The Book of Tiki: A Guide for the Urban Archeologist

by Sven A. Kirsten

After World War II, US soldiers stationed in the South Pacific returned home with tales of trees loaded with exotic fruits, sleepy lagoons, white-sand beaches, and gorgeous people wearing grass and feathers as they danced half-naked during all-night orgies of food and music. The American imagination seized on this exotic version of island culture, and it exerted a massive influence on Fashion, pop music, eating and drinking, and even architecture. Everything from bars to bowling alleys adopted elements of Polynesian design. Tikis, the carved wooden and stone statues from across the Pacific, found their way into every hotel lounge and suburban living room. But as the fad was reaching it's peak, the big generation gap of the late 60s put a sudden end to Polynesian escapism as the children of the Tiki revellers decided to seek their own Nirvana in sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. The 90s have seen a revitalised interest in this kitsch anomaly of post-war America -- lounge bars and the sound of "exotica" are back in. This enlightening and hilarious guide casts the reader as an "urban archaeologist" exploring the lost remnants of Tiki culture across the States -- discovering relics from this forgotten civilisation in thrift stores, yard sales, and used book and record emporia. A combination of nostalgia and fascinating pop cultural study, this volume is a long overdue investigation into the cult of the Tiki.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Pop Culture, History, Design, Cultural, Architecture

287 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2000

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An awesome and well researched pictorial history of all things TIKI - from architecture, to mugs, to cocktails, and, yes, even torches.

[Kevidently · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before this whole pandemic, the tiki revival was in full swing. Lots of local tiki bars were open or getting new recognition. New bands were making exotica and tiki lounge music. Tiki conventions and shirts and mugs were all making comebacks.

And most of it can be traced back to this book.

Now, it’s absurd to suggest that a single 20-year-old book started a revolution whose entire ethos is built around leisure, escapism, and fun. But I’ve been reading books about the tiki experience for about three years now, and every single book agrees that The Book of Tiki started it all.

It’s easy to see why. Sven Kirsten assumes you know very little about the world of tiki culture, and treats this book as a primer. Here’s what you need to know - the basics - to step into this weird, enthralling world. You get the capsule history that begins, roughly, with Donn Beach and ends when fern bars take over from tiki bars. (There’s even a chart that shows the motifs of pre-tiki exotic bars and how they became tiki.) There are chapters on tiki architecture, tiki “power places” (major bars and restaurants), and a special chapter on libations by master mixologist Jeff “Beachbum” Berry.

It’s a fantastic place for anyone to start, and if I were alive in the year 2000 and new I was going to develop this fascination, I would have bought it. The problem is that it’s been out of print for over a decade, and it sells on the secondary market for over $100. I bought it for my birthday and I am thrilled, but I’ve already spent so much on rum it’s hard to justify that kind of expense in the interest of study/worship. Don’t worry: I totally justified it.

All the books I’ve been reading have paid homage, one way or another, to The Book of Tiki. It justifies the price, and eradicates all worry that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. It so absolutely does. Now if I could only find Tiki Modern, the sequel, for less than $450 I’d be thrilled.

[Stefantheviking · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, I really want to rate this higher but I just can't. Horribly referenced photos (missing/inaccurate completely) lightly dancing around the problematic issues, racism and appropriation takes a lot away from this book. While visually inspiring (love that!) and inclusive of the many many contributors to the tiki theme and lifestyle I find this book in our current climate a bit lacking. If you are simply looking for some light reference and visual reference then it does the trick, which is what I wanted. But found the issues to be too distracting to love.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not much of a tiki cum lounge fanatic but I love this book, anyway. Every tiki cliche on your laundry list: cocktails, music, clothes, etc. is here for your review, and as mid-century memorabilia goes it's presented with much panache and style. I like the fact that during a short period of time you could live in any boring town in America but still find your own private Fiji in many of these gorgeous lounges. If you want to take a crash course in tikiometry, start here hepcat.

[Redsteve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A general history of the origins, rise and fall of the Tiki/Polynesian phenomena in mid-20th Century America, with sections on Tiki bars, art, home luaus and Tiki backyards/rec-rooms, motels, theme parks, paraphernalia (and the collecting thereof), drinks, and surfing, all lavishly illustrated. Not an in-depth history of the movement, but a solid coffee table book on the subject.

[Garrett Cash · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll never forget a brief shadow of a memory I have as a child of driving down a stretch of road somewhere in a major Florida resort town (I still can't pinpoint which one) and seeing a massive Tiki restaurant with an A-frame that seemed to jut out and point well over the road and into the sky. The place was massive and looked like a mix of foreboding and mysterious. There were torches and giant Easter Island heads outside. This was all in a brief moment as we drove past.
Ever since that moment I was absolutely overwhelmed with curiosity about what this building looked like inside. What kind of tropical wonders could such a strange looking building hold?

It wasn't until I was in my early twenties and working in a record store that I heard about a musical subgenre called exotica, which was a branch on the greater tree of the Tiki craze or Polynesian pop phenomenon. I had no idea that what I saw that day was some kind of remnant or mirage of an era that during the 50's-early 70's was one of the biggest cultural fads of its day. But most importantly, I finally knew what the name was of this sort of thing I had seen. I obsessively looked through photos and listings of tiki bars and restaurants and found out how brilliant, complex, and beautiful these places could be.

