June 29, 2015 bars/clubs/alcohol, Beer, brunch, dining, Food, Food events, food trends, lifestyles, pulsefeed, restaurants, Things to Do.
Independence Day makes us think about drinks by the water. Here’s a look back to an ode to that very-Florida phenomenon, the waterside tiki bar.
You think you’re at a tiki bar.
There’s a frilly tropical drink in your hand and steel drum music looping over the expensive sound system. The only boat in sight hangs from the bamboo rafters. The waitresses are in grass skirts, and you kind of, sort of, can see the water through the picture-frame windows.
The air-conditioning is set at 74 degrees.
Bad news: You are not at a tiki bar.
You’re at a theme restaurant dressed as a tiki bar.
A tiki bar is not fussy. It’s slotted safely above the biker bar, comfortably below the cocktail bar. But there have to be rules.
First, a tiki bar must have tiki huts. This is not negotiable.
Inside the tiki bar, Led Zeppelin is playing. “Fool in the Rain,” or “D’yer Mak’r.” There may be reggae. There definitely will be Jimmy Buffett.
It helps your status as tiki bar if you serve some kind of rum beverage out of a bucket. All the beer must be pale yellow, and it must nearly freeze the second you pop the cap.
There are no craft beers here.
A tiki bar does not have valet service.
You get a discount if you come by boat. You bring your own catch, the tiki bar will cook it for you. If the place puts on a Sunday pig roast like Panama Hattie’s Rum Bar, it will become a legend among tiki bars.
There will be Christmas lights.
Shorts, flip-flops and tank tops are OK at the tiki bar. (To call them wife-beaters is not. What’s wrong with you?) Slacks, black oxfords and dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up: fine. They won’t judge you. But don’t make a habit of it.
If you go to the tiki bar at noon, people will already be there. Hiding from bosses. Or spouses.
The tiki bar does not smell like piña coladas and sunscreen. It smells like sulfur, salt and fried food.
“Try to keep the beers icy and the food hot,” says Chris Howell, who both manages Tiki 52 in Jupiter and runs the forklift to pull boats out of Blowing Rocks Marina. His ruddy skin is sun-cured and his eyes are icy blue. Every tiki bar will have a guy like this.
Every tiki bar needs a cat. It’s even better if the cat is named Piglet. When the charter boats — the Narcosis or the Vamonos! II — pull into the marina at the Tiki Waterfront Sea Grill in Riviera Beach, they’ll call Piglet over for fish heads.
Piglet does not like to be pet.
At the tiki bar, you will meet the kind of people you only meet in Florida. There will be couples like Virg ‘n’ Mary (Virgil Alonso and Mary McLoughlin) who will be retired but doing something bizarrely entrepreneurial, like, say, bottling their own pesto.
They are the reason places like the tiki bar exists. For people who need a break from reinventing themselves.
“You see my hair blowing?” Mary says.
“You feel this breeze?” Virg adds.
The tiki bar welcomes tourists but does not cater to them. There are no Florida-themed tchotchkes for sale here. The tourists keep the tiki bar busy from October to May. But it’s the locals who keep them in business.
The tiki bar, though, is going away.
Panama Hattie’s Rum Bar may be bulldozed for new development. A few years ago, the city ordered the tiki bar at Sailfish Marina enclosed. And the city of Riviera Beach has deemed a similar fate for the Tiki Waterfront Sea Grill, which closes Sunday and may or may not reopen as an air-conditioned restaurant as part of the new plan at the other end of the marina.
An enclosed, metal-roof tiki is no tiki, at all.
“The reason people come to Florida is because it’s different. Why change it?” said Jim Seagraves, a 1969 Forest Hill grad and Waterfront regular who sometimes goes by the name Elvis.
A tiki bar should feel like it will always be there, although it should always feel remote, like you’re finally off the grid.
Like you’re at the last tiki bar in the world.
This award-winning story originally appeared in the Palm Beach Post on July 4, 2014.