Unofficial Word on The Tonga Room, San Francisco: “I think we’ll be open for a long time to come.”

The Tonga Room
The Tonga Room

A quick call to the reservations line at The Fairmount Hotel’s historic Tonga Room gave some great news. They were ready to accept a reservation for the last weekend in June, and when I asked if the rumors that they were closing were true, the answer was “I think we’ll be open for a long time to come.” Great news. Not official, of course, but promising. After all, a town meeting this February was supposed to decide the fate of the famous Tonga Room, as the hotel’s owners have plans to dismantle the mid-century Tiki Bar to make way for the development of a new condo tower. But no news has come out of San Fran this February…at least nothing that made it to the net.

We Tiki people really want to see the Tonga Room preserved. Of course, we want the owners of the Tiki bar and the hotel to make money, too. In a perfect world, the hotel owners would be able to have their condos and keep the Tonga Room intact. The money made on the condos could further enhance the hotel and promote the Tonga Room as a major tourist destination, much like the highly successful Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is.

By the 1960s The Tonga Room was transformed into a full-fledge Tiki Bar complete with mid-pool bandstand, hurricane bar and a real tropical storm
By the 1960s The Tonga Room was transformed into a full-fledge Tiki Bar complete with mid-pool bandstand, hurricane bar and a real tropical storm

If anyone has any additional info on the Fairmount or the Tonga Room, please comment below. I’ve never been to the Tonga Room, and hope it will still be there when I swing out to the West Coast in the future.

-Tiki Chris Pinto reporting from the lanai, at Tiki Lounge Talk. Tiki news, Tiki Talk, all the Tiki Time.

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