The Islands of the Fraternal Order of Moai

Can you believe this?!? Tiki is such a mash-up of so many things, it has become its own thing. An American thing, I might add. Anyhow, we need to be on guard in our own cities!

http://www.gazettetimes.com/albany/business/tiki-bar-stirs-up-cocktail-of-accusations/article_910fbb5c-afd9-51fc-bf85-4b22f8a04e64.html

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Sinatra on non-drinkers: "When they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel for the rest of the day."

It was only a matter of time before the Hippie came after tiki.
Snowflakes Unite!

I'm going to open up a restaurant called 'Fucking Millenials' and serve nothing but Tuna Noodle Casserole, Apple Pie and ass kickings.
One bathroom, no toilet and mandatory 25% gratuity added to every check.

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We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

FOM MC
President
Viva El Scroties!

Why can a guy named Davidson run an Irish pub and not open a tiki bar?

They make him apologize too?

It's a generation of Charlie X cross bred with Anthony Fremont:

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FOM MC road captain

Excrementus Cadaemus

Critiki had a great blog post about "culturally thoughtful" tiki not too long ago. I think their take on it was done well.

https://news.critiki.com/2017/05/25/on- ... tful-tiki/

crimany.

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A toast to my friend Roger.

BASED MILTON SEZ: COME AND TAKE IT

Let's break down how Cloud Davidson tactically handled this situation.

Appeal to Reason -----> Apology -----> Capitulation

This was a veritable clinic on what not to do.
Just one blunder after another.

I got some lulz out of this, though.

Everyone knows that this is a Yoga position. So, watch for the inevitable raising of ""problematic"" concerns over cultural appropriation from the Oregon State University Indian Students Association.

Dude should just stick to slinging Guinness, corned beef and Lucky Charms.

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"He spits his chaw like venom"

This is depressing. If I was a less trusting individual, I'd say this sounds suspiciously like a business decision spun as a sanctimonious press release.

I have no issue with ongoing discussions of cultural appropriation, sensitivity, privilege, etc., because strong defenses of tiki (like humuhumu's thoughtful post) exist, and apparently need to be aired. But this guy instantly backing down like a chickenshit sets a precedent - we're not expected to listen or compromise; we're expected to cease & desist. Not in my basement.

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Davidson. He should stick to slinging herring with aquavit shots.

McDavid could sell mutton pie and whiskey.

Corned beef is Jewish, appropriated by Irish Catholic immigrants to northeastern 'Merkin cities.

I am just a bit more sensitive than normal after the Thursdaynight mocking of Appalachian Scots-Irish immigrant frontier culture and male pattern baldness at Ohana 2017.

Sent from somewhere exotic

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FOM MC road captain

Excrementus Cadaemus

i, for one, am outraged that the Roman Empire co-opted ancient Greek culture.

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A toast to my friend Roger.

BASED MILTON SEZ: COME AND TAKE IT

"...but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

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Sometimes it's dark and stormy in my porthole.

Namaste-ake.

It is a business decision, and not a surprise. The reality is that most businesses know that if the headhunters come for you, it's better to capitulate. The people that do this stuff have mastered social media. Facebook, instagram, yelp.....all pathways to stirring up the resistance. Never mind that the majority of the people contributing to the uproar have never been there (and likely don't live nearby either), the campaign will continue until the business is closed and the appropriate self-flaggelant apology has been issued. It's an effective model, unfortunately.

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Will
The Luau Cinders



“I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.” —Dean Martin

It is all so ridiculous... The Tiki Culture is not based on factual island cultures, but the American 1940-50s version of what they saw as exotic...
I guess we will have to be shutting down Halloween haunted houses because the portrayal of a witch offends the Wiccans?
and the whole discussion of preparing foods from other cultures is just plain stupid.
None of the great Tiki Bars would have ever existed if put under that lens...

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The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived...

