What got you started with Tiki? My start was How To Drink and Greg’s recommendation of Smugglers Cove. Read the book, started buying rum and planning a home bar lol. I had been getting into making cocktails but never thought about exotic cocktails before watching Gregs Mai Tai episode.
Disneyworld. “It’s the tiki tiki tiki tiki tiki room, where the birds say words and the flowers croon…”
I always had a thing for Hawaiian shirts, and my tastes skew a bit kitschy, so tiki kind of seems like a natural progression of that.
In my early 20s, there was a seasonal outdoor “tiki bar” I frequented. It was not the place to go for good tiki drinks, but it was a fun time. They had a grill-your-own-food thing going on, they served a drink called a hurricane that more no real resemblance to any traditional hurricane except that it contained rum (and a lot of it) and they had a 2 per human limit on them. It was a fun time and that probably really planted the seed that I wanted my own tiki bar.
I’m not much of a beach guy, but I enjoy the aesthetic of palm trees and jungles and exotic trimes and such, so having that without all of the sun and the sand is very appealing to me.