TIKI CULTURE

Happy Thanksgiving from the Tiki Bar! Hess Trucks & Charlie Brown

The first Hess truck, 1963

Thanksgiving in the subtropics is a little different than it is for most people. For instance, today I put the top down on the convertible and drove down to the Hess station to buy a toy Hess Truck.

When I was a kid, we’d get up extra early on Thanksgiving, drive down to the Log Cabin Diner in West Atlantic City and have breakfast (they were one of the few places open). It was right next to the Hess Station…and we’d have breakfast there because the Hess Trucks came out on Thanksgiving Day. The Hess station opened at 8am, and there was always a line of about 50 people waiting in line to get a truck. We waited in this line for several years in a row, until we realized that line fizzled out around 9. So we’d go to the diner, have breakfast and wait for the line to slow down. Once it was down to about 5 people, one of us would go get in line, buy a truck, and return to breakfast.

If you didn’t get a Hess Truck on opening day, chances are you wouldn’t get one at all that year.

Things are a little different now…they trucks come out on November 11, and you can always get one online. Oh…and I remember when they were $4.95. Now they’re 28 clams.

Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

One thing that never changes is Charlie Brown…We’ve been watching the “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” since it came out in 1973. Of course back then you had to get the TV Guide and bookmark the page for the date and time. In the 80’s we video taped it, so we didn’t have to worry about missing it. In the 90s we bought the video tape, and that’s what we still watch every year.

What a masterpiece of mangling holiday traditions! What kid wouldn’t want a dinner of popcorn, toast and jellybeans, prepared and served by his dog? I have to admit, at least twice over the years we’ve had a similar Thanksgiving dinner…once on purpose, for fun.

If you haven’t seen CB’s Thanksgiving, you’re missing out on a real treat. You can catch the whole episode of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on YouTube.

The house smells like turkey. We’ve got the air conditioning on because it’s 78° outside. We’ll have our traditional little turkey dinner in the dining room, then have drinks at the Tiki Bar on the lanai.

From us here in the sunny land of South Florida, we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Veterans Day, Yankee Fighter Cocktail Recipe

On this Veterans Day, 11/11/11, I thought it would be kool to thank all the men and women who served with a kool new cocktail.

The Yankee Fighter Highball

This is a simple one but is tough as nails and tastes good too.

1 1/2 oz Wild Turkey

1/2 oz Southern Comfort

Club soda (not seals)

Beef Jerky (yes, you read right)

Fill a highball glass with ice, add the Turkey and the SoCo and stir. Top with club soda, give a quick stir, garnish with a piece of beef jerky. Don’t get much tougher than that!

Happy Veterans Day! Thank you Veterans!

-Tiki Chris reporting from the mess tent at Tiki Lounge Talk, the Tiki Culture Blog for swingin’ kittens and hep kats.

Celebrate International Exotic Cocktail Day!

Happy International Exotic Cocktail Day!

Today is a day to remember how much we all love Tiki cocktails. Most of us do this on a daily or weekly basis anyway, but what the hell, let’s have one special day to really drive the point home, right?

So I raise of glass of imported rums, exotic spices and fresh citrus juices to you all Tikiphiles, Retro lovers and all. Cheers!

We’ll be celebrating tonight at Florida’s famous Wreck Bar at the Yankee Clipper in Fort Lauderdale, where we’ll be watching Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid’s show. Then it’s off to the Mai Kai! My plan is to have a Mai Tai, a Jet Pilot and a Rum Barrel. We’ll see how that goes…

Hope you kids all have a great time tonight…whether it’s at your favorite Tiki bar, or in your own home with friends, take a few minutes to remember that no matter how hard times get, no matter how bad things are, a cool and tasty Exotic Cocktail can take you away for a little while.

-Tiki Chris P. reporting from Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar at Tiki Lounge Talk

Looking for Exotic Cocktail recipes? Check out Tiki Lounge Talk’s

Tiki Drinks Page

For lots of kool, vintage style concoctions.

The Playboy Club Already Canceled; Pan Am Soars; International Exotic Cocktail Day Almost Here

"Two double Martinis, Jimmy...and whatever the lady wants."

