Tiki Bar Signs

When people ask me what my favorite part of the home pub is, I usually tell them that my favorite part is having one. You just can't beat it. But my favorite part of putting it together had to be looking through all the tiki bar signs for the right ones for the joint. I've said it before - men are predisposed to liking neon signs. They're just cool. Or maybe my friends and I are just easily amused. Who knows. But that's what I had the most fun picking out.

 

 
Pretty much, as soon as I started looking aorund for them, I realized that there were more tiki bar signs in existence than I ever thought of. There were the simple, wooden plaque variety, of course. Those are nice. They're very traditional looking, like you're about to really go drinking in a straw-roofed hut somewhere. Unfortunately, my wife wouldn't let me go far enough to create an entire hut in the spare room that we use for my home pub. I don't know why. It seemed like a great idea to me - a hut within a house. Downright ingenious! I should have stopped while I was ahead though. My wife just gave me "that look" when I mentioned that part. She really put her foot down when I told her the entirety of my original idea though, which went way beyond tiki bar signs, and even beyond the hut.

I wanted to go so far as to bring in some sand to cover the floor with. I thought it would be very authentic, and that the lights from the tiki bar signs would reflect off of it nicely. I'm not sure where I would get all that sand. Possibly a few late night trips to the beach with a backseat full of buckets. But my wife put a stop to that plan really quick. She told me that if she wanted to live on a beach, she would have married a surfer bum. This put an end to my quest for that authentic, Polynesian feel.

I passed on the traditional wooden tiki bar signs as well. I did get one that had "It's 5 0'Clock Somewhere" carved into it though. That is just a classic and was my motto for many years. For the rest of my signage I chose to go for things that were brightly lit though. All neon all the way. There's one with a glowing, red, parrot on it. There's another one that's green, with one of those stone statues that they have on Easter Island. I even got one that flashes on and off and just reads, "Cocktails."

There are a hundred different ways to go with this stuff. I like what I have so far, but I was also thinking that I might throw some pirate stuff in there too. Maybe a skull and crossbones. Not Polynesian, or Hawaiian, or anything but there's no reason that I can't have a little fusion. It's my place, after all. It should be whatever I like. And it should have whatever tiki bar signs in it that I think are cool.