Zach Malm has only been into tiki 18 months and that time he visited a ton of tiki bars including Smuggler’s Cove, Zombie Village and Sunken Harbor Club to name a few. And in that 18 months Zach decided to build his own tiki bar! It’s called the Meka Leka Hideaway and if you like Pee-wee Herman, you know exactly where the name came from…
Continue reading “Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #123 Meka Leka Hideaway – Mountlake Terrace WA”
I met Shani Thomson at Tiki Kon a couple years ago. She mentionted that she has a home tiki and she lives in Victoria BC. I live in Seattle and getting up to “The Island” can be a little difficult. The best way to get up to Victoria taking The Clipper which is a ferry boat that leaves downtown Seattle and will drop you off in the middle of downtown Victoria. Paul Tanner put together and home tiki bar tour, visiting three home bars including Shani’s! I finally got to see The Huki Lounge which is in Shani’s living room or is it the other way around? Here is Shani’s story of how she got into tiki and the history of The Huki Lounge…
Continue reading “Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #122 The Huki Lounge – Victoria BC”
From Parrot Head to Tikiphile…
Before Ed Schroeder discovered tiki, he was a Parrot Head. There’s a lot of crossover between the tiki, pirate and Jimmy Buffett subcultures. From an outsider’s perspective, they may appear all the same, but as Ed slowly discovered the world of tiki, he realized that tiki bars are the “real deal” and started to build his own! Kraken’s Bay Tiki Lounge is Ed’s basement but it feels like paradise. Here is Ed’s story…
Continue reading “Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #117 Kraken’s Bay Tiki Lounge Warren MI”
Would you have a piranha as a pet?
During covid times, Wendy and Carl had a lot of time to kill so they decided to build a tiki bar behind their home in Seaback WA. Seabeck in located out on the Peninsula here in the Pacific Northwest and is about an hour and a half drive from Seattle. You need to travel on a dirt road through the woods to get to The Thirsty Piranha and I have to be honest is kind of creepy going through at night. It’s really dark out there! But once you get to Wendy and Carl’s home you start seeing the multicolored lights of the Thirsty Piranha. There are plenty of windows which would normally be frowned upon for a tiki bar but here, it works! You feel like your outside with nature and you don’t have to be worry about getting eaten by a bear, but inside, you have to watch out for the piranhas!
Continue reading “Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #115 Thirsty Piranha – Seabeck WA”Hala Kahiki in the northern suburbs of Chicago has the largest collection of Witco I have ever seen. I actually did a blog post just highlighting all the Witco pieces there and there’s a lot! Another place that has a respectable collection of Witco is Chef Shangri-La…
I stumbled upon a random tiki video on YouTube…
I’m always on the lookout for any tiki videos on YouTube and I found one. It was a video of someone giving a tour of their home tiki bar. You couldn’t see the person but you can hear the person talking about all the pieces that make up their bar. That person is GiGi and she’s from the UK. I was impressed with what I saw in that video but I noticed that there was more. Gigi made videos for each step on her build out and it was really cool to see the transformation. The name of the bar is The Kursed Piranha and here is how it all came to be…
Continue reading “Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #112 The Kursed Piranha – London UK”
Like many, we’ve been looking forward to the opening of Munktiki’s Dead Man’s Isle now for a long time, and were delighted to finally get to spend a weekend in Astoria, and visit – not once, but twice. Consequently, our notes are a composite of those two experiences…
Continue reading “Dead Man’s Isle – Guest Tiki Bar Review by Tom Hemmen (Astoria OR)”
What is Butlin’s?
What is a Holiday Camp?
And what’s a tiki bar called The Beachcomber Bar doing there?
Continue reading “The Beachcomber Bar At Butlin’s Holiday Camp”
There have been many tiki bars/restaurants that have come and gone over the years. Sometimes the building is demolished and something new is built, sometimes the building gets “repurposed” and becomes another business entirely, or the building is just abandoned and left to rot away. Sadly, when a tiki bar is gone, it’s gone for good and all that is left is the memories of the patrons who were lucky enough to go when the bar was still open …
Continue reading “Knobby’s Mai Tai Restaurant – A History In Bits And Pieces Compiled By Bob Cripe”
I think it’s safe to say that Hala Kahiki located in River Grove, Illinois may have the largest collection of Witco anywhere!
