Tiki tour: The Alibi

Now we come to the final stop on our Pacific Northwest Tiki Tour. Those of you playing along at home will recall The Wife and I paid visits to A Very Taki Tiki Bar in Seattle, then Hale Pele, Tiki Putt and No Bones Beach Club in Portland. We also stopped in at Shark Bites way down in Coos Bay, but while it has some tiki influences, it makes no claims to being tiki and leans more to the surf shack aesthetic, so it's not reviewed (although the food's pretty good, and my eldest insists it has the best veggie burger on the planet).

There remained but one stop on our tiki list: The legendary Alibi, one of a handful of old-school tiki bars from the glory days of tiki's golden age (established in 1947, to be precise). Unfortunately, experiencing the Alibi turned out to be easier said than done. As mentioned in my No Bones writeup, we'd originally planned to hit Alibi for lunch with the kids, but discovered at the door that 21 and under weren't admitted. That was frustrating for everyone. Not only had The Wife and I wanted to share a little tiki culture with the kids, we were all hungry by then and ticked off we'd have to wait longer to eat.

After feeding the kids and dropping them off at the hotel, we headed back to the Alibi for a mid-afternoon drink. If nothing else, we expected it to be fairly empty and have the place to ourselves. And we were pretty much correct in that assumption. Walking into the place from the bright afternoon sun, we felt we'd stepped into a pitch black void. Seriously. Hale Pele had been dim when we entered it, but we could still find our way around. The Alibi, on the other hand, left us thinking, just of a moment, that it was closed. I don't have great night vision to begin with, but it took a couple minutes to even begin making out the soft glow of the various Orchids of Hawaii and Oceanic Arts lights hanging from the ceiling. When you hear people saying a good tiki bar should be dimly lit, the Alibi takes that concept and goes the extra mile. Seriously, they're not playing around.

We found a table in the mostly-empty place and sat there waiting for our eyes to adjust. The bartender brought us menus, and we used our cell phones to light them enough to read. We placed our order, and Lisa, who has eyes that handle darkness far better than mine, bounded off with her camera to take all the great photos you see here. The entrance was particularly cool, with a barrel-shaped foyer that was lined top to bottom with woven seagrass matting.

Lisa ordered a Banana Hammock, which came in a brandy snifter with a little plastic monkey hanging from the ubiquitous tiki drink umbrella. We both got a kick out of this and decided we'd get little animals for our tiki bar as well. As a digression, some of my fondest memories of childhood involved my Grandpa Fritz taking me to Sonic in Cuero in his '55 Chevy Bel Air and buying me a grape or cherry slushy. Those always came with--you guessed it--one of these little plastic animals. So yeah, I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Anyway, the Banana Hammock is comprised of a tropical rum blend, banana liqueur, orange curaçao, lemon coconut cream (?) and "tiki" bitters. Lisa gave the drink a thumbs up, in case you were wondering.

My immediate goal was to get one of the Alibi's souvenir mugs. Unfortunately, those were specifically for the Zombie. The Zombie is a classic tiki cocktail, but includes grapefruit juice and Absinthe (or Herbsaint or Pernod) as main ingredients. I can think of few things more disgusting that licorice flavor in my drink, and after the bitter disaster with grapefruit at No Bones Beach Club earlier, I was in no mood to suffer through another vile drink. So instead of the Zombie, I asked nicely and had the bartender bring be a Cobra Commander in the coveted mug instead. According to their menu, that's a "secret" blend of rums, falernum, blue curaçao, orange, lime and cinnamon. And they served it to me in their really cool tiki mug with gummie worms hanging out the top. I mean, that was trippy. Delightfully weird. And the drink was pretty good as well. This was my first encounter with falernum, and while I couldn't identify it at the time, I've since learned that I am partial to it's spicy mix of flavors.

Once we'd finished those drinks, we ordered a second round. Lisa, sticking with her plan to evaluate every Mai Tai in the Pacific Northwest, ordered a Mai Tai. Their recipe was pretty close to the traditional Trader Vic Mai Tai with some tweaks: Martinique rhum, Jamaican rum blend, orange curaçao, lime and orgeat. If I recall correctly, she felt this drink slightly less complex in flavor in comparison to the Hale Pele version, but she actually preferred the Alibi's take on the classic drink.

