My Intro to Tiki Oasis
We stopped to eat breakfast in San Clemente this morning on our drive back from Tiki Oasis in San Diego. The server at Antoine’s Cafe saw our outfits and event wristbands and asked where we were coming from. We did our best to explain the entirety of Tiki Oasis in a few short sentences, but I don’t think we really succeeded. She responded to us by saying, “You guys must be really into tiki!”
“Not really,” I answered, sort of shaking my head; “At least not compared to most of the people there.”
To be fair, my wife and I both very much enjoy tiki culture and the vast, ever-growing community within which we’ve made countless friends. As I’ve written about in previous posts, there’s no genre or movement in the wine and spirits industry that can hold a candle to the popularity of the neo-tiki renaissance. It’s not just the booze. It’s the fashion, the merch, the gear, the posters, the artwork, the parties, and the lifestyle that make the current tiki atmosphere so incredible to behold.
I’ve easily spent five figures over the past year on tiki cocktails, clothing, mugs, sculptures, swizzles, and various events for my personal enjoyment. That being said, I still wouldn’t put my wife nor myself in the category of folks I would consider "really into tiki.” That qualification belongs to many of the people I spent the last 48 hours mingling with at Tiki Oasis—the largest gathering of tiki enthusiasts on the planet—in San Diego.
Pictures don’t really do it justice, so I’m going to embed my latest Instagram post packed with numerous videos below.
Here’s my best attempt to summarize Tiki Oasis into one paragraph. Imagine an entire hotel resort (in this case the Town & Country) that has been completely taken over by tiki fanatics. You walk into the lobby and there are hundreds of people in bright colors and floral prints drinking cocktails, swimming in the pool, listening to live bands, dancing to DJs, and making connections across a gigantic tropical-themed estate. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, imagine an entire conference center transformed into a huge marketplace with over 100 vendors, each with their own tiki-themed specialty: mugs, carvings, swizzles, paintings, jewelry, artwork, vintage gear, etc, along with seminars and special events, all brimming with endless, ever-flowing booze at every turn.
But that’s just the “official” Tiki Oasis scheduling.
Then you have the unofficial programming (aka room parties) that takes place from morning until night in dozens and dozens of the Town & Country’s private suites. It might be a brand takeover, or a certain bar’s mixologists who are throwing a special pop-up for a couple of hours. It could be a random group of strangers who decide to camp out in one of the elevators and hand out Bloody Maries and Mimosas to anyone who rides between floors. It could be two people running kegs of pre-batched tiki drinks in the hallway balcony. It might just be a guy (in this case, me) with really expensive booze in a black bag with a special surprise for anyone who has the secret password.
This was indeed our first ever Tiki Oasis, but we caught on pretty quick. By the end of the day on Saturday, we had infiltrated every nook and cranny of both the official and unofficial festivities. I often use punk rock as a metaphor for the tiki community (you could use Christianity as well, but punk rock is more fun). Punk rock is a musical genre often celebrated as a lifestyle with a very specific style of fashion. That being said, there are many, many subdivisions under that umbrella: hardcore punk, political punk, pop punk, and you can even merge them off into fusions of other genres like psychobilly or ska. Tiki is the same way.
You’ve got the traditionalists—the guys who adhere to original founders’ aesthetic and vision. To them, anything that isn’t Don the Beachcomber or Trader Vic-inspired isn’t real tiki. Then you’ve got the islanders, aka the guys who take real Polynesian culture as their muse. There’s also the mid-century modern adherents, who are more interested in tiki as a part of vintage Americana. Then there’s the pop culture enthusiasts who meld mainstream media into their appreciation, weaving in elements of television and film (there were several people dressed as Magnum P.I as you can see in my photos above). It even spins off into horror and goth! Yesterday, I purchased an expensive one-of-a-kind tiki mug shaped like the mutated monster from John Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing!
I could write an entire week’s worth of articles about tiki culture, the parties at Tiki Oasis, and how wonderfully creative its participants are, but I’ll leave that for another time. My first-ever Tiki Oasis is now in the books and I have so many ideas for next year. I can’t wait to go back.
-David Driscoll