The New Tiki

Kurt Rogers, former proprietor of Flask & Cannon, Jacksonville Beach’s very own urban-themed tiki bar, began his own love affair with craft cocktails thanks to an experience while traveling. After years spent pouring drinks for the locals at the beach bar Fly’s Tie, Rogers tasted his first proper Manhattan on a trip and never looked back. Inspired, he poured himself into cocktail culture, landing bar manager jobs at Restaurant Orsay and Black Sheep before opening Sidecar in San Marco and, most recently, Flask & Cannon.

Perhaps in response to the rise of the craft cocktail and the adventure of the modern day speakeasy, tiki bars, with their laid-back, fun atmosphere, ornately garnished drinks and complete lack of pretense, are making a comeback. Recent takes on the concept such as Lost Lake (Chicago), Smuggler’s Cove (San Francisco) and Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 (New Orleans) set the tone for a new school that takes its cues from both classic tiki culture and the craft cocktail scene alike.

And so it was in 1933, after traveling the South Pacific and Caribbean, that Ernest Gantt opened “Donn the Beachcomber", the world’s first tiki bar, an odd and eclectic mix of the cultures he had grown so fond of that fused the tropical flavors and decor of Polynesian culture with the distilled West Indian beverage of choice: rum. After World War II, GIs returning from their own travels abroad, presumably enamored with the exotic allure of the Pacific islands, found something familiar in the aesthetic and it wasn’t long before tiki found its place in popular culture.