Viva Las Vegas, Part 4

We Are Stardust, We are Golden

Say, why not buy me a coffee -> https://account.venmo.com/u/Kevidently

 Jeff reminded me, after I published Part 3 of this series, that I had neglected to mention Golden Monkey, a “Tiki bar” in a mall that served “beverages” and “had décor.” Okay, that last part isn’t fair. They had some pretty cool masks and feints at Tiki placemaking … but wow, what a rabid disappointment. I try not to be a gatekeeper about the things I love, because new ideas and perspectives can be fresh and fun … but Golden Monkey was like someone was building this upscale 90s-style bar and then heard that Tiki was big in Vegas now and halfway through tried to pivot. The bartender was so nice, but when he handed us our drinks, he leaned over and said, “But you know, if you want any classic Tiki drinks, I can make those too.” We leafed through the menu, which was all classic Tiki drinks, and then we sipped and I legitimately couldn’t gag down more than a few swallows. And I drink boat drinks! When I’m on boats!

Oh, and speaking of the menu: most cool Tiki bars have a little legend printed somewhere before the libations. It’s a classic Donn Beach and Vic Bergeron way of getting you even more immersed in the story of the place. Jeff adopted an accent and read the tale aloud to me, losing his accent by degrees as interest gave way to puzzlement, then annoyance. It’s a story about a monkey and a mermaid who hate each other, but then stop hating each other, then open a bar or something? It was the most imbecilic, banal story I’ve ever read, and I used to edit my high school’s literary magazine. (Our policy was “anyone can submit.”) (I mean, yipe stripes, guys.) 

Everything immediately got better after Golden Money, aside from Jeff’s pizza being stolen by Luke. (Luke and John texted us later. “Luke really liked your pizza.” Jeff screamed.) Somehow, even after our late night of debauchery and punk music, we were up bright and early the next day for our trip to Meow Wolf.

How to describe Meow Wolf? It’s an experience? Like an art installation but kind of cosmic and weird and you can spend like four hours in any number of rooms and not get bored. Jeff and I had been to the one in Denver and fell in love with the place. This one is fronted by a fake convenience store called Omega Mart where things are … not quite right. The products are off. Some of them are mutating from manufactured products to organic matter. And there are all these secret entrances to get to the place behind Omega Mart, which immerses you in this dark realm of the strange and cosmic.

There’s a story within every version of Meow Wolf but you need a special card to understand it all. We had the card in Denver and we barely understood it so we eschewed it this time. Still it was thrilling as hell. At one point, I climbed through a lilliputian door and found a rope, and I used it to climb a rocky hillside to get to a door on the second floor, which we could not open when we’d been there before. Every once in a little while, I am all for tourism of the weird. The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Meow Wolf, even the Magic Castle fit right into my stranger aesthetics, and I love that Jeff is also a fan.

Back out in the sunlight, it was time to continue our Tiki journey of Las Vegas. Every Tiki authority I’d spoken to had hammered home the three must-dos: Stray Pirate (check!), Frankie’s (check!), and Golden Tiki. The value of gold had diminished slightly since the monkeyshines of the night before, so we were ready for something redemptive on the China side of town.

Our Uber pulled into the one side of strip mall parking lot on the outskirts of Chinatown just as another Uber pulled in on the other side. We got out. They got out. Holy shit.

“Armand? Mari!?” Indeed, it was the folks we had met heading into Stray Pirate the day before. Were they on our schedule? Were they stalking us? Were we stalking them!? Just as we never planned on ship friends on our last Princess Cruise, we never planned on Vegas Friends here. Who knew this was even possible? “Hi!”

They were with their two other friends whose name I still can’t recall, and we entered Golden Tiki together. Inside, there was an anteroom with a waterfall feature and a few scant tikis, and we stood a moment to let our eyes adjust to the dim. Then we opened the door, and oh my God, it’s Tiki beyond.

I don’t know how dull it is for me to keep describing Tiki places. So many of them feature similar décor – fish floats, pufferfish, skulls, of course Tiki statues and carvings – but I think it’s all in how you execute. How much feels immersive and contributes to a sense of place. The night before at Golden Monkey, there were some neat pieces: masks on one wall, Tiki placemaking on another, a whole wall of mugs. But it felt like Starbucks decoration: wall art that hints at theme without committing.

This place – this place! – drew us in, at once cavernous and intimate. The center bar, so like an island, rose up in the center toward a shimmering ceiling of stars, some of them twinkling and shooting. A huge carved mask loomed from above, and an incongruous (but absolutely right) Hawaiian “it’s a small world” animatronic child stood above one of the two stained-glass pieces so penis-obsessed you’d be forgiven if you thought you were in Denver’s Hell or High Water.  

 One of the tenets of Tiki is that television that brings in the outside world is verboten, which ignores the unfortunate fact that Trader Vic’s all have TVs, and the extremely joyous addition of the Tiki TV trend. Most of Tiki’s best ideas were established between the thirties and the sixties, with the revival sometimes bringing in things like a reliance on clown Tiki and those weird garden walls with neon cursive writing inset – the cheugiest of all nü-Tiki ideas.

 But adding TVs that show old episodes of Gilligan’s Island or Magnum, PI, or Disneyland promos, or that Brady Bunch in Hawai’i? I can’t get enough of those. Golden Tiki’s TV had a curated clip show of Tiki from all over, taking from old TV and movies to YouTube shows and filmed ceremonies from the Golden Tiki itself. One of GT’s claims to fame is their shrunken heads ceremonies; the bar is festooned with heads from Tiki luminaries all over, and it’s honestly a huge honor to be worthy of your very own shrunken head.

Beyond that, there was a whole pirate room! That you got to through the mouth of a giant! A DJ spinning exotica! A bathroom with wallpaper of hundreds of naked women all over the walls (apparently the other bathroom had naked dudes, which, A+). The operations manager, Nick, came out and gave us a tour. There are giant clam shells along one wall that are basically a nonstop waterfall! Haunted booths with skulls and laminated Tiki postcards! Shields and masks and thatch and bamboo – this really is the platonic ideal of what a Tiki escape should be.

But escape rarely lasts. We spent as long a time there as we could, but we had lunch to get and showers to take before our Fancy Night in Vegas, with all the steakhouse dinners and Cirques du Soleil. We bid adieu to our new favorite place in Vegas and the friends we made there. Would we ever see those crazy kids?

I guarantee it.