Wanting to stick with rum-based drinks and avoiding those with absinthe or coconut, I ordered a Jet Pilot, a "high-powered" mix of rums, falernum, grapefruit, lime and cinnamon. Again, the rum-and-falernum combination worked nicely for me. The grapefruit was understated and honestly, I couldn't taste any cinnamon at all. This one wasn't my favorite, but I'd happily drink it again.

Now, let's talk about the non-drink elements. The Alibi is amazing! Once we adjusted to the dark, 70 years' worth of history jumped out at us. Seriously. The interior decor is like the Platonic ideal of what a tiki bar should be. The place was huge--easily triple the size of Hale Pele. There was a classic wall mural on one end. Every square inch of ceiling had some intricate light or other hanging from it. The wooden railings and trim had an age-worn patina to them. There were layers and layers and details as far as the eye could see. Every time I started looking at something, another object would catch my eye. Some details went unnoticed by me until I looked at the photos after the fact. It was a sprawling eruption of concentrated tiki history, and it felt historic. Hale Pele had excellent, dense decorations as well, but those felt fresh and new, carefully selected and placed by interior designers. The Alibi was having none of that. Even the sections that were clearly planned and laid out had an organic, haphazard feel to them. The weight of years gave the place a gravitas I did not expect. I can only imagine how it must've been at tiki's height in the 1950s.

But... (and you knew there was a but coming). Sigh. It pains me to say it, but despite all that history and wow factor and decent drinks, the Alibi falls way short of being a good tiki bar because of the atmosphere. How can that be, after all the amazing photos I've shared? Those good drinks? How? Sinmple--they don't run it like a tiki bar. The atmosphere is anything but. The entire time we were there, they played 70s over the P.A. system. We're talking Foghat, Tin Lizzie, Zeppelin, all the stuff you'd hear on what used to be called AOR stations. Which, you know, is music I normally like, but it felt so wrong here. I'm not insisting they play Martin Denny-style exotica, but cool jazz, surf rock or even reggae would've been more in keeping with the tone. The song selection made the place feel like a biker bar, and you know what? That's the clientele that came in. Nothing against bikers, they're some fine people, but the attitude of the patrons and bar staff was one of a roadhouse or dive bar. There was a weird disconnect with all the booths and tiki paraphernalia. And one entire section of the bar had been given over to lottery machines and other automated gambling devices. This is the kind of low-rent "entertainment" normally reserved for the back rooms of convenience stores, where the floors are sticky and smell of stale urine masked only partially by sloppily-applied Pine-Sol. It felt trashy. It felt as if the staff and patrons were there in spite of the tiki elements, not because of them. I know there are people who are passionate patrons of the Alibi's low-brow aesthetic, who think their karaoke nights are the greatest thing ever. And that's fine. But it didn't take long for Lisa and I to start discussing how wonderful it would be for the owners of Hale Pele to take over the Alibi and return it to it's tiki glory. Hell, keep the karaoke nights that are obviously such a draw, but return it to being a tiki bar again during the day and early evening. Judging by the lines waiting outside of Hale Pele in the afternoon, there's more than enough fans of tiki in the Portland area to support such a move by the Alibi (particularly since 90 percent of the place was empty when we visited). That's not going to happen, but it'd be nice.

We were looking at the menu to order a third and final drink, when the cognitive dissonance really started to get to me. I looked over the menu twice and absolutely nothing was appealing. I was uncomfortable. It was getting later in the afternoon, and more people were filtering in, a loud and boisterous crowd. I turned to Lisa and said, "Let's go to Hale Pele." I didn't have to twist her arm. She felt that odd discomfort growing as well. Twenty minutes later, we were seated at the Hale Pele bar, and all the tension just bled away. Lindsey recognized us immediately as the folks from Texas that took all the pictures the day before. That resulted in a conversation from a Dallas transplant right next to us, who'd lived in Portland for years but was only just visited Hale Pele for the first time, and was amazed by the experience. There was a friendly, welcoming vibe permeating the place. We felt comfortable immediately. Lisa ordered a Blue Hawaii, followed by a Castaway. I opted for a Passion Fruit Batida, then a Shark's Tooth. They were all so good. Lisa and I aren't barflies. We never have been, but it hurt, really hurt to say goodbye to Hale Pele. Almost as much as it hurt to see what the Alibi chooses not to be. Regardless, we now have the standard for what all other tiki bars will be judged by.

And if you're ever in Portland, check out Hale Pele. Seriously. It is amazing.

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