Tucson cocktail enthusiasts may be familiar with Cabali, a tiki bar that opened a couple years ago.
Cabali’s interior design is striking: wooden beams carved with tribal designs, a pillar wrapped in octopus tentacles behind the bar, and row upon row of vintage tiki mugs, collected from other tiki bars around the country by the bar’s owner, Doug Finical, who goes by Fini.
Cabali was a multi-year labor of love for Fini — he started the project partly so that he’d have a place to display his massive collection of tiki mugs, which he’s been obsessed with for decades.
Fini’s story — and the broader phenomenon of tiki mugs and culture — are the subject of a new documentary by Tucson filmmaker Josh Dragotta. It’s called “Cabali and the Tiki Mug Obsession,” screening at Film Fest Tucson on March 29.
In an early sequence in the film, Dragotta asks a series of interviewees to define what tiki means to them.
INTERVIEWEE 1: It is a culture. It's a cult. Yes, I'm blinking, but don't get me out. It is a mindset, it's a vibe, it's a drink, it's a mug, it's music, it's a get up. It is the coolest of the uncool.
INTERVIEWEE 2: You get into tiki because you think it's fun and kitsch, and then you're like, oh, they make really great drinks. And then you become a rum snob. And then all of a sudden you start learning about Polynesian culture.
INTERVIEWEE 3: Man, that guy's sitting with a Mai Tai and a Hawaiian shirt, comfortable clothes, that looks fun.
INTERVIEWEE 4: Our people helped form this genre. The original carvers, Andy Bumatai, Milan Flores Guanko, they were Filipino. And as a Filipino American, I use the name Polynesian Pop. It's a tribute to the people who helped build that genre, inform that genre.
The Show spoke with Josh Dragotta, who talked about him what tiki means to him.
Full conversation
JOSH DRAGOTTA: I would never put myself in a position to say: This is exactly what tiki is. But I will say it really is about community. It's about appreciation for a form. And there's so many different elements to tiki. It's music, it's clothing, it's art. It's so many things, Sam.
But all in all, I'd say it's really, at its core, it's escapism, you know, I mean, it's about finding a place both mentally and in a physical space where you could just sort of escape.
SAM DINGMAN: I'm really glad you brought up the art and the music of it. I mean, so much of this film is really about artists who are working in a very specific tradition, specifically the mug makers.
One of the ways that you illustrate this is through the story of the severed head mug. Can you describe the severed head mug and why it's a big deal?
DRAGOTTA: Well, without giving too much away, there is a mug, it's a coveted mug, and it is called the Ren Clark severed head mug. And this is a mug that if any one would look at it, and people say it in the film, is that it doesn't look — and I'll do air quotes — "tiki."
And there's a reason for that and there's a story behind that. And what drew me to that mug in particular was it almost represented what is so fascinating about the mug itself. And our tagline for the movie now is like, every mug has a story. Because they all do. And some have truth to them and others have just lore and a lot of mythology.
And that mug in particular has that mythology. But for those at home or on their car or whatever, it's a bloody upside down head that some describe as gory, grotesque. And we also talk to people that haven't actually seen it. People have been trying to collect it forever. It goes for thousands of dollars. Like it's just, it encompasses the whole crazy wild lore of tiki bug collecting.
DINGMAN: I also had the sense though, that I don't think this is giving anything away because, you know, people may know this, the restaurant now exists. When Cabali finally opens after a great deal of effort and money on Fini and his partner's part, I got the sense that it represented something very significant for this community of people.
Not just for Fini himself, but it kind of stood for how far this community has come.
DRAGOTTA: Oh, that's really... I love that ... It is a space and it symbolizes in a way this, this community in a way. But with the mug, you know what I mean? And that's cool. I hadn't thought of that, but man, that's pretty awesome.
DINGMAN: Well, it was just something about — again, we see this in the film, when it finally opens, there's people lined up at 6:30 in the morning who want to get in. And then when they do get in, they see many of them on the shelves of the bar mug designs that they have either spent their adult lives coveting or in some cases creating. It's like they're seeing themselves reflected back to them in physical space by somebody who clearly takes the values of this, again, hyperspecific thing very seriously.
DRAGOTTA: Yes, it's so true. Yeah, to see people just really be excited about some mugs that Fini has in there is cool to watch. And there's like other people that come in that know a lot of history about things, so you could just kind of be hanging out and then all of a sudden somebody's giving another person a little history lesson on it.
The other part of this that's cool is that there's so many people that didn't even know that this exists. Tiki itself, right? And so once he opened up this space, there's just, there's a lot of people that come in there that don't even, that have never even been into a tiki bar.
And so they're sort of enamored by just the design and just how much effort and work and creativity went into the space.
DINGMAN: Yes. That made me want to ask, Josh. And the film touches on this with one person that we meet who's a podcaster who goes under the name Polynesian Pop. He is of Polynesian descent, and he says at one point, "Our culture created this," referring to the Indigenous Polynesian community, that a lot of the, you know, a lot of the imagery in Tiki is tribal shields and face paint. A lot of things that came originally from Polynesian culture.
How much conversation is there amongst the tiki enthusiasts you spoke to about the delicacy of that? Like, are there fears about appropriation? Is that something that's discussed?
DRAGOTTA: You know, that's an interesting question. I'm sure that exists it for some folks. It wasn't something that ever came up in our journey. I think what's unique about our movie is we have Fini and we have the community. These two different storylines that intercept with each other, right. And throughout that journey, you take from the beginning to the end of the film, you see that there is this passion for the form, right. Like there's this genuine appreciation for this form. And it's not driven by money. I think that there does —
DINGMAN: [LAUGHS] In some cases, it's driven by losing money, it seems like.
DRAGOTTA: And many times it is. I mean, Fini is a really great example of someone that is not interested in exploiting something, if you will. Like, the guy genuinely has this reverence for this form and he's willing to spend whatever money he has — and he'll go broke doing it — so that he can share it and, and, and save it and, you know, be around it every day of his life.
So I can appreciate, you know, someone that may have, you know, feelings about that, but it wasn't ever anything that came up in conversations. And again, I think it's just because the people that are involved with tiki are just so passionate about it.
DINGMAN: Well, and there is an interesting — you alluded to it earlier in our conversation. This idea of speaking of the severed head mug ... how "tiki" it really is. There's a lot of conversation in the film about, is tiki a defined thing? Or is it, you know, just a passion for detail and aesthetic that's kind of loosely inspired by these midcentury modernism, plus Polynesian culture, plus pineapple syrup? [LAUGHS]
DRAGOTTA: [LAUGHS] Yeah, yeah. The scene has grown so big, mug, specifically mug collecting, that you're starting to see all kinds of mugs, you know, a few years back with like "Golden Girl" mugs or "Star Wars" mugs, right. And so what constitutes a "tiki mug?" Is it something that — is it a drinking vessel? And I like the idea of leaving that open and not actually saying to someone.
-
The Analogs is a series of stories about people who make things by hand — and what those things tell us about those people. -
Sam’s mom said something to him when he was very young that he’s never forgotten. This series is an attempt to figure out what she meant. -
Watching Angie Dell work a letterpress is like watching someone ride a bike. That makes sense for Angie, who says writing should engage all of our senses.
-
For Ryan Elewaut, guitars are more than musical instruments. They’re time machines.
-
Way up in the hills of Prescott, a small cadre of diehards is keeping analog type alive. In a culture that worships efficiency, Sky Shipley is a proud member of the resistance.
