Hawaiian Bill's was the reincarnation of the Reef Bar at the Caliente Tropics hotel in Palm Springs. The Reef Bar had been remodeled by Bamboo Ben when it was still operated by the hotel; in 2006, the bar was transferred to independent owners, and the name was changed to Hawaiian Bill's. Traditional Hawaiian food was served, with live musicians playing Hawaiian music on Fridays and Saturdays.

Hawaiian Bill's closed in the summer of 2008. Today the space is again The Reef Bar.

Not a lot of photos around from Hawaiian Bill's today, but below is a photo showing Rory Snyder, Doug Horne, and Hawaiian Bill at Hawaiian Bill's circa 2006 (holding brown Doug Horne Tiki Farm Grog mugs).

Mahiki opened in November 2006 in London's Mayfair District. Mahiki was designed and decorated by London-based tiki outfitters Cheekytiki, with menus designed by Tiki Racer. More of a nightclub than a simple lounge, Mahiki quickly became a celebrity destination once word got out that Prince William and Prince Henry were semi-regulars. Rihanna celebrated her birthday here in 2009.

In late 2011, a second Mahiki location opened in Dubai, located at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, and closed in 2018, due to “unforeseen circumstances during the renovation” of the hotel, as stated by the owners at the time.

In 2017, Mahiki's owners further expanded and franchised the brand. In the course of that year, Mahiki Clubs opened in Marbella, Spain (Mahiki Beach/open), in the Forte Village Resort in Sardinia (now closed), in Manchester in collaboration with Gary Neville's company GG Hospitality Management Ltd. (closed in 2018, but re-opened in 2019, and closed again in 2020) and at a second London location (Mahiki Kensington, closed in 2019). There was also a Mahiki club in Gothenburg, Sweden (closed).

This flagship location in London's Mayfair District closed in July 2021, due to COVID shutdowns.

The Samoan Village Motor Hotel opened in 1964, and also featured a restaurant and bar. It was designed by architect Peter Lendrum, and had three large rounded "hut" structures with dramatic pointed rooftops; one was the tiki-supported porte cochere, the largest was the restaurant. The hotel itself was a two-story horseshoe shape with a pool area and tikis in the courtyard.

It was a competitor with the nearby Kon-Tiki Hotel.

As of 1993, the site was still standing but no longer in operation, and Lendrum's long-neglected tiki huts looked disturbingly like a series of nuclear reactors.

"That Polynesian-village frou-frou stuff was big back in the early Sixties," said Lendrum in an interview with the Phoenix New Times. "Why was it so popular? I have no idea."

The Samoan Village was demolished not long after.

Early menus and other items are labelled "120 Via Lola," which maps to the south face of the site rather than the east face. The Palm Springs location site dates back to at least 1941, but this Don's was opened there on March 2nd, 1953.

Frank Sinatra was a regular here, and was reportedly a big tipper, but also a demanding customer. He liked the Navy Grog.

Today, this same spot houses Bootlegger Tiki.

The now restored rooftop tiki torches from the old Don the Beachcomber's now form the logo for the adjacent Ernest Coffee Co., which opened in June 2014. The two entrepreneurs behind this independent coffeehouse, photographer Jaime Kowal and designer Chris Pardo, also paid tribute to the history of this site by calling it after Don the Beachcomber’s real name: Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt. (They also own neighboring bar Bootlegger Tiki, a nod to Don’s occupation before he essentially invented the tiki bar.)

Originally, this location was named Lo Curto's Gardens in 1933.

It was renamed Lo Curto's Hawaiian Gardens in 1938 and remained so until 1966, so it spanned both the pre-Tiki and Golden Tiki Eras.

The last incarnation was Italian Gardens, a banquet hall specializing in weddings and Lockheed Christmas parties.

Today it is Italian Gardens Family and Italian Gardens Senior, two government housing projects.

Opened November 18th-19th, 1961. Aloha Jhoe's was created by Lyle R. Wheeler, a prolific Hollywood Art Director who won Oscars for his work on Gone with the Wind, Anna and the King of Siam, The Robe, The King and I and The Diary of Anne Frank, and was nominated another 24 times (many years, against himself). Wheeler was an Art Director on South Pacific four years before the opening of Aloha Jhoe's.

Featured on pages 28-29 of Sven Kirsten's The Book of Tiki.

Sam's Seafood started in its original location in 1923 at 2501 Coast Highway and, up until its Polynesian remodel in 1960 it was just a seaside seafood joint.

At 3 a.m. on Feb. 17, 1959, a fire burned the original Sam’s Seafood to the ground. Forced to rebuild, then-owners Ruth, Nick and Dick Katsaris glommed on to the midcentury fad sweeping Southern California: Tiki!

In 1960, they invested $1 million and hired architect Don Davis to design the new face of Sam’s and introduced Surfside to “Sam’s Seafood and Hawaiian Village.”

Sam's Seafood contained several dining rooms. The brightly lit main dining room had a large wall mural on one side and a dramatic tiki & waterfall display at the back. A pair of smaller side dining rooms were also bright and more aviation themed.

Of more interest to the tikiphile was the Hidden Village (Hawaiian Village) banquet room area in the back available for event rentals, which was large and moodily lit, with glass floats, waterfall displays, A-frame covered seating areas, and a small bar. On Friday nights from April to November, Sam's Seafood had a Polynesian Dinner Show in the Hidden Village. Last but certainly not least was the excellent main bar at Sam's. It was dark and full of excellent carvings, pufferfish and float lamps, and thatch.