Since then I've had the chance to visit many of these places from California to Florida, and had the chance to see preserved places from the golden era and also new and influential spots that keep the tradition alive. This Sven Kirsten book was and remains a major work within the small cluster of books related to this subject, and for such a popular fad it's remarkable that this is really to this point still the only major history of the subject.

Kirsten seems to be both passionate enough about his subject for the love of it to come through, but also willing to criticize the more unfortunate elements of tiki: mainly its being a supreme example of cultural appropriation and stereotyping, the racism in its depiction of "primitive" peoples and society, and perhaps most of all its objectification of women. I truly did not realize how much the topless and sexually available wahine was practically at the crux of this whole fantasy before the sexual revolution unleashed all the repressed social mores of men living the suburban American life.

It also clicked for me that Polynesian pop as a male fantasy makes an incredible amount of sense considering just how many WWII vets had been stationed on islands where this sort of freedom with the locals could easily occur. Naturally when they returned home they built a society that allowed them to "go back to normal," but this Polynesian tiki temple world could be where they allow themselves to regress to both their most base desires and also their nostalgia.

If you have any interest in America's relationship with tropical myth and imagery, I highly recommend this if you can find a copy.

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent primer on Polynesian Pop, simultaneously one of America's most American trends and one of the 20th Century's most 20th Century trends. Lavishly illustrated and exceptionally well-researched, my quibbles are two: The first (and this is a rare one) is that the book could have been slightly longer. Each chapter is effectively a short monograph on a subject, and I think an extra 5-20 pages for each would have been useful. The second is the tone of the book--it's written at an ironic remove, as if we are explorers venturing into ancient lands. Like, fine. It's a nice kitschy touch. But it stales quickly.

Anyhow, worth a read from the library.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a rare treat to the urban archeologist wanting a primer on Pop-Polynesian Culture. And in the odd and quirky spirit of the book, there are German and French translations in the back, yet the printing was done in Italy.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting little history.

[Rusty Stanberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must have for any Tiki collection

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ah, good taste--what a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness." --PABLO PICASSO All that Urban Archeologist stuff seemed cute at first, but grew rather cloying after a time; mainly though I just gawked at the pitchers!

[Jennifer Cannady · Rating 3 out of 5]

A profoundly odd little book I picked up in Flagler city library. It appears to be written by a Northern European about tiki culture and style in the US. It is filled with images but almost no captioning info The publishing information includes The Old Navy (yes, as in the clothing store) so I’m so puzzled.
However the images are fabulous and the narrative about things from iconic tiki influencers Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic to the post WW II US culture’s impact on nurturing tiki (as well as the hippie counter culture rejection) was good but the images are the main draw.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I turned my attention to Tiki aesthetics and decor thanks to two separate experiences. The first was a brief, flirting interest with Googie architecture, and the second was a trip to Disneyland. What these two have in common is an overlap over the American craze for Tiki. Kirsten wrote an article that I scooped up somewhere on the internet, and it immediately became obvious that he had put considerable time and research behind what he wrote. I wanted to get more, and so ordered The Book of Tiki from the library. This is not a long, exhaustive history or academic treatise, but it is a good, if brief, outline of the major players, trends and names in American Tiki-dom. This book is primarily aimed at showing the casual reader what the Tiki aesthetic looked like, and how deeply entrenched it was in everything from cocktail spears to apartment architecture. Kirsten gets cute sometimes, as if writing from the perspective of an "urban archaeologist", unearthing finds from garage sales and such, but the narrative is clear: Tiki came from traceable origins, and later, declined like a lost and culturally insensitive civilization. Kirsten's other books might dig deeper into the details of the history, but this is a great start for anyone interested in this tiny slice of largely invented Americana.

[Simone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I haven't read this book yet, but I've flipped through every page of it and it's a tiki lover's heaven! Even if the text turns out to be crap (which it doesn't appear to be from the little I skimmed) it wouldn't matter because the pictures are enough to make you weep. It depicts so many tiki themed businesses, that it gives the impression that when you next head out, all this will be waiting for you, but sadly, much of it is now defunct. We can be grateful for th great tiki revival since this books publication in 2000! Yay! Incidentally, that's when I bought it. *blush*

[Mike Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly I had higher hopes for this book. It is more of a miss-match collection of yard-sale finds loosely based around South Pacific exoticism, Polynesian-pop, and the tiki-bar phenomenon. I suppose I was hoping for a museum catalog written by a scene-ster, but Sven (a scenester in his own right apparently) took a large first step in the right direction with this book.

[Duchess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference for Tiki Americana!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tiki good. Tiki very good.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the history of Polynesian Pop and its current resurgence.

[Allisonv · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only wish that it had more footnotes/citations. Wonderful for anyone interested in American culture, and or the interaction of primitivism and modernism, or just booze.

[Jk]

Time well spent for fans of Polynesian decor.

[JR · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to all that is tiki and its subculture. I enjoyed reading about its colorful history,and sad to learn about how it died. Good to know tiki is making a small come back.