Tiki culture thrives in Las Vegas at Frankie’s, Golden Tiki

Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale — not of a fateful trip, but of an escape from reality, your own three-hour tour.

It comes by way of tiki culture, which had disappeared from Las Vegas, but has come roaring back thanks to Frankie’s Tiki Room, which is approaching its ninth anniversary, and The Golden Tiki, which just marked its second.

But while the two spots share a clear appreciation for all things tiki, they’re really about as dissimilar as a toddler and an almost-tween could be.

Frankie’s filled a void that was absolute. Tiki tradition started in Las Vegas in the ’60s with Aku Aku at the Stardust and Don the Beachcomber at the Sahara, but both closed in the ’80s. 

Enter P Moss, owner of the Double Down, the venerable Paradise Road dive bar. While Moss said he “wasn’t a fanatic or anything” in regard to tiki culture, he knew a niche when he saw one.

“It’s escapism,” he said. “It’s tropical-looking. It’s not a beach bar, but it’s like you’re on a desert island … without a care in the world.”

Moss snapped up the old Frankie’s bar on Charleston Boulevard near University Medical Center and after extensive renovations, Frankie’s Tiki Room opened in December 2008. Moss hired tiki icon Bamboo Ben — grandson of tikidom founder Eli Hedley, who designed the exterior of Aku Aku and did extensive work at Disneyland — to do the interior, which is covered with bamboo matting, jungle and rainforest artifacts and much, much more.

The Golden Tiki came along in summer 2015. Partners Seth Schorr, Jeff Fine and Joe Cain wanted to do something different with their Little Macau in Chinatown, and Branden Powers went to work.

Powers was a tiki fanatic. He’d long been a fan of exotica music — what Americans hear when they think of island music — which came to be associated with tiki bars. Powers, too, came to be associated with tiki bars, at the Hanalei Hotel in San Diego in the early ’90s.

Drinks lean to tiki classics such as the Scorpion Bowl, and Powers plans to start food service Sept. 1. He said The Golden Tiki sold 15,000 tiki mugs in its first year, and if you want to be sure of getting a table on weekends, reservations are advised.

Frankie’s offers tiki classics, too, but a point of pride is the 24 original drinks on the menu, most of them crafted of house-made ingredients. Moss is so serious about the 60 originals created by his bartenders that he published them in a book, “Liquid Vacation,” which is in its second printing. He also has a line of original tiki mugs, with eight or so available at a given time.