My day job has recently taken me out into the wilderness that is Ballarat (about 1.5 hours out of Melbourne for any visitors who might read this). On one of my jaunts to check out the local lunching establishments I found myself drawn to a very colourful looking cafe, complete with a row of pink flamingos out the front. Upon peering through the window I KNEW I had to stop in to investigate.
The Krooze in Cafe is on Main Road in Ballarat right near the University and IBM’s fancy new data centre. It’s filled to the brim with absolutly wonderful 50s retro diner-style furniture, and the colours are garish (in a good way) with pinups and 50’s throwback posters in every direction. There is a distinct Tiki flavour to the place too – a good sized bamboo shrine to the Tiki Gods grabs your attention as soon as you enter which is adorned with orignal exotica albums – Martin Denny and Les Baxter are on proud display.
The people here are salt-of-the-earth friendly kinda folk – while I was there I spent some time chatting with one of the owners, Alan, about Tiki, hotrodding, burlesque and pin-ups (part of your complete breakfast of retro-cool pop culture!). This place should definitely form a key part of any road trip for retro/tiki/hotrod types venturing out into the wilds of Victoria. It’s a place where you can curl up and relax with a retro book or magazine under a beautiful SHAG print on some incredibly comfortable 50s couches and sip away on a coffee or hot chocolate with some nice, tasty and honest diner-style food. This place is definitely worth a bit of a look-in.
Sorry about the late notice, but I must tell you about the amazing Cabaret show we are hosting tomorrow!
Tiki Lounge and Bar will be engulfed by the smokey, risque and exotic burlesque-inspired cabaret stylings of Mz Josephine Fisher (http://www.josephinefisher.com/) as accompanied by the laidback lounge/exotica sounds of the Kahuna Daddies. We’ve been lucky enough to host the Kahuna Daddies before at our humble bar, and Mz Josephine’s reputation preceeds her… just look at her website and try to tell me that this doesn’t sound compelling:
“Mz Josephine’s tendency to reveal more than absolutely necessary has made her a popular entertainer with her customers. Regaling them with saucy songs, anecdotes, dildo dancing, striptease, fabulist story telling and tales of love gone kinky. Mz Josephine was invented to explore the politics of pleasure and to encourage her audiences to be curious about their own.”
We’d love to see you there! Show should kick off around 9:30pm. No cover charge! (woo!)
Well that snuck up on us! The Melbourne Zombie Shuffle is on again for 2009. For those who aren’t aware of this annual event, it’s basically an excuse for Zombie Afficionados to don Zombie costumes and terrorise the good peoples of Melbourne in a good old-fashioned flash mob. The shuffle kicks off this year at 1pm on Saturday May 9th starting at Carlton Gardens
The Facebook group for the Shuffle can be found here.
As strong supporters of Zombie rights, the Tiki Bar will be offering Zombie related cultural entertainment all night (movies on the projector, maybe some Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead… depends on whether Kev is up for donating his Xbox for the evening…). We’ll offering drink specials on the night ($4 off Zombie cocktails) to those who attend as Zombies (more out of fear than anything else), so please feel free to dress up!
Just a quick note to let y’all know that the bar will be closed this weekend due to the ANZAC day public holiday along with licensing hoo-haa.
To make up for that, please accept these YouTube videos of the recent Mondo-a-Go-Go event held at the Tiki Bar as a gesture of thanks for your continued support.
Those crazies from Tiki Robot are holding another amazing 60’s themed Mondo-a-Go-Go evening at Tiki Lounge and Bar this Saturday night (April 4th)! Be on hand for all the beats, boots and ‘bots (robots that is) starting from around 8pm!
Here’s the low-down:
Mondo-a-Go-Go is on again at the Tiki Lounge and Bar, 327 Swan Street Richmond 8pm $8 – Amazing visuals, Yuri the Robot, Bagadelic DJ, Cage Dancers and the best music to Go-Go by. Oh and fabulous cocktails in the amazing experience that is the Tiki Bar and Lounge.
