Tell (PDT) – 113 Saint Marks Pl., Manhattan, New York, NY
There are reports that you may be able to snag a high-quality tiki drink at the world’s worst-kept-secret bar.

Flatiron Lounge – 37 W 19th St., Manhattan, New York, NY
Joe Swifka: ask for him by name. He’s gotten to have a bit of a reputation as the go-to bartender for tiki drinks in New York. Tiki drinks make frequent appearances on Flatiron’s rotating menu.

Clover Club – 210 Smith St., Brooklyn, New York, NY
Clover Club has the same owner as Flatiron Lounge, Julie Reiner. Reiner grew up in Hawaii and plans to open a tropical (but not tiki) restaurant in Manhattan later this year. Clover Club is Victorian in style, but if you ask nicely, they may be able to hook you up with the good stuff.

Dram – 177 S 4th St, Brooklyn, New York, NY
Dram’s rotating menu often has tiki items on offer—at this writing, it’s a Jet Pilot.

Dutch Kills – 27-24 Jackson Ave., Long Island City, NY
Dutch Kills is from the same team that opened New York’s latest tiki savior, Painkiller.

Rum Bar – 2005 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA
Rum Bar is, well, all about rum. Most of the cocktail list is Caribbean-focused, but a few traditional tiki cocktails are also on offer.

Embury – 2216 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA
Embury has a Tiki Tuesday event, and they’re game for tackling the complicated drinks.

Farmers & Fishers – 3000 K Street NW, Washington, D.C.
Zombies, Fog Cutters, Grogs… all part of their regular menu!

Anvil – Houston, TX
Anvil is perhaps most notable for their “100 drinks everyone should try at least once.” Naturally, tiki is part of the prescription, and Jeff Berry’s Grog Log is a heavily-thumbed reference behind their bar.

Vessel – 1312 5th Ave., Seattle, WA
Spur – 113 Blanchard St., Seattle, WA
Tavern Law – 1406 12th Ave., Seattle, WA
My hometown may be lacking in the tiki bar department, but I’m proud to say that when it comes to the drinks, it’s “ya sure, ya betcha.” All three of these establishments have the materials on-hand to whip up traditional tiki drinks, and each has periodic tiki nights. Vessel even serves some drinks out of tiki mugs.

Teardrop Cocktail Lounge – 1015 NW Everett St., Portland, OR
Teardrop hosts periodic Tiki Nights, typically with the involvement of local tikiphiles and cocktail obsessives Blair “Trader Tiki” Reynolds and Craig “Colonel Tiki” Hermann. The next one is on September 12.

Caña – 714 W Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
Caña is dedicated to all things rum, so of course this means some tiki representation on the menu.

Lewers Lounge – Halekulani Hotel, Waikiki, HI
It’s tragically difficult to find a decent drink in Hawaii. You may have heard good things about the House Without a Key in the Halekulani Hotel, but the better bet is actually the Lewer’s Lounge in the same hotel.

Paparazzi – Laurinská 133/1, Bratislava, Slovakia
Paparazzi’s Stanislav Vadrna knows his way around a tiki drink… he’s even hosted a tiki drink seminar at his bar.

Cotton’s Rhum Shack – 55 Chalk Farm Rd, London, UK
Cotton’s Rhum Shack in Camden has a very long rum list, and a smattering of tiki cocktails to match. There is a sister location, Rhum Jungle in Islington, that may be worth trying, too.

The Merchant Hotel Bar – 16 Skipper Street, Belfast, Ireland
Crowned as the Best Bar In the World, the Merchant Hotel Bar’s menu is more of a book. The menu is exhaustively thorough, and tiki drinks do not get short shrift. On the contrary: Bar Manager Sean Muldoon takes tiki drinks so very seriously that he has the last remaining bottle of the true original Mai Tai rum: vintage 17 year Wray & Nephew. This is the only place in the world you can have a truly old-style Mai Tai—though it’ll cost you about $1,000.

Mahalo nui loa to the following for their assistance in compiling this list: Peter Andrijeski, Alice Berry, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, Dan Budiac, Robert A. Burr, Nicole Desmond, Boris Hamilton, Liz Lang, Kiki Lenoue, Georgette Moger, Ben Wagner, Doug Winship

We’ve done this time & again… an initial rush at the news that a major publication has written up an article about this nutty tiki craze thing… followed by an immediate let-down that the article was sloppily researched, full of inaccuracies, misses the point, and doesn’t really understand that this isn’t just a tacky, ironic thing to us, that there’s real quality and history here.

