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Get into the swim with Tiki Kon

Red Lion at the Quay welcomes increasingly popular 3-day festival

By Sue Vorenberg
Published: July 11, 2014, 12:00am
7 Photos
Craig Hermann's home bar The Monkey Hut was part of the Tiki Kon home bar tour in 2013.
Craig Hermann's home bar The Monkey Hut was part of the Tiki Kon home bar tour in 2013. Photo Gallery

If you go

o What: Tiki Kon: Mysteries of the Deep, a celebration of Tiki culture with exotica music, art, fashion, vintage cars and cocktails.

o When: Public events 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, including an Island Marketplace 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; a Cocktails and Fishtails seminar 11 a.m. to noon; a Rock Lobster Pool Party 1 to 4 p.m.; and the “Ahoy! Exploring Mid-Century Nautical Tiki” seminar 2 to 3 p.m.

o Where: Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay, 100 Columbia St., Vancouver.

o Cost: $10 for the Cocktails and Fishtails seminar. Other public events are free.

o Information: www.tikikon.com.

If Tiki Kon’s growth is any indication, then the Polynesian pop culture trend that swept the country in the mid-1900s is well on its way back into fashion.

If you go

o What: Tiki Kon: Mysteries of the Deep, a celebration of Tiki culture with exotica music, art, fashion, vintage cars and cocktails.

o When: Public events 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, including an Island Marketplace 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; a Cocktails and Fishtails seminar 11 a.m. to noon; a Rock Lobster Pool Party 1 to 4 p.m.; and the "Ahoy! Exploring Mid-Century Nautical Tiki" seminar 2 to 3 p.m.

o Where: Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay, 100 Columbia St., Vancouver.

o Cost: $10 for the Cocktails and Fishtails seminar. Other public events are free.

o Information:www.tikikon.com.

Last year’s event, held at the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay, drew a crowd of about 250 fans of nautical bars, Hawaii shirts and funky cocktails. This year’s three-day festival already has double the sign-ups and is sold out, except for a series of public events Saturday.

“We still have a bunch of daytime events that are free and open to the public,” said Greg Clapp, the executive producer of Tiki Kon. “But our nighttime shows are completely sold out.”

Tiki Kon’s festivities include a marketplace with vintage shirts, art and jewelry, a car show and parties with music and specialty cocktails.

“We also have a mermaid,” Clapp said.

The mermaid is Marina Anderson, who performs as Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid. She’ll showcase her lounge swimming skills Saturday afternoon in the Red Lion pool.

Anderson, 42, is renowned in Tiki circles for almost single-handedly bringing back underwater performances at porthole bars, a trend that was extremely popular in the 1950s and early 1960s.

“She’s also doing a free seminar at 2 p.m. called ‘Ahoy! Exploring Mid-Century Nautical Tiki,’ which I’m really looking forward to,” Clapp said. “She’s really helping to bring that trend back.”

Tiki Kon itself hails back to the bygone age of the 1930s and 1940s, when a love of exotica music, strange cocktails and Polynesian pop art appeared as a growing trend across the United States.

The fascination with Tiki began in the 1930s in California, spearheaded by the Don the Beachcomber bar in Hollywood, which opened in 1934. Three years later, rival Trader Vic’s opened in Oakland, Calif., and eventually grew to a worldwide chain.

Cocktails such as Zombies, Scorpions and Mai Tais dominated the scene. The old-school recipes are much better than the sugary-sweet versions that were more commonly known in later decades, he added.

Tiki culture had a moderate resurgence in the 1990s and has slowly been regaining popularity.

Anderson’s performance will highlight a subset of midcentury Tiki culture, when bars began installing swimming pools with underwater portholes. The bars would feature underwater performances by swimmers dressed as mermaids, among other things, she said.

“The feature of watching people underwater became quite popular,” Anderson said. “It pretty much took off in the 1950s and into the ’60s, but fell off after that.”

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Back in the day, the bars featured all sorts of strange entertainment, she said.

“You could watch a horse dive into a pool,” Anderson said. “When you went to a hotel, you didn’t just go to hang out; you went to see all these cool shows.”

Only three original nautical bars remain across the country — at least that she knows of, Anderson said.

One is in Montana, the other two are in Florida, including the Wreck Bar in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Anderson performs regularly with a group of aquatic performers.

She said she hopes to spread her enthusiasm for the style at this year’s Tiki Kon.

“This is my first Tiki Kon, and I do a lot of Tiki events,” Anderson said. “I’ve talked about going to it for a while. Now, I’m just really looking forward to it.”

Tiki Kon began when a bunch of friends went on a makeshift bar crawl 12 years ago in Portland to check out each other’s home Tiki bars. The friends turned the tour into an annual event, one that’s grown significantly in the past few years.

In 2013, Tiki Kon moved to the Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay, because the organizers fell in love with the Quay Bar and its nautical theme, Clapp said.

The full convention has a lot more to offer, including evening entertainment and a home bar tour. But those events have been selling out earlier and earlier as the festival has grown, he said.

“In past years, guests have been able to wait to get tickets, but we sold out of the nighttime events three months ago,” Clapp said. “We’re at a decision point about our growth. We’d like to keep it as a small boutique event, but at the same time, we’re glad to see interest in it growing.”

Either way, the group plans to be back at the Red Lion at the Quay again next year, he said.

“If nothing else, just being right on the river there, it’s gorgeous,” Clapp said. “With the water it feels like a cruise ship. The Red Lion is just perfect for us. And Vancouver’s been very welcoming.”

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