Tiki bars were invented in Hollywood by a former rum-runner from Texas
The Pacific never produced a tiki bar. The style began in 1933 when a young man with a rum-running past opened Don's Beachcomber in Hollywood, mixing Cantonese food, Caribbean rum and movie-set Polynesia. Even the word tiki, as Americans used it, was unknown in the languages of the Pacific.
Tiki is the Māori name for the first human, and hei-tiki pendants were treasured objects that Europeans turned into mass-market lucky charms. From the late 1930s Americans applied the word to torches, punches and themed rooms. Hawaiians themselves said kiʻi. The label tiki culture only arrived in the 1990s, to describe a revival.
Its founder, Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, came from Texas and New Orleans, claimed to have sailed much of the Pacific, and eventually changed his name legally to Donn Beach. His bar opened as Prohibition ended, dressed with torches, rattan and leis straight out of South Seas films. In 1936 an Oakland restaurateur, Victor Bergeron, ate there, went home and rebranded as Trader Vic's; he even told customers that the leg he had lost to tuberculosis was taken by a shark. Imitators piled on. Clifton's Cafeteria in Los Angeles was remodelled in 1939 with 12 waterfalls, and The Luau's owner listed the global origins of his building materials on the menu.
Several forces then fed the craze. Matson Line advertising sold island cruises, the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition celebrated Pacific culture with an 80-foot statue, and hundreds of thousands of servicemen came home from the South Pacific after 1945 with stories and souvenirs. Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki raft voyage put the word into everyday American speech, and Easter Island heads joined the motifs. James Michener's Pulitzer-winning Tales of the South Pacific inspired a hit musical. A booming middle class and new civilian flights to Hawaii did the rest. Bergeron franchised from 1949, and Beach and his ex-wife ran at least 25 restaurants.
Tourism flipped the story around: native bartenders in Hawaii did not recognise the supposedly Hawaiian drinks visitors ordered, though Harry Yee did invent the Blue Hawaii in 1957. The fashion faded, then revived in the early 21st century among cocktail and retro enthusiasts. Critics now challenge it for blending islands spread over 10,000 miles into a single colonial fantasy and for appropriating Indigenous cultures.
Source: Tiki culture