But over the past year or two (going back perhaps not-so-coincidentally to about the time that Forbidden Island opened) these articles have been improving, both in the quality of their research, and in the authors’ ability to find a bit of true appreciation; they’ve been coming closer & closer to seeing what we see.

Today, finally, comes the zenith of Polynesian Pop journalism. You can tell right from the title, “Tiki Doesn’t Have to Be Tacky,” that this article isn’t going to be the same old quickie, filler, throwaway article that confuses or even damages the public perception of Tiki.

The impetus for the article is the upcoming annual San Francisco Tiki Crawl, but the article touches on much more than that — aside from giving mention to several Bay Area tiki hotspots, it also explores the very essence of Polynesian Pop. It points out the difference between good tiki and bad tiki (yes! yes! oh, thank you, yes!). The author, Eric Felten, even mentions something I’ve long held to be true — that while yesterday’s PolyPop escapism was about eschewing formality, today’s escapism is more about eschewing informality.

So, thank you Eric Felten, thank you Wall Street Journal, and thank you to anyone and everyone who helped him write this beauty. You’ve done us all a great service, and I’d like to buy you a drink.

• Tiki Doesn’t Have to Be Tacky [The Wall Street Journal]
• Forbidden Island, Alameda [Critiki]
• San Francisco: Tiki Central’s Tiki Crawl 8 [Humu Kon Tiki]

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

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]

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.

When people hear the phrase “tiki music,” generally their mind goes directly to Exotica. It makes sense — Exotica rose to prominence during the same era as tiki bars, and certainly aimed to capture the same mysterious and idealized view of the tropics. Most Exotica is a perfect fit for a tiki bar. The thing is — Exotica may not have actually been played very often in tiki bars. Exotica was born from live performances in bars in Hawaii, played to an audience of vacationing mainlanders who probably frequented stateside tiki bars (especially upon their return), but the tiki bars found outside of Hawaii may not have actually played much Exotica. A mix of traditional Hawaiian music and hapa haole songs, especially recordings done to capitalize on America’s growing love affair with Hawaii, might have been more common to hear in tiki bars. It’s also possible that many tiki bars simply played what they had available to them — whatever local small combo jazz act was available, or whatever records the owner had compiled.

Much as midcentury tiki bars were an idealized view of Polynesia, our modern view of tiki bars has become idealized into a perfect vision of something that probably was a bit more fractured. But like I said, this might be a bit of an Lose Weight Exercise in futility — let’s not talk about what was played in tiki bars, since it’s very debatable, and instead focus on what works well today.

I think it’s no mistake that there aren’t many tales out there that shed light on the music played in tiki bars. In my opinion, that’s as it should be. The music in a tiki bar should be like a great film score — creating a mood and giving subtle cues as to the character of the joint, while not calling constant attention to itself. It should be quiet enough that conversations can be had — tiki bars are not throbbing discotheques.

For traditional, Hapa-Haole and Hapa-Haole-inspired stuff, the variety of LPs out there is terrifically broad. This class of music has its own standards, which were recorded over and over again, to an amazing extent. Selector Lopaka, a name familiar to Humu Kon Tiki readers, has created some great compliation disks that he likes to share. If you want to track down music on your own, you can go down to your corner thrift store and pick up all kinds of crazy albums for about a buck a pop. Look for song titles like “Lovely Hula Hands,” “My Little Grass Shack,” “Pearly Shells,” “Aloha Oe,” Little Brown Gal,” “Hawaiian War Chant,” and “The Hukilau Song.” Some of it’s good, some of it’s bad. To my ear, a good set of these sorts of songs provides the absolute best backdrop. Modern acts like Haole Kats, Maikai Gents and the Crazed Mugs are carrying forward these great standards.

Exotica music by folks like Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, Les Baxter, Yma Sumac and Robert Drasnin work really well in tiki bars, though they’re my second choice behind more “traditional” stuff. I adore Exotica, and I prefer it for just general listening, but I find traditional stuff just a wee touch better for tiki bar mood-setting. Exotica is my first choice to be piped into outdoor jungle-y patio areas, though. Modern acts like Fisherman’s Burlesque Trio and Waitiki are continuing the tradition with new Exotica recordings.