Well, I guess my scathing review of the premier of The Playboy Club was on the mark. After only three episodes, the retro drama is off the air…So far NBC doesn’t even have plans to run off the remaining episodes in another time slot. Poor initial ratings and sharp viewer decline in the last two episodes (along with some squawking from a big-mouthed religious group who thinks Playboy is pornographic, ugh) caused the advertisers to jump ship. And without dough, there’s no show. Shame, since episode two was a thousand times better than episode one. Haven’t seen the third one yet.

Now…when you swing over to Pan Am, you can’t help but smile. They’ve really captured the era, and give people like us an hour a week to feel like we’re back in the days when you could get a real martini (in a real glass martini glass), complete with olives and pretty, smiling stewardess on an airplane.The story lines are solid and keep us interested, and peaks of vintage Cadillacs and Chryslers remind us of the days when the most elegant, luxurious and powerful cars were built in Detroit.

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Friday is International Exotic Cocktail Day!

At the Tiki Bar...

We’ve been waiting all year for Friday, October 7 just so we could drink a cool rum concoction! Ok, we didn’t wait. But what better way to pledge our allegiance to the Exotic Cocktail than to have a day dedicated to it? This Friday, raise a glass and toast your friends, family, boss, gardener, dog, whatever, wherever you are, whatever time you can make it. Celebrate International Exotic Cocktail Day with me, and show the world you’re a Tiki Drink Lover!

We’ll be celebrating at the famous Wreck Bar in Fort Lauderdale, watching Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid’s show through the portholes. Then it’s off to the Mai Kai for a nightcap. Hope to see some of you there!

-Tiki Chris P. reporting from the Tiki Lounge

Halloween Decorating Has Begun At The Tiki Lounge!

Yes, these are skeleton flamingos. Just like the pink ones.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know how kookie I am for Halloween. Every year I abandon sanity and turn my humble, tropical-themed home into a house of horrors, complete with animatronic monsters, creepy crawlies, and a facade over my front entrance that creates the perfect atmosphere for a hauntingly good time.

I’ve already started building props and organizing decor for this year’s shindig, and have in fact begun putting up decor in lesser-used rooms of Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar (my abode). The goal this year, as it is every year, is to have everything done a few weeks before Halloween so I can actually enjoy the season…including going to haunted-house walk-throughs, and being able for OPP - other people’s parties.

A hollographic image-changing photo, just like at the Haunted Mansion.

This year’s theme is VAMPIRES. A cliché, I know, but vamps are so hot this year that I couldn’t resist. The real trick is decorating a goth Vampire’s lair with Tiki undertones…hmmm…

This will be the official 25th anniversary of my kooky Monster Mash Bash, a party I started on a crisp October day in 1986 when a hot chick I knew came to me and said she wanted to have a Halloween party at her spooky house in the woods.

A skeleton in my closet

Turned out the chick was nutz, so my friends and I had the party at my place. I was only 18, and funds were low so we did the whole party on a budge of 12 bucks. Cheap, market-brand soda, no-frills chips, homemade onion dip and popcorn served as the fare while we watched old black and white horror movies made fun of each others’ costumes. I was Dracula for that first party…and I suppose I will be again this year.

Playwitch...my favortie magazine (Yes, I made that myself)

Of course, every party is done with a retro style theme. I mean, what holiday is more “retro-ee” than Halloween? (and don’t say Christmas. Nobody does old-fashioned Christmases anymore. Not when there’s an iPad under the tree). The whole point of Halloween is to celebrate a centuries-old tradition, with witches and goblins and vampires and zombies and all those groovy monsters that all go way back. We watch classic horror films, bob for apples and eat candy just like your grandparents did. Even the decor…at least anything store-bought…still looks like it did 30, 50, 80 years ago.

25 years ago the paper cut-out skeletons and pumpkins looked the same as they do now, the same as they did when I was a little kid. Hmmm 25 years. 25 years is a long stretch to do anything, especially a party. A third of the kittens showing up at the party won’t even be 25 years old! So I’m going to have to do something extra special for this year’s soiree. I dunno…maybe I’ll get some real monsters this year!

-Tiki “Drac” Chris, reporting from the dungeon at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar