THE LUCKY STAR: What Do You Mean There’s A Home Tiki Bar Near Me!?!

A while back, my friend (Tiki With) Ray Wyland called and told me that he’d discovered a tiki bar somewhere on the island I live on. What!?! How could that be? If there was one here, I am sure I would have found it by now. This particular bar isn’t a public one. Instead, it’s a home bar, he said. Even that was welcoming news. It meant that someone else on this rock was also a tikiphile like myself. I thought I was alone here.
The next day, my phone dinged. At Ray’s suggestion, although I hadn’t really used it all that much, I had recently opened a Tiki_Tourist Facebook page. I looked at the source of the ding and it had been the Facebook messenger app. It was a note from Ray that was sent to myself…and someone else; the guy with the home bar.
Ray introduced he and I to the bar’s owner. He said we would love to come out and visit his home bar. Could that be arranged?
The bar’s owner, Will Locksmith Hawkins and his wife Dawn, were delighted to have us over…but wanted to finish a project they’d been doing on the bar first. Could we wait a few weeks? Of course!
June gave way to July. Eventually my phone dinged again. It was Will, letting us know his project was done and when did we want to meet? Awesome!
Ray came over to my place here on Whidbey Island and we went together.
When we arrived, I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, I’d seen the picture of the bar on Will’s page (the one Ray had seen originally), but it was kind of dark and I really couldn’t make out much. Will met us in the driveway and led us down some stairs to a lower level of the house, where the tiki bar was hidden away.
The exterior suggested a work in progress. But really, are any home tiki bars ever “finished”? There was a very curious pair of signs to the right of the door, though. One listed the hours of operation (“Dawn ‘til dawn”). Below that was another sign reading “Closed for aerial attacks”? Huh?

Upon entering, the first thing I noticed was what looked like an old military airplane wing hanging from the ceiling over the bar.

Was that a framed painting of some sort of fighter jet on the wall and, was that an old mortar that had been made into a lamp? What sort of tiki bar was this?

This bar, the Lucky Star, is a military-themed bar. A what? I was familiar with tiki bars having a pirate slant or maybe just a nautical theme, but full-on military? That was a new one to me….and to Ray.
But for Will and Dawn, it seemed like a natural progression in a way. Their families had been involved in the military, aviation and/or transportation in one way or another over the years. Will’s grandfather, Willis Hawkins, had been an aeronautical engineer for Lockheed. His patent for the vectoring thrust of a prototype fighter jet that was never built, was eventually used for F-22s. A painting of the Lockheed PV-1 Vega Ventura hangs to the right of the bar. Will’s grandfather was also involved in that.
Another member of Will’s family, his uncle, Bill Hawkins, had served during the Vietnam war (in Alaska!). It was he who had first introduced Will to tiki culture. There is a photo of Uncle Bill on display in the bar along with the actual helmet he was photographed with.

Aside from Will and Dawn (both just home from working at their business, Rain Shadow Nursery), their friend Jeff Stoner was there. Jeff owns Greenbank Cidery, which has a tasting room here in Coupeville, and it was a pleasure to meet him as well.

While we all chatted, Will poured us up some drinks. Ray, who has given up alcohol, had bitters and soda. I had what everyone else was having, a Test Pilot. (How apropos!) Will ignited it before serving it up. It was one tasty drink! It was complex but not mired in its own complexity, as some drinks can be. It attacked your tastebuds in different ways, but the total effect was delicious.

We had a delightful evening. Although Jeff had to cut out early, there was still plenty of Will’s big, gregarious and hearty laughter, Dawn’s quiet smiles, and Ray’s and my wide-eyed stares of wonderment over the bar, to round things out.
Ray and I were both bemused by the whole military tiki bar thing. As Will pointed out various aspects of it and the “story” behind it (An officer’s quarters that had been turned into a bar on the sly—for those in the know—during WWII), the more we thought it was clever and very unique.

During war time (and probably during peaceful moments, too), military personnel were known to have erected portable “trench bars”. Think “The Swamp” on MASH—but more elaborate. Will has added some ingenious touches to add to the illusion, such as making the lone booth area look as if it is inside of a Quonset hut. The music in the bar is from the 1930s and ‘40s with snippets of Tokyo Rose spouting Japanese propaganda sprinkled in now and again.

Behind the bar is a large “picture window” (i.e. television showing a YouTube video) looking out at a deserted beach on a beautiful day.

There is a door to the right of the bar with a glass window. The word “office” is painted on the other side as if a person walking up to it would think the bar was an office. Behind the window, Will has a large TV set up. He hopes to soon have it playing a video of workers in a machine shop with someone occasionally coming up to the door and wanting to speak to whomever is in charge—and someone else trying to dissuade the person from entering. Very cool.

Another door with a window in a corner of the bar will eventually appear to lead to an air hangar.

Typical tiki is not lost on Will and Dawn’s home bar. There’s a super collection of tiki mugs, some swell tiki statues and some nifty tiki-esque chairs/stools.

The military aspect is just their own take on tiki. Will shared with us that he had previously built a tiki bar in the back of his Menlo Park, California home. He had built it with his Uncle Bill. When he’d moved to the Pacific Northwest, he wanted to take his tiki bar with him and—in classic (yet nontraditional) trench bar-style—resurrected it in a new location.

In addition to relocating the tiki bar to the island, family plays a large part in the bar’s charm to Will and Dawn. Besides Will’s grandfather and uncle, his grandmother, Anita Hawkins (an early flight attendant on DC-2s and DC-3s), and Dawn’s father, William “Nick” Nickerson (a merchant marine during the Vietnam war) are also remembered fondly through photos and memorabilia on display.

The bar is unfinished. Future plans on the outer patio include seating, a pass-thru window into the bar, a model railroad, and a MASH-like signpost complete with locations and distances. But unlike trench bars of the past that were designed to be moved at a moment’s notice, the Lucky Star isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

CHEERS!