Robert Mitchum’s Calypso Is Like So…

Later in the evening, as the crowd loosens up, sometimes it becomes more appropriate and natural to go up-tempo. Equivel is a great Exotica wee-hours sound. Bossa Nova and Calypso work well, too — I know, I know… “wrong body of water!” I’m generally pretty quick to remind folks of the big difference between Polynesian and Carribbean, but some Calypso just fits. After all, the Enchanted Tiki Room’s theme song has a Calypso, not Hawaiian, beat. (Plus, rum comes from the Carribbean, and I’m not about to say rum doesn’t belong in a tiki bar. You’ve just gotta mix & match with some careful consideration.) Try the album Calypso Is Like So…, from actor (and sometime singer) Robert Mitchum — it’s a surprisingly great album. The modern band APE plays songs that pull from many different influences, and they sound just right in a late-night jumpin’ tiki bar.

There is lots of music that obviously doesn’t belong (Polka, Whitesnake, Celine Dion…). But there’s sneakier stuff — steel drums, reggae, salsa, Jimmy Buffett… sure, they’re tropical, but here’s where I will assert that they just don’t play well with the Polynesian Pop mystique. It becomes less of an issue later in the evening, as the crowd has already gotten into the mood of the place. Selector Lopaka has sneakily segued an evening of great Hawaiian and Exotica classics into reggae without my noticing. But that takes some high quality music, and a DJ’s skills of discretion. They don’t call them selectors fer nuthin’.

So, there is an indisputable and tangled-up-tight connection between surf music and tiki. Surf music grew out of the burgeoning surfing teen community in Southern California in the 1960s, and tikis are an iconic image that was all over the place for them (most notably as good-luck charm necklaces). This is a group that skewed a bit younger than the folks typically in attendance at tiki bars back in the old days, and to my ears it sounds like a mismatch to be sitting in a mellow tiki bar listening to surf. Which isn’t to say it didn’t happen. Maybe the Dumb Angel guys can paint it all in for me and smooth over my cognitive dissonance. They actually do tie together Exotica and surf in their latest issue, All Summer Long, but not enough to make it sound natural to me in a cozy, dimly lit tiki bar. Surf music to me conjures up images of either bright sunshine or gritty, boisterous parties — things I love, just not things I love in a tiki bar.

So, there you go. That’s my take on music in the Perfect Tiki Bar. There are lots of folks more knowledgable than I in this arena, and I welcome hearing their input on the topic.

• Exotica Albums Recommended by Hanford Lemoore [Tikiroom.com]
• Selector Lopaka
• Haole Kats
• Maikai Gents
• Crazed Mugs
• Fisherman’s Burlesque Trio
• Waitiki
• APE
• Perfect Tiki Bar: The Drinks [Humu Kon Tiki]
• Perfect Tiki Bar: The Lighting [Humu Kon Tiki]

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]

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.

Proper construction of a tropical cocktail takes precision, care, time and training. Between high turnover in bartenders, and an “I want it now” customer base to serve, it is simply a difficult (but not insurmountable!) challenge for bars to make proper drinks. The past few decades have seen a decline in use of the tropical drinkmaking basics, and has resulted in modern-day tropical cocktails that are overly sweet, overly pink (or blue), and just generally gross. Here’s an attempt to right that ship:

Balance
An ideal tropical cocktail is neither sweet, nor tart. It strikes a perfect balance of flavors. Often a good cocktail will also incorporate small nuances of unexpected flavors like spices or special liqueurs, to add a sense of complexity and mystery. No one taste is overpowering or obviously detectable.

Ingredients
Okay, this part is interactive — take a day sometime soon, and do some side-by-side comparisons. Buy some “ReaLemon” (that’s the lemon juice you get that comes in the plastic lemon) and compare it to juice from an actual, fresh lemon. Buy some of the previously-frozen, made-from-concentrate orange juice, and try it alongside some fresh-squeezed orange juice. Eat some Chef Boyardee Ravioli, while considering the difference from a ravioli meal at a local Italian restaurant. Night and day difference.

The common thought seems to be that since you’re mixing all the ingredients together, no one will be able to taste the difference, but in reality you only get out of it what you put into it. If you’re having a summertime backyard barbecue, would you serve everyone using hospital-cafeteria-quality ingredients? No! Take that grillmaster pride, and convert some of it to drinkmaster pride.

