Seattle Twist

Welcome to part 5, the last chapter of The Home Bar: Resurrection of a Mid-20th Century Domestic Icon. In the previous chapter we ended in the early 2000s with the neo-Tiki craze and the home bar’s biggest resurgence in domestic culture, Tiki or otherwise. As they once did in the mid-20th Century, people again began entertaining guests at home, the home bar the beacon for a social gathering of cocktails, appetisers, and conversation. And although in the mid to late 1990s I had showcased a few retro-styled home bars round the Seattle area to the pages of my own short lived ‘zine as well as Scheidelman’s Organ & Bongos, the new millenium brought about organised tours of people’s home bars, where one could see and experience the bars’ atmosphere in person as well as sample the host’s hospitality.

Backyard Bali Hai: a guest bartender pours drinks for tourists on the Jet City Junket. This is a classic example of the manufactured circular bamboo bar, a vintage design replicated today. (Photo taken 2007)

Argued to have initiated in California, the home bar tour was and still is largely centred round home bars done in mid-20th Century Tiki/Polynesian-style (with classic Space Age designs coming in a favourable second), featuring home bars located in backyard huts, cabanas, and garages to living rooms, dens, and basements. Until recently, the most significant organised tour of home bars was featured on the annual Tiki event in Portland, OR, referred to in the past as the NW Tiki Crawl and currently, Tiki Kon. On the third day of the event ticket holders would meet at a designated place to board a charter that would take them round to a pre-selected group of 4 or 5 stunning home bars/lounges, decorated in all manner of Tiki and Tiki-related style, with pupus and tropical libations served at each stop. In the summer of 2005 I had the pleasure of being aboard the home bar charter on the third day of the NW Tiki Crawl. 

Now while the second day’s festivities of the NW Tiki Crawl took place in historically and aesthetically-relevant public venues appropriate to the event’s theme and was entertaining enough, it was the third day of the event — the home bar tour – that really impressed me. In fact, it was magical. So impressed was I with what the organisers and home bar owners had put together, that I decided to begin a home bar tour here in Seattle the following year called The Seattle Area Home Bar Tour. And though tropical/Tiki bar themes were prevalent, I didn’t want the Tour to feature only Tiki bars, but rather any inspired thematic bar with a retrospective flair, exotic or Space Age, tropical or otherwise.

ZanziBar Lounge, a striking African-themed home bar and lounge in West Seattle, and a stop on the 2006 Seattle Area Home Bar Tour. (Photo taken 2006)

The Seattle Area Home Bar Tour is now in its third year. Some info and pics of past events can be found here:

Seattle Area Home Bar Tour 2006

http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic=18926&forum=4&start=45

Seattle Area Home Bar Tour 2007

http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=22765&forum=4&start=15

And this year’s Seattle Area Home Bar Tour, July 18th & 19th, 2008

http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=27544&forum=4&5

In closing, through the last 15 years I’ve seen some extraordinary home bars and lounges (and some not so), most far more inspired and aesthetically-interesting than any local public bar I could go into. More than simply an area to serve drinks, the home bar is a stylish piece of furniture, and a decorated lounge round it an extension of atmospheric decor. Whatever the taste, whatever the style, inspired or uninspired, the resurrection of the home bar and lounge is a significant link to a civilised and social cultural past — one that has come back to stay.

Asian, Nautical, Tiki, Atomic Age, Space Age, Oceanic: If you live in the Seattle area and have an inspired, thematic mid-20th Century-styled home bar and lounge in your home or yard (sorry, no apartments), and would like to put your bar up for a potential stop on the Seattle Area Home Bar Tour, please contact me. For ticket reservations and event info please go to the above link.

 

Isle of Elba Lounge, a Napoleonic-themed home bar in West-Seattle. Another example of a home-made bar, this one circa 1970s with tufted vinyl and built-in radio and 8-track player. (Photo taken early 2008)

Seattle’s Andy Warhol of Cocktail Culture: Russ Scheidelman’s Blue Flamingo Bar, an example of the classic trapezoid-shaped Space Age-manufactured home bar, with supplementary adornments (e.g., glow-wire flamingo). (Photo taken early 2008)