Luau at the Lagoon: Inaugural tiki party

This past weekend saw us host our inaugural tiki party at the Lagoon of Mystery. We had a number of dive-in movies last summer, and have another slate planned for this coming summer, but those are a different type of animal all together. This was an opportunity to invite our friends over as well as the greater circle of Texas Tikiphiles for an evening of relaxed cocktails and conversations while formally unveiling the past year's work we've put into making the Lagoon of Mystery all that it can be. Mike Hooker and The Quiet Village volunteered to bartend (y'all really need to follow them to keep track of the cool tiki bar coming to Austin!), which automatically improved the drink quality a thousand percent.

The run-up to the party was fraught, however. I had certain projects planned that took way longer than anticipated. Cleanup and prep were a massive undertaking, since I use the patio area that would be the focal point of the party as my construction zone. Day job crises consumed more days than I can count. On the day of, unplanned and unlooked-for obligations took The Wife away to San Antonio for the better part of the day, so that nothing was ready when guests started arriving. I'm not terribly good at multitasking, and was pretty much a basket case until she returned and Made Everything Right. Everything that was good about the party can be attributed to her intervention.

For me, the evening went by in a blur. I got to chat with friends both old and new. The Boozy Doodler gifted me with an incredible original sculpture by him. It seemed that everyone passing our threshold came bearing gifts--how do I know Texas Tikiphiles are the greatest? Because we ended the night with more rum than we started with! I started out drinking some of the rum barrel punch I'd mixed ahead of time, then followed with one of Mike's Mai Tais. After that, it seemed every time I turned around Mike was presenting me with a new drink. "Try this," he'd say. Ah! A flaming Jet Pilot! Ah! A Saturn! and so on. So much so that I neglected to drink water in between cocktails, which is my usual strategy. So much so that by the time the last guests departed, I belatedly realized I was quite a bit wobbly--which I never let happen. "How could this happen?" I wondered, then thought back over the night and realized my cup had been kept full the entire night. Sneaky devils.

The end result, from my perspective, is that a bunch of people got together and had a bit of fun. They seemed to appreciate what we've managed to put together with the Lagoon thus far, and our vision to expand it for the future. There's still a tremendous amount of work that remains to be done, but it's now recognizable as a tiki bar and functional for entertaining socially. We can now begin planning for next year's party--after we get through the upcoming slate of dive-in movies, of course!

Now Playing: Les Paul & Mary Ford Lover's Luau
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