I spent most of the week in Springfield, Virginia, a hellish and highly confusing confluence of multiple freeways and poorly-laid out surface streets, surrounded by dreary strip malls. Consequently, most of the things I was interested in doing were very far away from where I was at, and extremely difficult to locate. The traffic was beyond horrible. I've been to the D.C. area many times over my career, and I've never seen such an appalling clusterf*ck of gridlocked cars and inattentive drivers. It's utter anarchy. On Monday, it took me 45 minutes to get back to my hotel from the office where I was working...a distance of 5 miles.

Despite these obstacles, I still managed to have a pretty good time. I was finished at 3pm every day, so I could hit the highway slightly before the onslaught of rush-hour traffic. One evening, I decided to drive out to visit an antique mall I'd seen in the Yellow Pages, but when I got there, I found it'd gone out of business! Since I was about halfway there already, I decided to keep driving out to Sterling, VA to locate Cheng's Pacific Restaurant, which I'd heard was a paradise of tikiness set amongst the stripmalls of the suburbs. I was not disappointed.

Your first sighting of Cheng's might lead you to believe that it's some sort of Bennigan's-like chain restaurant. From the outside, it's just a nondescript red-brick square building, but don't be misled. The interior is a glorious temple of Polynesian Pop, awash in carved wooden tikis, masks, warclubs, and bamboo. A giant clamshell in the middle of a rocky koi pond spews dry-ice fog, and relaxing Hawaiian music plays over the PA system.

The waitstaff are all Thai, and were extremely friendly. I sat down at the bar first and ordered a Zombie with a plate of roast-duck wontons from the porn-moustaschioed barkeep. While not quite as potent as my own recipe, it was mixed well, and very tasty, as were the wontons. I then switched over to the dining room and ordered off the Prix Fixe menu. I started with a delicious bowl of pork wonton soup, followed by a Vietnamese dish of broiled beef on skewers with rice noodles, that I rolled up in very thin rice pancakes, and dipped in a hot sauce. Heavenly! I had a Mai Tai with the meal that was almost as good as the Zombie. For dessert, I had some green-tea ice cream.

Click for larger image

On Thursday, I met up for dinner with a Tiki Central member named Vern. We drove to the Peking Gourmet Inn, located in Falls Church, VA. While not a tiki establishment, they do serve excellent cocktails in tiki mugs, and their food is divine. The restaurant walls are covered with photographs of celebrities and politicians. We were seated under Maury Povich.

Over a fine repast of garlic sprouts and pork/chicken, washed down with Navy Grogs and Sufferin' Bastards, Vern and I discovered that we had a rather amazing number of things in common: we are both Wisconsinites who've traveled the world extensively, we both collect tiki, bad thrift store art, and listen to Exotica music, but weirdest of all, we both come from a 'zine background and had written articles for Cool and Strange Music Magazine. What're the odds? Vern also produced his own xeroxed music 'zine called Cannot Become Obsolete. He graciously gifted me with a couple of back issues, and reading them on my way home yesterday, I was struck by how intensely personal the writing was.

After dinner, Vern invited me to take a look at his home tiki space. Again, the plain exterior of his 2-story suburban townhome did not prepare me for the wonders that lay within. I sorely regret not having my camera with me so I could simply show you photographs of its splendours, but I guess that my poor verbiage must suffice. Vern's home is much more than simply a tiki space, every nook and cranny is crammed with thrift-store art, space-age bachelor pad-ness, and Exotica. He had several shelves groaning under the weight of his splendiferous mug collection, and the walls were covered with Shag prints as well as this very cool self-portrait, done in the Margaret Keane "big eyed" style, that Vern commissioned from artist Vicki Berndt.

Vern mixed me up a very good Mai Tai, then showed me around his pad, highlights of which included a downstairs bathroom decorated with 200 plastic carnival ducks, and an upstairs bathroom done entirely with kitsch portraits of Christ. In the basement, Vern had constructed a Space Age Bachelor Pad replete with retro-futuristic furniture and multiple mobiles hanging from the ceiling. We chatted for a while, then I had to split since I needed to get up at 5am the next day, but we agreed to try and organize a road trip on my next visit to see some of the tiki establishments along the Maryland coast like Vera's White Sands.

I was done with work early on Friday, so I drove to Old Town Alexandria to do some antiquing. First, I had a nice lunch of scallops, lump crab, and shrimp at a restaurant on the Potomac River, then I went in search of vintage tiki . It wasn't long before I scored the 4 mugs pictured at the top of this post, which I purchased for a mere $10 apiece. From left to right: His 'n' Hers Kahlua Hut mugs, a green "Paddle Licker" mug from the Hawaiian Inn at Daytona Beach, FLA, and finally, a beautiful and mysterious Otagiri Moai mug that I've been unable to find anything out about other than a photograph in the book, Tiki Quest.

I flew home on Saturday morning in style and comfort, having received a complimentary first-class upgrade on Northworst. The flight attendants seemed rather sullen, but I suspect that's because a Federal judge had just denied their request to go on strike.