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.
I thought now might be a good time to broadcast a timely reminder that Tiki Lounge and Bar now sports a brand new air-conditioner. Come down and escape the brutal Melbourne heat and sip on ice-cold Mai Tais and Mojitos. Alternatively try one of our “Cone of Silence” cocktails – complete with a straw encased completely in a cone of ice!
In searching for an image for this post I came across the one I used on a cool blog of retro stuff from Populuxe Books. Check it out!
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.
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!
Tiki Lounge and Bar is a very popular venue for parties and other functions. In the last few months we have helped to host dozens of parties in our recently redressed Bachelor Pad section. The Bachelor Pad section of the bar is hidden away in the corner of the venue and is dominated by The Most Comfortable Couch in Melbourne™ and the original 50’s style freestanding bar from which we served our first cocktail many many moons ago.
To put cherry on the cake (so to speak) we recently took delivery of a set of back-issues of Bachelor Pad Magazine to help complete the Bachelor Pad experience.
For Functions, the whole Bachelor Pad (including the dance floor) is able to be curtained off for privacy and can hold around 50 people quite comfortably. Whilst we don’t yet offer a full bar service from the lovely Bachelor Pad bar, we can offer you your very own bartender serving a selection of beer, wine and soft drink or even a batch of one of our premium cocktails served as a “punch” from either an oversized clam shell or a pirate’s treasure chest.
For food we offer a selection of gourmet pizzas, nibble platters or fruit platters. For something more extravagant try one of our seafood platters or flambe fruit selections served with delicious flaming Inner Circle rum! Give us a call so we can help you plan your classy and civilised cocktail party in a unique tropical atmosphere.
Below is a gallery of images from the Bachelor Pad. Click through to view!
You may remember me posting a little while ago about a very clever t-shirt featuring a member of the undead with very specific dietary requirements. Well, the man responsible for that great t-shirt design, cartoonist and illustrator Dennis Culver has emailed to let us know that threadless.com in their endless quest for world domination have decided not to print this most excellent t-shirt. Boo-urns to threadless.com! Never fear though dear readers, Dennis has arranged for the shirt to be available through redbubble.com. Be sure to go and check it out!
Also remember if you have an awesome shot of your best mates’ “Zombie Face”, or any other photo you’d like included in our Gallery, you can shoot them through to photos@tikiloungeandbar.com.
To help the creative juices start to flow, here are some awesome photos that were sent to us by a recent customer Eliza:
I came across some very sad news recently. The owner of the La Mariana Sailing Club, Annette Nahinu passed away on the 19th of July at age 96. Annette’s contribution to the preservation of Hawaii’s recent Tiki Bar heritage is immeasurable.
The La Mariana was opened over 50 years ago in Honolulu in Hawaii. Hawaii had recently become the 50th state of the United States of America, and Tiki fever was gripping the country. Entrepreneurs (Don the Beachcomber amongst them) began opening enormous Tiki resorts and restaurants throughout the islands. As the Tiki trend began to cool and the venues started to close down, Annette would be there to collect what was left of the decor and furniture that was being disposed of. Over the decades the collection of Tiki artifacts that have amassed at La Mariana is impressive. It’s like a shrine to the great Tiki Bars of the Islands.
La Mariana is on my short list of about 5 Tiki “must-sees” in the world today. I was lucky enough to be able to visit there at the start of this year, but sadly did not get an opportunity to meet Annette. The La Mariana is an absolutely wonderful place. The atmosphere is thick with history and has a great organic “hand-made” vibe. It is what I imagine our bar will feel like in 50 years time.
I hope La Mariana is taken over by the “right” person. Annette’s legacy is an American treasure, and it deserves to be looked after.
I’ve attached an album of photos I took at La Mariana so you can see how special the place is – click on the image below to see more.
I just had to share this t-shirt design which I found on threadless.com. I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce you to our most popular drink…
At the Tiki Bar we serve a famous Don the Beachcomber classic cocktail called a Zombie. The Zombie is an excellent example of a cocktail made with lots of fresh juice and premium rums with a lot of complex flavours. The recipe we use is considered by many experts in the field to be close to what Don’s original Zombie Cocktail would have been – with passionfruit, lime, lemon, angostura bitters and lots of big, bold rums. We top ours off with a flaming passionfruit husk representing the “brains” of the Zombie, to which we add a magical voodoo powder made from Chicken bone and Human blood (no, really! Trust me, I’m a bartender!). The voodoo powder – sent to us by a witch-woman living on a small french colonial tropical island in the indian ocean called “Reunion Island” – is dropped into the live flame which throws up a tempest of sparks (often burning the hair off the poor bartender’s knuckles).
We are pleased to say that despite the “voodoo powder” this drink is vegan safe – the chicken was also vegan.
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