Tiki Time

<img alt="vintagetiki.jpg" src="http://suttonfirstchurch.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/vintagetiki.jpg" width="386" height="600"

I knew it all along. Tiki drinking is "in." So "in" in fact, that tiki cocktails in all their rum-soaked kitschy glory were served at my "Lost" parties a while back. Now, the Wall Street Journal says that these Polynesian pearls are making the rounds around the rest of the country:

With the much-repeated words "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression" marking the moment, it seems appropriate to visit that peculiarly American escape -- the tiki bar -- itself born in the depths of the Depression. It was in 1934 that Donn Beach (né Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt) opened Don the Beachcomber in Los Angeles, starting a craze that took roughly 50 years to fizzle. The time seems ripe for a Polynesian Pop revival -- and, in fact, it's already under way.

Starting Thursday, and going through next Sunday, tikiphiles will be descending on the San Francisco Bay area for the eighth annual Tiki Bar Crawl. The Bay Area was one of the original hot spots of tikiana: Victor Bergeron owned an Oakland barbecue place called Hinky Dinks; after visiting Don the Beachcomber's place in L.A., Bergeron promptly bedecked his restaurant with tiki carvings, bamboo and outrigger canoes and rechristened it "Trader Vic's." The Bay area is still home to a remarkable number of tiki bars, big and small, old and new. That's why the community of tiki fanatics -- who normally gather online at aficionado Hanford Lemoore's Web site, www.tikiroom.com -- make San Francisco and Oakland their destinations to meet and drink in person. Go to www.tikicrawl.com to find out when and where to join them...

Guess I'm a trend setter.

Zombie anyone?