On Drinking: Paradise Lost
A Funeral for a Friend/Eulogizing the Tonga Hut (1958-2024).
Oh man. Where to begin. Well, I suppose we must disclaim at the outset: Content Warning: 75 different rums-fueled screed incoming.
Now then, back to business. Of course, that’s if you can properly label ‘drinking in a tiki bar against the general backdrop of a soft/trial roll out of World War III’ as business.
I. Last Call
Oh, The Tonga Hut. We stayed too long (and strayed too far). A last, lonely holdout in the desolate, wider and wilder (as in wilderness) landscape of the Los Angeles basin. In a time before COVID, the Tonga Hut was a notable, outlier odd ball (as geographically remote as it was culturally vital, with its 45 minute one-way drive from the westside beaches). Los Angeles’ oldest continuously operating tiki bar and a come-as-you-are, sticky surfaces dive that drew an eclectic crowd. Sure, even in 2019 it had its share of hopeless people on the worst/most misguided dating app dates of all time, but you could also wander in at random and strike up a conversation with an incredibly tall bearded man in a dress (the Sisterhood of Perpetual Indulgence would sometimes congregate there, from wall to wall), or one of the craftsmen who made armor for Amazon’s Rings of Power series. A true Los Angeles microcosm.
For its most brave, gullible and/or depraved patrons, the bar also had a feat of strength on offer: join the Loyal Order of the Drooling Bastards. Which is to say, drink your way through Beach Bum Barry’s Grog Log (78 drinks) in less than 12 calendar months. If you do this, you’ll get a plaque on their wall for your efforts (supplied at your own cost, of course). In 2019, I threw myself into this task with reckless abandon. With a venture capital subsidized rideshare, I could zip up to North Hollywood and do between 6 and 8 drinks from the grog log on a week night before meandering home (some people kill time, I was passionately murdering it with this worst hobby of all time).
If Bowie had his artistic phases, I had mine as well. My Tonga Hut phase was infamously inhabited by the “man who had run out of dreams.” This guy was not a father, and had few serious hobbies outside of being generally available for pub activities, in case you need that signposted further for you. I earned the plaque and then just moved on. I never came back to formalize things and put my name on the wall.
II. Con Tiki
Five years later, I finally got around to going back Tonga Hut to get the information about the plaque rules. I had emailed and called prior to this seeking this basic information, but to no avail. Part of an established place like TH is that they don’t make themselves available for outreach. You have to go and assess facts on the ground. I wrote about finishing this business back in January, but I couldn’t get back up there until earlier today (on the ignominiously named Victory Boulevard), to relive former glories and debase myself in asking for the plaque parameters.
There’s that old saw: you can’t go home again. So it goes with the Tonga Hut. It seems the bar that time forgot was finally found and served papers. In my absence, the bar had changed how it operated and was incongruously thrust into the modern world. On arrival, I am told to stand in an empty queue, where a sign tells me: PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED. Oh no, that’s weird. I used to just walk right in here. I stand there for ten minutes before a person comes to ask me how many are in my party.
A host then takes me into the bar and tells me where to sit, and confirms that I have a table server. Oh that’s also weird—I used to just order from the bar (and enjoyed the opportunity to walk around freely and talk about what was in the drinks, make substitutions, etc.). And then comes the biggest problem: the server and a laminated piece of paper taped to the wall (lest I forget) tells me my South Pacific Idyll is LIMITED TO 90 MINUTES. Oh man, time really did a number on this place.
The jukebox seems operable still, but its lights are turned off (a flashing tray indicates it will still accept American Dollars to pick music, but I can’t be sure). Exactly one great song plays while I’m there, which helps me feel like fragments of the old DNA remain. If you dont know this song just go listen to it - you dont even need to read the rest of this, I’d be happy just to recommend this song if you hadn’t run into it already. It’s from Italy (1972), but was written to replicate the experience of hearing an American pop song in a language you don’t speak. They play it in Depsacio for a reason.
One good song aside, what was going on in this bar I formerly loved? Waiting to be seated when the bar isn’t full, the weird time cap on how long I can be in the bar (90 minutes for drinks with 3 kinds of rum in them strikes me as positively homicidal, or manslaughter-y at the very least), the loss of rapport with the bartenders in needing a server to come take my drink order. The chaotic, egalitarian experience of LA’s oldest tiki bar was gone. Murdered by some combination of COVID and time’s merciless beltsander. I’d been away sure, and came back a different person, but the bar I loved was likewise bodysnatched. A bizarre pretender was left in its place, complete with bouncers, who paid for themselves (?) by ushering patrons out of the bar when their paltry 90 minutes was up.
Then it hit me like a thunderclap. I came in to get info about finally putting my name on their wall, but realized I don’t want my plaque hanging in their bar. If I had paid closer attention, my inability for 5 years to make and bring in a plaque was probably my first clue that I don’t actually care about this.
I finally received the information I came in for. The parameters for their plaque that I was so keen to observe? “Two inches by six inches.” No thank you. Keep your rules and sad yardsticks to yourself. I’m the proprietor of my own loyal order now. The Tonga Hut, for whatever it meant to people at one time or another, is now washed (at this point my whole readership will yell out “yeah s.f., this tiki bar was always a waste of time, congratulations for figuring that out 5 years later”). It will presumably continue to do fine without my erratic patronage, albeit in 90 minute increments.
Thank you for choosing hell. Please wait to be seated.
III. The Dubious Abides
Tonga Hut has things about it that are beautiful, but I have to recognize the bar I’ve built in my own home. I’d just as soon hang a plaque up there if I’m going to bother doing it anywhere.
Did Chez Jay in Santa Monica used to have peanut shells on the floor? I can no longer be sure, although they clearly brought an elephant in there at one time. If I’m going to chase the dragon of old LA/decades past, I can do it much closer to home.
The ‘man who ran out of dreams’ finally woke up. At my tiki bar, the plaques are whatever dimensions you want. Feel free to send me yours and I’ll hang it up.
The only other thing you need to know about the Tonga Hut is that their Dark and Stormy is made with Gosling’s rum and Gosling’s ginger beer. When I asked that they please make it with anything else the server had the gall to mention the Gosling’s trademark to me. As if I need further proof of this place’s total apostasy. So long and thanks for all the hangovers fish.
Rest in reservation app-mediated peace Tonga Hut (1958-2024). In the end, we got to know ye too well.
Internet Bycatch
Hey, it’s 90 minutes max in here only, so I hope you enjoy your bonus time.
Barry Can’t Swim stopped by KCRW. What’s the name for the genre of music that can make grin like a lunatic in the middle of your workday? He’s on the Coachella livestream later today. Recommended.
One of those articles that explains the entire of the modern world (so too long to be read by most). It’s undersea cables.
The Coachella epitaph/seance we needed.
A time limit of any amount in a bar is insane and goes against everything a bar is supposed to be