There was a hoopla a while back in Austin about the Tex-Mex chain Torchy's. Protests, graffiti on their buildings, etc.
How DARE a non-Mexican sell bastardized Mexican food - in a city that has dozens/hundreds of Tex-Mex restaurants owned by REAL Mexican-Americans (and dozens/hundreds owned by NON-Mexican descent people)!

If you have to pass a DNA test to own/run a business in America, we're gonna see a looooootta businesses close down.
Go to the Mexican-American owned place instead if you want! You are allowed!
Who gets to draw the line anyway?
So if a European-descent person can't own a Mexican restaurant, can a Mexican-descent person own an Italian restaurant? Can a Guatemalan own a Mexican restaurant? The American Dream, anyone?
Should Julia Child be dug up and burned because she made a living teaching French cooking - and she was - *GASP* - not French?

And can a Hawaiian person have a tiki bar that has Papua New Guinea and Maori art in it, 'cause it's just going to be a Hawaiian bar and not a Tiki Bar if not.

Yeah, I'm over that stuff. We are [mostly] beautiful mutts who love the purebreeds AND the mutts.

And it's not like the Oregon guy went and stole Hawaiian land himself to open his place, fer cryin' out loud. He just [badly] used Hawaiian-ish (and other!) iconography to open a meh spot. The market would have taken care of it. It didn't need The Self-Appointed Arbiters of Righteousness rising up and impaling his head on a spike.

No one could accuse the FOM (or Tiki Central folks) of not loving Polynesian cultures. We might cross the line in the eyes of an actual Papua New Guinea native who actually believes in the spirit power of the carvings......that he carved to sell to tourists.......Wait! No! I'm not even gonna say that!! Seriously!!
But the old stuff - we all treat that with great respect.
And the FOM show our respect of places like Rapa Nui with our raising money for scholarships for the young people there who wish to study subjects that will protect their island's culture.

We might cross the line of silly, but we strive not to cross the line of outright rude/totally unacceptable.
The Samoan family who owned The Tiki saw all of our Room Crawl silliness and they honored the FOM for our having donated in their name to victims of the tsunami damage. They were not horrified that our men wore lava-lavas. They LOVED that fact.

Tiki Vee, I'm buying stock in your restaurant.

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Why is Zazoom always around so many graves?
http://www.bradybunchshrine.com/bradybu ... btiki2.wav

Yes, but only for the entertainment value.
And if that sentence offends you, you've joined the wrong online forum.
( "you" in the general sense - not "you" in the Formikahini sense )



Shares are going fast...operators are standing by!

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We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

FOM MC
President
Viva El Scroties!

I respect your opinion, but disagree.

Chick-fil-A is still open and thriving.
Duck Dynasty is still on A&E.
The Hapuna Kahuna Tiki Bar & Kitchen is closed.

The results speak for themselves.

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"He spits his chaw like venom"

Bullshit CK...BULLSHIT and you know it.

There is no way Duck Dynasty is still on TV.

I absolutely refuse to believe that.

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We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

FOM MC
President
Viva El Scroties!

http://www.aetv.com/shows/duck-dynasty

Read 'em and weep, Vee.

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"He spits his chaw like venom"

I feel like we don't know the whole story about Hapuna Kahuna and probably never will. Given that there was mixed opinion even among Polynesian community members it seems like it would have been possible to tweak the concept in some manner that would be a gesture to critics and sensible business. The objections themselves don't seem to have come with threats of a boycott or picketing or anything that would motivate a business to do something more extreme. Maybe the owner just felt strongly about not offending a culture he clearly cares about and wanted to do something more definitive.

The bio of the owner sounds like someone steeped in Oceania but possibly not well informed about Poly-Pop tiki beyond the cocktails. I think where he may have stumbled is by having a concept that quite frankly wasn't enough of a tiki fantasy and the objections came up not because it was a tiki bar but because it was perhaps trying too hard to be a Hawaiian bar.

Honestly it is kind of ironic if that's correct.

