Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #24 Brenda’s Tiki Hut Sacramento, CA

Brenda's Tiki Hut

Common places to build a home Tiki bar include the basement or a garage. However, when Brenda Ray decided to build a Tiki bar, she chose to build her bar right in the center of her home! That’s dedication and her bar is well-stocked. Brenda’s rum collection is larger than some “real” bars I’ve been to. Let’s see how Brenda’s Tiki Hut came to be…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #23 Kimo’s Iki Tiki Ahi Hale. Morgan Hill, CA

Brigitte and Kimo at Kimo's Iki Tiki Ahi Hale

I remember reading a book from Chuck Palahniuk called Diary. The main point of the story is that everything about you is a diary. Everything is a “tell.” How you act, the way you dress, the type of music you listen to, etc. Even your furniture choices show your personality.

What makes every home Tiki bar special and unique is that the space was created and designed by the owner and no one else! As the old saying goes, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” but you can learn a lot about someone through their Tiki bar!

Disney, Hawaii, Tiki, and bulldogs. These are the passions of Brigitte and Jim “Kimo” Crawford and Kimo’s Iki Tiki Ahi Hale tells their story…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #21 The Streamlined Tiki Medford, OR

The Streamlined Tiki

Home Tiki bars: where should you build one?

Most of the time, someone’s Tiki escape is down in the basement or maybe in the garage. For Sweetie Suz and her husband Dave, it’s in their living room! Why limit your love of Tiki to some spare bedroom when you can show it to everyone who walks through the door? This is the story of the Streamlined Tiki…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #20 The Porthole Portland, OR

The Porthole

When you start collecting Tiki mugs, one turns into two, then two turns into three, and pretty soon you have an army of Tiki mugs trying to take over your house! What can you do? You build a home Tiki bar to display them! Rhonda and Bill Reedy did just that. They converted their basement into the Porthole and Tiki mugs are proudly displayed on shelf after shelf that spans its length. Here is Rhonda and Bill’s story…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #19 The Kanaloa Lounge Calgary Alberta, CA

The Kanaloa Lounge

Fun fact: Calgary is known as Cowtown! Even though Calgary is in the heart of Alberta, Canada, it has a cowboy/country feel to it. They even have a rodeo called the Calgary Stampede. You wouldn’t expect to see denim, daisy dukes, and cowboy hats in a metropolitan Canadian city. You kniow what else you wouldn’t expect to see? An awesome home Tiki bar! It’s called the Kanaloa Lounge and the man behind it is Aubrey Hallis. Here is his story…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #18 The Desert Oasis Room Corona, CA

The Desert Oasis Room photo by Mike Remmel

Adrian Eustaquio has been living the Tiki lifestyle for a long time—since the ’90s, to be exact. If anyone knows what Tiki is supposed to be, it’s Adrian. When it came time build his own bar, Adrian had a vision of what a proper Tiki bar should be and his place is truly outstanding. The Desert Oasis Room is so outstanding that it has been photographed for Hana Hou, which is Hawaiian Airlines own magazine! In fact, all the pictures used for this post are from professional photographers Kamala Kingsley and Mike Remmel. Here is Adrian’s story…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #17 A. Panda’s Tiki Lounge Bethlehem, PA

A. Panda Tiki Lounge

“Oh little town of Bethlehem…”

Bethlehem is one of the cities that make up the Lehigh Valley in eastern PA along with Allentown and Easton. For a long time, steel was Bethlehem’s main export, but the days of Bethlehem Steel’s reign are long gone. You may not find much steel in Bethlehem nowadays, but what you will find is a Tiki powerhouse in a man named Andy Panda!

Andy Panda has his own Tiki blog, his own Tiki radio station, and his own Tiki podcast. All are incredible. What also is incredible is A. Panda’s Tiki Lounge…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #16 The Alta Tiki Lounge Daly City, CA

Buz Deadwax owner of The Alta Tiki Lounge

“Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same…”

If your familiar with the TV show Weeds, you’ve heard this song sung by Malvina Reynolds. The neighborhood Malvina was singing about was actually Daly City and she describes it perfectly. All the homes are literally square boxes that are different pastel colors and built on the side of a hill. Hidden in one of these “square boxes made of ticky tacky” lies the Alta Tiki Lounge.

Buz Deadwax is the proud owner of The Alta Tiki Lounge and here is his story…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #15 The Fuzzy Smudge Olalla, WA

Mark and The Fuzzy Smudge
Mark and The Fuzzy Smudge

Remember that old saying “as the crow flies?”

It meant the actual distance between two points via a straight line. The town of Olalla is only 15 miles away from Seattle, but that doesn’t mean it’s close—let alone easy—to get to. The Puget Sound stands between Seattle and Olalla, which means you have two ways of getting there: taking a ferry or driving around and below the Puget Sound. A ferry trip is not cheap, so that means driving is the best way to get there. Why all the fuss about getting to Olalla? Because Debbie and Mark Whitehead live there and down in their basement lies the Fuzzy Smudge…

Going downstairs to The Fuzzy Smudge
Going downstairs to The Fuzzy Smudge
The Fuzzy Smudge bar
The Fuzzy Smudge bar

Here is Debbie and Mark’s story…

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