You know you’re a true history geek when you want to know about the history of a fake historical thing. Last year, I researched the history of fanciful tiki culture and this year, I started wondering about the origin of the Renaissance festival. Yes, the origin of the...
When I first started working at the local chamber of commerce, my boss told me the most common question I’d get from people is “What day is the 4th of July?” It wasn’t that people couldn’t count, but they wanted to know whether the parade and fireworks were being held...
The best pirates in history are not funny. Pirates who were good at their jobs took other people’s property by threatening violence, and they were prepared to carry out their threats. Even if they spoke in a funny pirate drawl and all looked like Johnny Depp,...
While tiki fans may disagree about the what makes a bar a genuine tiki bar, there is no doubt about the fact that a tiki bar must offer at least a few tiki drinks. Of course, what constitutes a tiki drink may be up for debate. In the original tiki bars discussed in my...
Tiki culture—the drinks, the food, the music, and most noticeably, the décor – looks like it came from somewhere. That’s the idea. Visiting a tiki bar is supposed to give you the feeling of escaping to a tropical, exotic paradise. But that tiki paradise never actually...
As I prepare for a tropical storm by painstakingly removing approximately 4000 pounds of tiki masks, thatched umbrellas, glass floats, and other potential hurricane projectiles from my yard, I blame my parents. Not for the storm, of course. But I’m blaming them for my...
