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    A New Golden Age for the Tiki Bar

    Half a century after the tropical craze of the 1960s, the modern age of escapism is taking cues—and inspiration for giant rum drinks—from the past.
    by Kara Newman Jun 05, 2018 5 minutes
    Source: Corbis / Getty

    There are no TV screens inside the Polynesian, the giant new tiki bar that opened three stories above Times Square over Memorial Day weekend. That means no news crawls, no Fox & Friends, no jaw-gritting headlines—nothing to break the illusion of a rum-fueled tropical oasis.

    The Polynesian’s splashy opening signals the arrival of more than just another themed bar serving $15 drinks in skull-head tiki mugs. It’s the manifestation of a certain mood in America: the escalating need for escapism. (The over-the-top drinks are just a bonus.)

    On opening night, the Friday heading into the holiday weekend, aloha-shirted tiki enthusiasts queued in the lobby of the Pod Times Square hotel, awaiting the grand unveiling. It was an ironic moment that echoed one from almost 30 years earlier, when another sprawling tiki bar inside a Midtown Manhattan hotel closed, ushering in what would be the end of, a tiki bar in the basement of the Plaza Hotel, which Trump then owned, deriding it as “tacky.” Today, the tumult surrounding the Trump administration has helped reinvigorate the tiki machine.

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