08/28/2026
Speaking with the ancestors. 🌴
If you’ve spent any time inside The Tikeasy, you know there are a lot of faces looking back at you. 👀
Our collection of carvings, masks, lamps, artwork, and wonderfully strange objects has been gathered over many years. A lot of it is genuinely vintage. Some pieces have known histories, while others have stories we’re still trying to uncover.
Our owner, Mercy, even rescued several of our tikis after finding them rotting away in a yard. They were brought back to life and eventually found a home here.
Then there’s Moe. Our very large, very watchful figure from Papua New Guinea was originally a speaker’s stool. We know he last changed hands in 1979, but we don’t actually know when he was made. When he arrived, a piece with that much personality obviously needed a name. 😂
We also try to be thoughtful about the history behind the aesthetic we love. American tiki exploded in popularity through the 1940s and ’50s, creating a romanticized Polynesian and South Pacific fantasy that borrowed imagery from many distinct Pacific cultures. And the cocktail history has another layer worth talking about: Filipino bartenders played an enormously important, and historically under-credited, role in building the drinks and hospitality that helped define the genre.
We love tiki for the escapism, craftsmanship, rare rums, elaborate cocktails, dim lanterns, carved wood, and the feeling that you’ve stepped somewhere completely different for a few hours. But loving it also means being curious about where these traditions, objects, and influences actually came from.
So next time you’re here, look around. Some of our decor has been traveling longer than The Tikeasy has existed, and we’re still learning its stories.
And if you catch yourself having a conversation with Moe after your second cocktail… well, speaking with the ancestors. 😂🌺🥃
