Trouble in Paradise:
The Great Tiki Controversy, Part I
Local publications and pundits have long found
pleasure in labeling Denver a Cow Town, an oversized
burg with big-city pretensions but lacking the sophistication
and culture to back it up.
And up to three weeks ago, those decriers may have
had a foot to stand on. But no more. Denver is now
a real city. A full-fledged metropolis. And if you
think I’m saying this because of the recently
opened opera house, you couldn’t be more wrong.
I’m saying it because Denver finally has
a Tiki bar.
It’s been a long, harrowing and shameful
drought. Cities like NYC and San Francisco have dozens.
Small towns in Iowa and Tennessee have them, Salt
Lake City, for crissakes, has one. And at last, one
has sprung up in Denver.
Tiki Boyd’s, ensconced in the East Colfax
Ramada, was designed and assembled from scratch by
namesake and legendary Tiki aficionado Boyd Rice.
Over the past weeks I’ve had the pleasure of
watching it slowly take form, steadily transforming
into a portal to another world, a better world, where
the shackles of modern life can be traded for the
trapping of savage sophistication. Where a man can
drink rum from a pineapple, listen to Martin Denny
and drift into Polynesian Paradise.
Whenever something this beautiful comes along,
however, it’s only a matter of time before
the sordid tawdriness of the outside world tries
to reassert itself. The ego hustlers, know-it-all
dilettantes and well poisoners slither their way
in and try to put the kibosh on it.
So in prances Dave
Flomberg, nightlife writer for the Rocky Mountain
News’ Denver Buzz section. If you’re
familiar with Flomberg’s writing, you’ll
know he fancies himself something of a bar expert
and trendsetter. His instincts are so honed that,
without having actually set foot in Ireland, he
possesses the capacity to inform actual Irishmen
that their Irish pubs are unauthentic. Such are
his skills.
Right
off the bat he employs the old theater reviewer
trick of praising the scenery and cast to high heaven,
so as to damn the director. After describing the
bar with lavish praise and handing out the title
of the “best bartender in Denver . . . maybe
even the universe” based on the production
of a single cocktail, he announces he will never
set foot in the bar again.
Why so? Because, Flomberg claims, Boyd Rice, the
bar’s namesake and creator, rushed up to him
and declared, “Charles Manson is a great guy.”
It so happens I’d attended a wedding reception
with Boyd earlier that evening and we’d drank
plenty, so my first gut reaction was echoed in an
email I fired off to Flomberg, and I quote:
Let me get this straight — you’re
going to demean an entire bar in print based on
the words of someone who is blackout drunk? I got
a newsflash for you, pal: you follow anyone around
who is blind drunk and you’re going to hear
some crazy shit. People will tell you they want
to nuke Paris (the city, or perhaps the socialite
as well), leave their wives for the cocktail waitress
they just met, or build a fricking rocket ship to
investigate rumors the canals on Mars are running
red with bourbon. I’ve heard drunk bar owners
say they’re going to blow up their competition.
Are they serious? No. They’re blackout drunk.
And don’t tell me you’ve never said
anything crazy when you’re out of your mind
on the booze. Anyone who’s ever put fifteen
drinks together has. The difference being, no one’s
going to attack the Rocky Mountain News in print
because you rambled some insane nonsense while mullocked.
Can you picture it? A Westword column crowing: “After
fifteen drinks Dave Flomberg remarked that he wanted
to drop a 15 ton shit-hammer on LA, so don’t
pick up the Rocky Mountain News. It’s obviously
staffed by homicidal lunatics.”
I went on to say I’d respond to his review
and take it out on him in this issue. Flomberg, sensitive
soul that he is, construed this a “personal
threat.” See, when it comes to communicating,
journalists like Flomberg prefer a one-way street.
They’d prefer they did the talking and everyone
else keeps their trap shut. And if you do speak up,
well, you’re “threatening” him.
After I sent the email, a couple things started
bugging me. First, why would Flomberg, who pals around
with a gentleman who runs a website called iamthedevil.net,
resplendent with satanic imagery, be so sensitive
about Charles Manson? Second, and more to the point,
why the hell would someone who is promoting a new
bar (Boyd has no financial stake in the place, by
the way) rush up to a reporter and state, strictly
out of the blue, that he thought Charlie was a happening
cat?
It didn’t ring true.
So I did some investigating. I tracked down and
interviewed five witnesses to Boyd and Flomberg’s
conversation, staff and patrons alike, and not one
of them corroborated Flomberg’s story. None
heard so much as a whisper about Charles Manson.
Which leads me to believe that Flomberg was (or
became aware through the Internet) Boyd had interviewed
Manson 19 years ago for the book The Manson File,
and decided to fit Boyd with a sufficiently controversial
quote. But why? Why would Flomberg make up such an
unbelievable statement out of whole cloth with an
eye toward assassinating a bar’s character?
Flomberg answered that question in his reply to
my aforementioned email, revealed that a number of
his friends had “crossed swords” with
Boyd in the past. In other words, Flomberg walked
into the bar with an agenda. He slithered into the
Garden of Eden looking for a serpent, when all he
had to do was take a look in the mirror behind the
bar.
When you discover that someone like Flomberg is
charged with determining what’s cool and what
isn’t in this town, it’s suddenly no
wonder we’ve had to wait 20 years for a Tiki
bar.
But I have news for him: despite his best attempts,
he won’t succeed in poisoning this well. All
the cheap hacks in the world can’t stop an
bar whose time has come.
Frank Kelly Rich
