Denver’s Tiki Revival
A historic fad fades away, only to be resurrected by the underground
At first glance, Denver might seem a million miles from the tropical beaches of Polynesia, both geographically and culturally, but the Mile High City has a surprisingly rich history of tiki bars dating back to the 1950s. Our introduction to tiki is all thanks to two titans of the tropical cocktail named Donn Beach and Trader Vic Bergeron, who birthed a craze that swept across midcentury America before succumbing to the merciless fate of all fads.
However, this is a tale of redemption. Tiki culture rose from the ashes, and the scene today overlaps many other underground subcultures, including old-school punk, burlesque, hot rods, pinups, goth and rockabilly. Tiki’s aesthetics challenge the notions of high- and low-brow culture by elevating what bourgeois tastemakers dismiss as kitschy, gaudy, and polarizing.
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The word “tiki” is derived from Māori creation mythology. Like biblical Adam, Tiki was…
