When Victor "The Trader" Bergeron decided to open another one of his successful Polynesian lounges at the Havana Hilton in 1958 he could not foresee that only months later his manager would be shot at by revolutionaries as he was boarding one of the last planes out. Much less could he predict that, six years later, his decor would become Tiki loot to provide the atmosphere for the artistically strongest scenes in a film aiming to glorify Castro's revolution.....

And so, as today the Trader's empire is shrinking ominously with the closures of the Seattle ('92), San Francisco ('94), Washington ('95) and Portland ('96) outposts, we can still catch a glimpse of his style in "I Am Cuba" (available only at arty video stores). The Havana Trader's architect Lloyd Lovegren also designed the Denver ('54) and Chicago ('57) restaurants (Chicago being the finest example still in existence, go while it is there!), and the Trader Vic's at the New York Plaza in 1965. It was a proud achievement for Vic, who had always catered to uppercrust "sophisticated savages", to move into this "classy joint" (Trader lingo). His first outpost in New York had opened at the Savoy Hilton in 1958, but the hotel was demolished to be replaced by the General Motors building.

The downstairs lobby of the Plaza Trader's was graced with a humongeous forty foot long seagoing outrigger canoe from the set of the 1962 version of "Mutiny on the Bounty" with Marlon Brando. In an act of lounge/industrial espionage, the restaurant's blueprints were surreptitiously acquired by the Trader's main competitor, Stephen Crane, who operated Sheraton's Kon-Tiki chain from his Luau headquarters in Beverly Hills.

Attended by the swank and the suave, Vic's Tiki temple at the Plaza was a regular hang-out for players like Bob Fosse, who lived around the corner. When Donald Trump took over the hotel, he closed the restaurant (1989), keeping the lounge open a couple of years longer. My favorite unconfirmed rumor was that Trump was planning to engage "exotic" dancers to increase profitability, which fortunately/ unfortunately never happened. Like the Hawaii Kai and the Luau 400, the Plaza Trader became a victim of changing tastes. Nobody knows what happened to the giant outrigger.....

A footnote: The Havana Trader supposedly still exists, although we do not know in what condition. The ultimate lounge experience might await those who can make it to cocktails at the Caribe Hilton.

Sven"-Tiki" Kirsten is co-editor of "Tiki News" and the author of the upcoming "Book of Tiki."

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