If there’s anything that can help us survive this utterly dread-inducing Election Day, it’s our old friend alcohol. Even better, there’s the premise of getting sloshed on fruity, boozy, icy tiki drinks well earlier in the day than it would normally be socially acceptable.
Hell—take a horrible day, drown it in rum, and garnish it with a pineapple slice and a maraschino cherry. Suddenly, life’s not so bad, is it? When life gives you lemons, juice them, mix them with pineapple juice, and make a damn tiki drink.
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When you’re feeling the looming potential of the apocalypse, hide in the comforting shadow of a miniature paper cocktail umbrella. You can do this.
Photos by Janelle Jones. Styling by Eleanore Park.
Maybe you’re fortunate enough to live in a city with an amazing tiki bar, such as San Francisco’s Tonga Room, or perhaps within walking or cabbing distance from a freakishly creative cocktail bar such as New York City’s Death + Co., and if that’s the case, you’re in great luck. Congratulations: For you, the rum drinks can flow from opening until last call with ease.
But for everyone else, or for those who like to put a little homemade flair into their poison, we’ve consulted with the bartenders at the aforementioned, amazing drinking dens and collected their recipes for three of the finest tiki drinks you’ll ever sip on in your life: The Beach Goth, the Pineapple Royale, and the Blue Hawaii.
The Beach Goth (pictured above) is an exercise in studying the almighty Mai Tai and then chopping and screwing it into a new incarnation that will please both bikini’d women at luxury hotels and all-black-wearing New Yorkers who will only admit that they love the heat of July by drinking the whole way through it on their friends’ decks and rooftop parties.
And the Pineapple Royale … well, Jesus Christ—look at the thing. The Tonga Room is celebrating its 70th birthday this year, and is the oldest continuously running cocktail bar in North America, so if they don’t know how to make a proper rum banger, who does? (Also of note: they have a live band that performs on a floating barge in the middle of their indoor lagoon, and Anthony Bourdain once called the bar “the greatest place in the history of the world.”) And if sipping your tiki drink out of a whole pineapple isn’t impressive, what is?
The Blue Hawaii deserves a wonderful intro, as a most classic of drink in the American tiki canon, but what we’d really like to say is that it’s sweet, it will knock you on your ass, and it looks really cool when served in a miniature terrarium. Life’s a beach and then you die. Just kidding! Have some rum, vodka, and blue curaçao all mixed into one glorious concoction.
Have all three of these bad boys, and watch as your election cares float off like waves lapping away from the shore.
The best part about these drinks is that once you get the ingredients together, it’s a simple matter of shake, pour, and—of course—garnish. Start stocking up on those little umbrellas ASAP. We’ll need them.
