The Mango Vol 1 Issue 6

Now the Barnes family tailors vacations around warm weather, sunshine and “anywhere with palm trees, fake or real!” They are Disney and cruise line fans, and almost defensively he assures: “No Alaskan cruises yet!” Most of his kids’ birthdays occur in the winter, so they most often get themed something contrarily tropical. Around 2015, Barnes was setting up for yet another beachy birthday in the middle of a nor’easter snowstorm and found himself daydreaming of an earlier trip to Disneyland when the family stopped by Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar. “At the time I thought, this is cool, whoever designed this place understands me. That’s when I decided to make my own,” Barnes explains. The cars, once tucked happily in a toasty garage, were banished to endure the elements outside, and the tiki bar transformation began. Barnes took to the Internet for ideas and uncovered an underbelly of like-minded bar aficionados. He joined appropriate

Facebook groups and found out he was, ironically, on an island. “I’d like to be able to build a larger group of tiki enthusiasts in central Massachusetts, because there aren’t really a lot. Most people think, ‘why would you do this?’” It started simple, with the actual bar and a pool table. Then he pulled in bamboo props from his photography studio and, little by little, with more and more Internet research, thrift store, flea market and antique store scavenging, he began to build an oasis. He once drove 12 hours to buy a find. True to escapism, it can be more about the journey than the destination, and Barnes finds great joy in the search for the right tchotchkes. “A lot of the space is filled with stuff that most people would look at it and say ‘that’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’” he laughs. The large tiki came from the back of a garage that was long pillaged from an old Tiki Kon restaurant abuzz in 1970s Boston. He even bought an entire private museum collection

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N o v / D e c

2021