Let’s make one thing perfectly clear right up front: we love mock speakeasies. We love bartenders who wear bowler hats, Jerry Thomas facial hair, and sleeve garters. Even more than the theatricality, we love the ceremony of watching a vintage cocktail being scrupulously and lovingly brought back to life before our eyes. It’s what makes [...]
While London has a severe case of Polynesiaphilia (six Tiki bars opened there this year alone) and Hamburg, Oslo, and even Moscow show signs of infection, Barcelona has long been Europe’s most Tikified city. And Kahala has long been it’s most Tikified bar. The Beachbum’s host during a recent Barcelona visit, Ivan “Bastardo Saffrin” Castro, [...]
Also posted in Food, Places, Rum |
Köln’s biggest tourist attraction is its cathedral. But cathedrals hold no interest for the Beachbum: while it is indeed impressive that Jesus turned water into wine, we prefer rum, and we’d heard that Köln’s bartenders do interesting things with it. So our first tourist stop in Köln was a bar. So was our second. Come [...]
Also posted in Events, Places |
Tikiphiles wear many hats, not all of them straw. These new tropical drink recipes came to us courtesy of a novelist, a web designer, a retailer and a resaler. Joe Riley is Fine Spirits Manager at Ace Beverage, Washington D.C.’s oldest liquor store. He’s also a regular at the downtown D.C. bar The Passenger, where [...]
The last time the Beachbum found himself in British Columbia, well-nigh ten years ago, the region’s classic Tiki bars had sailed away like Captain Cook after the Yuquot Indians refused to barter for the usual worthless trinkets. Vancouver’s magnificent Trader Vic’s outpost (pictured above) had been razed. The city’s other Tiki jewel, the Waldorf Hotel’s [...]