This line of thought follows into selecting the rums and other liquors you use, as well. It is dismaying, but liquor stores tend to not have a very broad variety of rums. Most people tend to think of rums in terms of “silver,” “gold,” and “dark,” but they’re actually not always that interchangable. Try instead to experiment with rums from different countries. A note about Bacardi — it may be ubiquitous, but it is actually not very good stuff. I have a bottle of it here, but I would only use it later in the evening, when people’s senses truly are dulled. Maybe. If I was out of everything else.

Flavored liquors (e.g., mango-flavored rum) are seldom a good route. If you want a flavor in your rum, try adding it yourself. I’m a big fan of “better living through chemicals,” but save it for the bathroom cleaners — adding those flavors yourself (fresh ingredients!) will be far more delicious.

Measuring
It might seem tedious, but measuring your ingredients really will make a difference. Especially when attempting to achieve the very delicate balance neccessary in a tropical cocktail, a jigger is your friend. The jigger wants good things for you. Learn to love your jigger. I personally use a small plastic angled cup from OXO designed for measuring small amounts of liquid. Some ingredients, like Pernod or Absinthe, have a very strong flavor; for these ingredients, consider trying an eye dropper or a spray mister (a well-cleaned old Chloraseptic bottle does the trick).

Presentation & Fragrance
You may be surprised to learn that many of the really delicious classic tropical cocktails are brown. I’m not sure I’ve ever met a pink or blue drink I’ve truly loved. The flair in a cocktail (aside from the top-priority taste) comes from the serving vessel, the aroma, and the garnish. Tiki mugs are the classic, and are always a crowd-pleaser, but I also very much enjoy drinking tropical cocktails out of a simple glass tumbler.

An element that is often overlooked in drinkmaking is the smell — our sense of smell enhances our sense of taste, and since these cocktails are cold, they typically don’t give off much smell on their own. The garnish can do that — a healthy sprig of mint (smacked to gently bruise it, and release its scent), a freshly-sliced cucumber spear, a fresh gardenia, a few drops of orange water — all are simple ways to add a whole new dimension to a drink. Other garnishes can include the classic pineapple chunk & cherry speared onto a cocktail umbrella, or one-half of a spent lime. The Tropical Itch traditionally comes with a small bamboo backscratcher for garnish. Larger garnishes can get in the way of drinking; don’t let that hold you back from going nutty, but don’t feel bad if the drink recipient yanks the garnish out. It is, after all, just for presentation.

Recipes
The best resources for proper tropical drink recipes are the books Grog Log and Intoxica! by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry. Berry put a lot of effort into tracking down the original, classic, true recipes of these drinks, as they were served by the masters who created them. His books are as close as we come to a gold standard. Another trusted source for recipes is Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails — unlike Berry’s tomes, which focus soley on tropicals, Haigh’s book covers a broad spectrum of drink recipes.

Experiment
Don’t be afraid to stray from the recipe! If what you’ve mixed doesn’t taste quite right to you, feel free to add a little of this, or a little of that. Recipe amounts often need a little tweaking — after all, there’s a bit of variation between batches of ingredients. If you decide that you want to make a more dramatic change to a recipe by adding a whole new ingredient or leaving one out, by all means you should — but you’re now making a different cocktail, and tradition calls for you to christen it with a new name.

Where to Get a Good Drink
Bah! This all looks like too much work! Where can you just go and buy a good cocktail? I wish I could say it was easy. It’s a dying art. Some (but not all!) of the Trader Vic’s bartenders are fantastic. Tiki-Ti in Los Angeles is legendary for their consistent delivery of top-notch cocktails. The Mai Kai in Ft. Lauderdale is cocktail heaven. Chef Shangri-La just outside of Chicago is an unexpected haven for fine drinks, as is Hula’s Island Grill in Monterey. You can find a list of tiki locations that are top-rated for drinks on Critiki; it’s interesting to note that many of the top-rated places are actually home bars.

So there you have it! That’s my wee little dent of an attempt to lay out the fundamentals of good tropical drink making, the very mainspring of a great tiki bar. Go out and have fun playing drinkmaster, you’ll just be doing your part to keep this fine craft alive!

• The Grog Log & Intoxica! [Amazon]
• Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails [Amazon]
• OXO Mini Measure Angled Cups [Amazon]
• Top 15 Drink Quality Locations [Critiki]
• Perfect Tiki Bar: The Lighting [Humu Kon Tiki]

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]

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