Cultural appropriation is going to come up around tiki forever and I try to be thoughtful about that. Having "taken" something from these cultures, even if it is just what we call our little club here, does require that we give something back. And we do. I see that as the decent thing to do and, to borrow from another culture, good karma.

I work on a university campus so I know that "tiki" offends someone, somewhere, you cannot please all of the people all of the time. I don't feel hostility towards those people, they feel how they feel and if I am ok with my own decisions I can live with that. The genuine affection that exists between us and people like Jimmy Faatauvaa and his family tells me that we're doing something right even if we are a bunch of goofballs.

Intent matters and I don't think it is politically correct to ask ourselves if what we are doing would needlessly offend a reasonable person and I think we need to thoughtfully consider that when we use elements of Polynesian languages, symbols, etc. I like that we tend to use original art and design that cannot be confused as an attempt to make a direct representation of real cultural figures.

-Rev

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To taua na Moai!

I think the key difference is that DD and Chik Fil A were both on a national level. Both could withstand a boycott or bad press just due to the sheer numbers of fans in the background. Chik Fil A did lose some contracts, if I recall. You also have, in both cases, a strong Christian support group that would step up and help cushion some of the blow. Hapuna was on their own.

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Will
The Luau Cinders



“I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.” —Dean Martin

America is a tacky mish-mash of interpretations of other cultures. That is part of our own culture. Tiki is polynesian, in the same way raman is Japanese. It wasn't meant to give you an authentic experience. It's Route 66 Americana.

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If you need me, I'll be at the bar.

And I notice no one complained when it was an Irish Pub"

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If you need me, I'll be at the bar.

Well said, Rev.

I'm still skeptical about the owner's motivations, but you are right: no one knows the full story, and his heart may well be in the right place. What irks me is the normalization of perceiving a tiki bar as existentially "wrong," leading to its closure. It's already too difficult to keep these joints around, you know?

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TikiJack is right...what we consider Tiki is not authentic at all, and probably doesn't even strive to be...It is a mishmash of all sorts of things, and a romantic view of the exotic. We should never try to hold places like Hapuna Kahuna or even Kahiki or Trader Vic's against the lens of being culturally correct to any particular island nation...that is not at all what it is about...it is a complete American fabrication...a romantic amalgam...
If people was authentic you will have a lot of fish and no booze.
I think the complainers about that restaurant were off base...and maybe being islanders, they do not understand the American Cultural Institution of the Tiki Bar...

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The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived...

CK man, I don't even know where to start...
You do know that Duck Dynasty is a complete and utter sham and just proves how stupid the American public are as a whole - or cultural hole, as I like to call it.

People love the "downhome folksy aww shucks" charm of these simple folk who done made good, but none of it holds up under even the slightest scrutiny.

I don't know what their actual names are and I'm not about to go and look it up but lets just start here:

Beardface Dumpster Juice...this guy...



is actually this guy


nice mullet

and this guy


nice highlights

Then you have Nicklelback Ballad Song Lyric

You know...this guy....



Who is actually this guy...



Anybody remember the pictures I posted of my old boss and his family on the beach...all wearing white...remember how downhome and backwoods he seemed? Right, he didn't. Cos he isn't. Not even a little. And neither are these guys.

Except maybe Lynchy McRacist Noose...you know....this old grumpy fuck....



That dude looks like he actually looks like he bathes in month old bathwater to save money.

But the rest of them?



Marketing my friend. Plain and simple. Good old fashioned Madison Avenue Mad Men Don Draper boning his secretary across a mahogany desk advertising. That shit is about as real as a GoBot ( remember GoBots? )
And you my friend have fell for it.
Hook, line and derrrrp.

Rich yuppies can't sell duck huntin' products. But rednecks can.
Let's take this very well educated and affluent family of successful business men and woman and lets gussie them down for TV and lets rake in some good old fashioned advertising bucks.

Oh CK....you beautiful yet blind buckeye.

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We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

FOM MC
President
Viva El Scroties!

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A toast to my friend Roger.

BASED MILTON SEZ: COME AND TAKE IT