Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #114 Rita’s Lost Weekend – Matawan NJ

Rita's Lost Weekend

Remember that movie Escape From New York?

Once you got in, it was hard to get out. But in reality, it’s quite the opposite. If you want to drive into Manhattan from New Jersey you have only three options: Holland Tunnel, Lincoln Tunnel or the George Washington Bridge. If you want to take a train in, you got two ways in, NJ Transit or you can take the PATH train.

So, if you want to tiki and you live in New Jersey, what do you do? You don’t escape to New York, you build a tiki bar in your garage and escape there! This is exactly what Shanna and Johnny did and here’s their story…

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Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #69 Rodgers Reef 2.0 – Barnegat NJ

James Rodgers lives along the Jersey Shore where there are tons of “tiki bars”, well not really. If you start getting into tiki, you realize there’s a difference between a true tiki bar and a beach bar. Both types of bars share many of the same elements like bamboo, thatch and even tikis! It all comes down to the vibe, tiki bars are supposed to be dark and mysterious, not bright and sunny. Since there aren’t any real tiki bars on the Jersey Shore, James built his own …

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Tiki Bar Review #20 Lee’s Hawaiian Islander Lyndhurst, NJ

Lee's Hawaiian Islander

Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

It’s a city that’s a 45-minute train ride from downtown Manhattan. It has no claim to fame and I can’t see anyone needing to or wanting to go there—unless you happen to be my buddy Matt who lives there.

I was in Pennsylvania visiting my parents and long story short, I missed my connecting flight that would get me back to Seattle. I asked the man at the flight desk what my options were. He said I could come back the next day and fly out at 5:00 AM (no, I wasn’t doing that!) or I could fly down to Newark right then and fly out from there the next morning at 8:00 (okay, that’s much better). So that’s what I did.

Matt picked me up at the Newark airport and started heading back to his place. “Are you hungry?” Matt asked. “If so, there’s someplace you need to see.”

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