︎ zazen bozo ︎


︎︎︎ August 21st, 2023 ︎︎︎


Burlington and Tiki bars, these things feel somehow related as of this moment. They’re hyper reality maybe? I go to Burlington most Mondays, and sometimes on Wednesdays, but almost never at night. I was at a fancy restaurant, then I got a creemee. Almost nobody was from town at the restaurant, and almost everybody was at the creemee spot. There were kids being intimidated by black-clad police at the latter and lads in golf shirts talking about a different sort of repping altogether at the former.   

It feels a bit like a caricature of itself at this point, Burlington. Like had I been a US marine stationed in Burlington at the prime of my youth, the bar I’d make in inspiration of it might feel like a combination of Honey Road full of travelling salesmen and North African refugees being hassled for the crime of not being from here in a creemee stand parking lot. 

That’s the Tiki bar connection. 

A Tiki bar is the concoction of old Marines who were formerly stationed in Polynesia. It’s not an earnest attempt at an authentic Polynesian experience, there was no research done outside of their own memory palaces. They searched the depths of their nostalgia and the halycion days of their youth and they put together a place that’s hyper real, more itself than itself. To them at least.

The friend I got dinner with tonight thinks that’s cultural appropriation and is bad. I think with the example of the Tiki bar in particular, sure, it’s not great. But the Tiki-bar-Burlington I’d make, it might not be bad at all. It’d be funny, but it’s not worth doing because Burlington’s already a very un funny Tiki bar version if itself.

Bozo