A small bar with some tiki carvings inside, Turc's, can be found just down the street.

At the end of May 2006, Sam's Seafood was sold to developers who aimed to build retail spaces & condominiums on the site. Red tape appeared to be holding off any development on the site for years. Sam's closed for several months until June 2007, when the property owners allowed a new group to come in and keep the restaurant running in a somewhat modified form until the development could move forward.

In 2007, Sam's Seafood became Kona. In 2009, Kona closed and the restaurant reopened as Don the Beachcomber (no connection to the historic chain), which then closed in 2018.

This tiki bar opened to much fanfare in 2001, but it reportedly closed for "renovations" in November of 2002. In reality, it shut down after running into some governmental crankiness over unpaid back taxes.

Their theme was Rat Pack meets Tiki. They also had a number of early Tiki Farm mugs branded with their location.

In 2006, the space finally reopened as Headhunters, a punk dive bar renowned as a live music venue.

Headhunters fell on hard times and was cleaned up and re-branded in 2012 as Metal and Lace: Steampunk Lounge by Host Jon Taffer of the Bar Rescue television show.

However, the changes didn't stick and the bar went back to its old name and ways and closed in 2014.

Opened in October of 2022.

Hubba Hubba Tiki Tonk describes themselves as: "a bit tonk, a bit tiki and a lot of rock n roll."

This is accurate.

It is not a tiki bar in the strictest sense, but it does have some tiki decor, including their logo (which is based on a mass-produced 5' tall fiberglass Ku with glowing eyes who oversees a special corner inside). There are also a bunch of tiny pufferfish hung over the main bar. They do serve tiki cocktails (but only 5 classics on the menu, including the Mai Tai, Planters Punch, Blue Hawaiian, Painkiller, and Jungle Bird).

The majority of the bar is dedicated to kitsch of all kinds, including many velvet paintings of rock stars and pop figures like Elvis, Eddie Van Halen, Alf, ET, etc...

The overall take-away is of a vintage rumpus room/dive bar that's exploded with pop culture art and collectibles.

So, if you are there drinking a mai-tai while a surf rock track is playing and you are seated in a corner across from the Ku, you might find yourself having a very "tiki" experience. However, if loud hard rock is playing while you and your friends are slamming back shots under the movie poster for Terminator II, you may find yourself wondering how this could remotely be considered "tiki" at all.

Mileage will vary...

Previously the site of Charlie's High Hat Bar/Charlie's Grill and Cocktail bar, built in 1932, which has a convoluted history of murder and suicide (and which you can read about in the Tiki Central thread below).

In 1948, 39-year old Jimmie Kam Sun Lee immigrated to the Daytona Beach area from Hong Kong. He was born in Canton, China. Jimmie Lee opened the doors of the Lotus Restaurant as owner-operator in 1950 at 308 Seabreeze Boulevard, on the ground floor of the building formerly hosting Charlie’s Grill & Hi-Hat Club.

Laney's was upstairs and offered strippers and other entertainment. Laney’s Supper Club continued to operate until 1963.

By 1962 at the Lotus Restaurant, Jimmie Lee was joined or succeeded by Wei Lee. Various members of the Lee family shared responsibilities throughout the years.

The interesting tiki facade of the Lotus Restaurant remains a bit of a mystery. However, another member of the Lee family who worked at the Lotus Restaurant in the late 1950s, the venerable Ho Lum Lee, also known as “Papa” Lee, worked several years as chef at the Hawaiian Inn in Daytona Beach and then moved on to be chef at Tiki Gardens, retiring after 20 years there...

So this might be the missing link to explain the Polynesian/Hawaiian influence.

The Lotus Restaurant continued in business until 1987, when the remaining family operating it acquired and moved on to an existing restaurant in Deland, renaming it the New China Restaurant.

A slew of bars have been at the old Lotus Restaurant location in recent years, including Front Row, The Joint, Moonshiner's Hideaway, and ROK Bar. Current status is uncertain as of 2025.

Joe Chastek was first introduced to Polynesia when he and a high school buddy stowed away to the Philippines when they were both 17. Joe was one of the first to open a club with the South Seas motif. His first pre-Tiki bar was the Zamboanga. His second was the Tradewinds. His third was Vagabond's House.

The Trade Winds was opened during the war, in December 1944. He kept the same monkey theme that worked for him at the Zamboanga.

Opened April 17th, 2023 in what used to be the Genting Palace Lounge.

The idea, apparently, was that the Genting Palace Restaurant was too formal and intimidating for their lounge to see casual traffic from people not interested in dining, so they separated it from the restaurant and made it a more inviting and slightly more casual space.

There was a very light re-model of the old lounge which already had a bit of an exotic Asian vibe. Tiki masks were added, along with some standing surfboards and an impressively lit wall of mugs that appear to have all been sourced from BarConic or some other inexpensive tiki mug wholesaler.

Beverage Director Will Cahow insists that The Golden Monkey, which takes its name from the golden monkey statue that has sat on the bar since the venue opened in 2021, shares no association with the similarly named Golden Tiki. “We want to be a little different,” he says.

The Golden Monkey lists 50 types of rum behind the bar and 20 cocktails on their menu, which you can check out below.