You may have noticed that we’ve recently been referring to Tiki Lounge and Bar as “TikiLAB”. At the time we though this was a cute contraction of the full name of the bar and that, we thought was that. It has just come to our attention, however, that there was already a site at http://tikilab.com which is home to the Deborah Harry and Blondie Internet Service! Now we have no desire here at Tiki Lounge and Bar to upset or confuse Blondie fans (we’re quite partial to spinning the Nouvelle Vague version of “Heart of Glass” every now and then down at Tiki), so we’d like to apologise to Louis (who’s a great guy who runs tikilab.com and contacted us to let us know we were inadvertantly stepping on some digital toes).
Now that’s all sorted and all is well for the Internet community.
Tiki Lounge and Bar reopens following the Christmas/New Year break on Friday January 9th and we’re straight back into the swing of things!
The incredibly scary yet stylish and alluring girls from the Victorian Roller Derby League will be holding a Trivia night down at TikiLAB on January 9th. Doors open at 6pm and there is a $6 Cover charge to participate.
It’s come to the end of another great year for Tiki Lounge and Bar. We’d like to thank you all for your support during the year, and invite you all to join us for an awesome 2009! We’ll be shutting down for Christmas with our last night tonight (Dec 20th) and reopening again on January 9th. In the new year expect some great new stuff from us – we’ve got loads of events in the pipeworks with our all new menu (which we will announce properly soon) and some great bands as well as more of the quirky cabaret you’ve come to expect from TikiLAB (someone at the bar may have even rediscovered the joy of firetwirling, so be forewarned!).
Things to look forward to in the new year include our new menu, a Bettie Page Tribute night some time in the early part of the new year (Rest in Peace) our great new air-conditioner (tropical drinks without the tropical climate), an excellent bar food menu currently being developed in the laboratory, and our new bar service night on a Thursday when we will be putting on some great events for locals and loyal regulars.
Of course we’ve had some great highlights from this year in no particular order:
Inviting a bunch of Zombies from the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle back to the bar for Cocktails and Brains
Filling the venue with Mini-skirted, knee-high-booted GoGo dancers in Cages for Mondo-a-Go-Go
The drink that “The Boss” would drink – our very own Bruce Mangosteen cocktail.
And who can forget Purplo’s (the honey cocktail sausage) and our short lived attempt at Cocktails and Snags.
If you have any photos of any misspent nights at the bar, please feel free to email them to photos@tikiloungeandbar.com and we’ll put them up in our gallery.
Once again we’ve all had a ball with all our customers this year and we hope to be able to see some old (and new) faces in the new year!
The always exciting, sun-drenched Instrumental Asylum are waxing down their surfboards and celebrating the beginning of Summer proper by joining the grommets down at Tiki Lounge and Bar (or TikiLAB as I’ve seen it referred to). You all know the drill – Instrumental Asylum play surf inspired guitar rock – think Duane Eddy.
Gig starts some time after 8 ish, and there will be a cover charge of 8 clams.
I’ve embedded a video from their last gig up at Tiki… Hope you like it!
Many thanks go to the souls who braved last night’s horrid Melbourne weather to come on down for Mondo-a-Go-G0! A good time was had by a dedicated core of hardy party-goers who weren’t going to let a little rain stand in the time of a good Hustle or Watusi!
Just a reminder to those who have any photos of the Tiki Bar that you’d like to share from last night or any of the other recent events held at the bar (I KNOW I saw some photos being taken of the boys from Mariachi Los Romanticos a few weeks back!) we have an email address for guest photo submissions – photos@tikiloungeandbar.com. We can also embed YouTube videos in the site – if you have any video of the bar on YouTube that you’d like to share, email us the link at info@tikiloungeandbar.com.
We’re looking forward to seeing some great guest snaps!
Cheers,
Kev
*The photo in this post is of the driveway of another Tiki Bar – the La Mariana Sailing Club in Honolulu – following a bit of rain.
Hi Tiki-sters!
The people here are salt-of-the-earth friendly kinda folk – while I was there I spent some time chatting with one of the owners, Alan, about Tiki, hotrodding, burlesque and pin-ups (part of your complete breakfast of retro-cool pop culture!). This place should definitely form a key part of any road trip for retro/tiki/hotrod types venturing out into the wilds of Victoria. It’s a place where you can curl up and relax with a retro book or magazine under a beautiful SHAG print on some incredibly comfortable 50s couches and sip away on a coffee or hot chocolate with some nice, tasty and honest diner-style food. This place is definitely worth a bit of a look-in.
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