We all know Star Wars isn’t Tiki and Tiki isn’t Star Wars, but can you combine the two?
I believe that answer is YES! Proof positive of a perfect example of a Star Wars themed tiki bar is Peter Haugen’s Tatooiniki. Peter combined elements of Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine and a classic tiki bar to create a truly unique space. Here is how his home tiki bar, Tatooiniki, came to be. A Long Tiki Time Ago, In A Tiki Galaxy Far, Far, Away …
What is the tiki scene like in New Jersey?
In all honesty, we’re still discovering it. Central/Northern NJ is home to three “classic” tiki bars which are great, especially, Lun Wah Restaurant (think Chinese restaurant with bamboo, tiki masks with LED eyes, and Christmas lights over the bar). However, we’re also a 30 minute train ride from New York City, where the Polynesian has really become our favorite local tiki bar. Brian Miller has done an incredible job developing new twists on the familiar classic drinks but, more than that, he has created a coherent, fully-realized reinterpretation of tiki including original furniture, artwork, light fixtures, etc., that set the vibe from the moment you walk through the velvet drapes. It’s quite the top-down creation. That’s not at all to say we don’t have a deep appreciation for more ‘organic’ tiki bars, where the layers accrue like the rings of a tree.
What brought you into the ‘Tiki lifestyle” and how long has it been a part of your life?
Peter’s father was a pilot in the Air Force in the 1960s, then later for Pan Am, where Peter’s mother was a flight attendant. By the mid-60’s, both were based out of San Francisco and flew the Pacific routes for years; the Philippines, Hawaii, Australia, etc. Their mid-century modern home was furnished with a number of pieces of teak wood furniture from overseas along with a vast collection of seashells, etc. So, aviation and flotsam and jetsam from the Pacific have always been around in Peter’s life.
A few years back, in preparation for a trip with our two young boys to Kennedy Space Center, Peter was brushing up on some of his 60’s space race history and realized that the Mercury 7 astronauts spent a lot of time in tiki bars on Florida’s space coast. A close friend of ours who grew up down there remembers astronauts Gus Grissom and Jim Lovell at his family’s backyard luaus! And it was around this same time that our boys were obsessed with the movie Moana, so even they got into the act, leaving us with a heavy rotation of faux Polynesia. Peter’s parents have made a number of direct contributions to our bar – his mom passed along a gold-tasseled first class menu from a Pan Am 747 “Clipper Ship” which we’ve framed and displayed. His dad’s Pan Am captain’s hat resides in a place of honor, on its very own stand behind the bar when it’s not perched atop Peter’s head!
Can you give a little history of how it all came together?
Our bar started with Peter’s impulsive purchase of a large beach-themed, inlaid-wood bar top–salvaged from a South Jersey mansion–in 2014, shortly after we moved to the ‘burbs from Brooklyn with our family. We had nowhere to install it at that point, so it sat in a corner of our garage draped in some moving blankets. A couple of years later, once we had done some work to make our formerly-leaky basement watertight, we began the process of designing a bar around our bar. In fact, we designed our entire finished basement around the bar top, because there was only one part of the L-shaped basement where it would fit! Peter began building in earnest in 2018. The bar made its debut Labor Day weekend 2018 and has hosted approximately monthly parties ever since, even as its decor and furnishings are constantly evolving.
What is the story behind the name of your bar?
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, but you feel like you’re in a galaxy far, far away. Tatooiniki, the world’s only Star Wars-themed tiki bar (we assume … right?) is at your service. As Star Wars fans well know, Tatooine is the remote, desert home planet of Luke Skywalker (in addition to notable others). For Peter, after watching Star Wars multiple times in the theater at five years old, the image of a 19 year old Luke staring off into the distance at the twin setting suns of his home world with a grand adventure just around the corner was sweet, sweet nectar.
Later in life, Peter realized that if he mentally inserted a palm tree or two (as we did for some of Tatooiniki’s artwork), Tatooine and its denizens become the familiar natives, beachcombers, pirates, explorers, and traders of our domestic tiki-verse. Working through that conceit has been one of the primary, escapist pleasures of this bar project. In a strange twist of unwitting reverse engineering, we found out recently that George Lucas wrote portions of the Star Wars script while sipping cocktails at Tiki Ti tiki bar in Los Angeles. Some of the characters from the Cantina scene may even have been based on Tiki Ti locals.
A few other Star Wars elements we’ve incorporated into the tiki bar’s decor: The wall behind the bar features a hand-built, illuminated, woven-grass and bamboo installation referencing Tatooine’s twin suns (which are also referenced in the double “o”s of the bar’s logo, also created by Liz, a graphic designer and branding consultant.
We have a 30-minute soundtrack of jungle sounds with occasional thunderstorms synced with a lightning machine playing on a loop at all times. As an audio easter egg, Peter has hidden iconic sounds from the Star Wars movies (e.g., wookie roar, blaster) in the mix roughly every 8 mins. Our dear friend and fellow tiki-phile Liz painted a large mural of Jabba’s palace complete with Tusken Raiders, Banthas and palm trees on one of the walls.
The remaining walls are lined with still images of “tribal natives” from the Star Wars films ‘tikified’ by rendering them in black and white film grain with labels written as though by an anthropologist on an exotic expedition. Yes, it’s a bit ‘meta’ but a) we think it works and b) it’s a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of some of the more egregious cultural appropriation that is woven throughout tiki culture.
On that topic, we also make monthly donations to non-profits based in and serving the people of Polynesia (Please check out the American Samoa Alliance Against Domestic and Sexual Violence) as a way of giving something back to the real communities from whom so much of our fun is derived, so often without permission or compensation. It’s a complicated relationship that we have with our fun, “not-but-not-not-Polynesian” space, to quote Humuhumu.
What is your favorite Tiki drink?
A quality Mai Tai is always a good tiki bar barometer. Our own take on the Polynesian Paralysis, “Scum and Villainy,” is also becoming a bar favorite.
What is your favorite Tiki bar? Not including your own!
We have to pick?! Smuggler’s Cove in San Francisco or Trader Sam’s at WDW. Layers, layers, and more layers! Vertical layers! At the other end of the spectrum, we also loved the beach-cottage-meets-70s-rec-room vibe at South Seas Tiki Bar in Charleston.
Outside of great drinks, what do you think are essential elements in creating the perfect Tiki environment?
It has to transport you, to feel wholly separate and self-contained from the world outside. We’re not averse to high-concept or elegance, but we do want a tiki bar to have a sense of fun and be a little bit cheeky.
What does the future hold for you and your home tiki bar?
Tatooiniki is constantly evolving as we are always on the hunt for inspiration and unique decor. We have held one party in our space that doubled as a fundraiser, but as we get more confident in our party-hosting, we’re open to the possibility of loaning out our space to non-profit organizations, civic groups, and political campaigns for small events.
Last December, we hosted our block’s annual holiday party, and this summer we’re planning an Independence Day party. Our boys, now 4 and almost 7, love spending time down in the bar and would very much like for us to host more tiki gatherings that include them!
Super cool idea. I liked how they took Star Wars stills and made them look like expedition photos. So glad to see that Tiki is not stultifying by being held up to some Aristotlean (sp?) ideal. While I do love me a classic Tiki room, there’s plenty of room for variation. This is the stuff that keeps it fresh and fun for the next generation. Well done Peter and Beth!