Your Weekend Tiki Cocktail: The Blue Hawaiian

As I was driving the convertible into work this morning, Bing’s version of Blue Hawaii came on the XM-band radio. It was like, kismet, man. So here it is, for you laid-back swingers who want to bask in the hot tropical sun,

The Blue Hawaiian

An easy drink to make, this Tiki Cocktail looks kool, tastes great and is very refreshing on hot sandy beach.

1 oz silver rum
 (or kick it up with an ounce of Sailor Jerry or Bacardi 151)
1 oz blue curacao
2 oz pineapple juice
1 oz cream of coconut (Coco Loco)
Cherry
Fresh Pineapple
Orchid

Shake the rum, curacao, pineapple juice and cream of coconut well in shaker with ice and strain into a clear hurricane glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish it up with a sword full of cherries and pineapple, and top it off with the orchid. If you don’t have an orchid, don’t sweat it. Just put one of those little plastic mermaids on the side of the glass.

You can also go a step further and do the more popular frozen variety by adding a cup of crushed ice and blending. Vodka is often substituted for rum in the Frozen Blue Hawaiian, thanks to the efforts of Smirnoff’s marketing department. But who ever heard of Hawaiians drinking blue vodka? Wait…I don’t think Hawaiians originally had rum either. C’est la vie, baby.

-Tiki Chris reporting from behind the bar at Tiki Lounge Talk, the swingin’ tiki blog for tikiphiles and retro-lovin’ hep kats.

Tropical Storm may squash weekend plans in Cocoa Beach

If you follow me on Twitter or The Retro Tiki Lounge on Facebook, you’ve probably heard we’ve been planning a trip to the Space Coast, Cocoa Beach for this weekend. It’s been an up-and-down/on-and-off-and-back-on-again krazy kind of plan. We were originally going to swing up to Orlando (with a stop in Cocoa) on a work/trip, but the work part got canceled. We managed to rescue the Cocoa Beach part of the trip, but several events in the last week (flat tire, sudden influx of rescue puppies and kittens, dates moved on paying gigs with the little lady, etc etc) have severely screwed things up.

As of yesterday, we were all set up for a cruise up to Cocao today. Then this goofy Tropical storm, which is all the way down in the Caribbean, decided to fling itself into a big mess of rain clouds and shot some rain all the way up the East Coast of Florida. So as of now, 10:30 am on Friday, here in Fort Lauderdale is a big soggy wreck of a day, and our sources north tell us Cocoa Beach isn’t much different.

One thing you should know about Florida: The best stuff to do is outdoors. Even the Tiki Bars are all either open-air, on the water (Like Islamorada) or have great tropical gardens (like the Mai Kai). So zipping around in the rain is maximum dullsville.

Cocoa Beach is full of kool old ’50s motels and Tiki-ness. It’s like you can’t get drunk and fall over without hitting a Tiki. There are great Tiki Carvers up there, and lots of fun beachy stuff. And the plan was to take lots of pix and post a report on this seaside Tiki lovers’ getaway. But I’m afraid this TS-Bonnie is going to squash the plans on this foray into vintage-meets-neo tiki culture. It’s no fun driving three hours on I-95 in buckets of rain, even in the sleek little Cruiser with the aquatreds, especially if it’s to spend most of the time sitting in the motel room waiting for the rain to stop. So, we’ll see how it plays out today. If Bonnie bows out by tonight, we’ll swing up tomorrow instead of today. If not, this weekend will be a great time to catch up on some writing.

More to come…

Later Gators.

-Tiki Chris, soaking wet and not packed yet, reporting from under the overhang of the lanai at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar. Tiki Lounge Talk, The Tiki Culture Blog for Hep Kats and Swingin’ Kittens.

The Manhattan: Weekend Cocktails at the Tiki Bar

Ready for the weekend kids? We sure are at the Tiki Bar! Since out last post was on some sophisticated Latin Jazz, lets Jazz the weekend up with some sophisticated cocktails…

The typical Manhattan calls for rye whiskey and sweet vermouth. Here are two twists on the original:

Bourbon Manhattan

3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 1/2 oz good bourbon whiskey (I’d go with Maker’s Mark)
1 dash bitters
1 maraschino cherry
1 twist orange peel

Pour the booze and bitters over the rocks and stir gently. Add the Cherry; twist the orange into the drink and ditch the peel. A little sweeter and smoother than the traditional drink.

The Manhattan Cocktail. Old-style is served in a rocks glass.

Southern Comfort Manhattan

1 1/2 oz. Southern Comfort
1/2 oz dry vermouth
dash bitters
Cherry

Stir with cracked ice, strain into a glass (also good on the rocks). Drop in the cherry and you’re good to go with a ’60s style cocktail that will make the southern belles melt.

Either of these splashes would be a great accompaniment to the sultry tunes presented in our previous post.

-Tiki Chris reporting from the Tiki Bar

Memories from Hukilau 2010, Fort Lauderdale

There’s nothing like getting a bunch of swingin’ kats and kittens together with island music, vintage threads and lots of rum. Well kids, let me tell you, his year’s Hukilau didn’t disappoint. From tattooed chicks in short skirts and flower leis to guys wearing palm tree shirts and short-brimmed fedoras, the eclectic crowd that swamped Fort Lauderdale was more fun than a barrel of fez-wearing monkeys.

That's me, Tiki Chris with three of my best girls - Colleen, Shannon & Molly

If you’ve been to an event like this (or to this one) you know how much fun can be packed into a couple of rum-drenched days. If you haven’t then you should definitely plan to. Our presence at the event was truncated due to a busy work schedule, but we still had a fantastic time on Friday night, Saturday and Saturday night. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking forward to the Hukilau!

The Hukilau in Fort Lauderdale is this weekend, and I must say that us kats and kittens at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar have been looking forward to this since we left last year’s shindig. This year, we’ll be hitting the Mai Kai for dinner and show with a couple of friends who’ve never seen it…in fact, even though they’ve lived down here in the land of palm trees and Mojitos for years, they’ve never been to the Mai Kai at all. Krazy, huh?

Bahia Cabana, site of the Hukilau

That brings up a point. It amazes me just how little most people know about our little Tiki and Retro culture, even though if you look hard enough, it’s everywhere. The Hukilau is one of the largest Tiki events in the galaxy, and brings in a lot of business to Fort Lauderdale. Yet most of the people I’ve yapped about it to have never even heard of it. Hell, I didn’t find out about it until just a few years ago, and I love this stuff! Maybe it’s best kept as a best kept secret, huh?

As for this  weekend, we’ll be attending the Friday night party and we’ll be at Bahia Cabana during the day on Saturday; we’ll be watching the premier of the Tikimentary ‘In Search of the Lost Paradise’; we’re going to the Wreck Bar for the Mermaid Show and will hit the Mai Kai in the evening. (Note to burglars: We have a very large dog, an cop-wired alarm and a next door neighbor with a shotgun and a coke habbit).

So as far as Tiki Lounge Talk posts go, not sure how things are going to play out in the next couple of days, so you might not hear from me until Sunday. That of course depends on the level of intoxication achieved at The Hukilau, catch my drift? Groovy. And for those swingers going to the big party - see you there kids…just like last year, I’ll be the guy in the Hawaiian shirt!

-Tiki Chris Pinto, reporting from the lanai next to the pool.