A Corvallis restaurant owner is apologizing a week after opening up a Tiki bar downtown and being accused of cultural appropriation and insensitivity.
“I unintentionally made a mistake and I’m very sorry,” said Cloud Davidson, in an interview on Friday.
The Hapuna Kahuna Tiki Bar & Kitchen — until recently, the location was Cloud & Kelly’s Public House, an Irish pub — will close Sunday and reopen Sunday night as an extension of the Downward Dog, an adjacent bar that Davidson owns. Hapuna Kahuna started its short run on June 22.
Davidson said that residents of Polynesian ancestry, including those with the Oregon State University Asian and Pacific Cultural Center, complained about a combination of factors such as the use of a Hawaiian name, traditional iconography displayed in a cartoonish way, and how plastic leis were handed off to customers.
“I’m very sympathetic to the issues that were brought up to me. And I’m not for a moment going to tell a person of color that they’re wrong for how they feel,” Davidson said.
There also were grumbles, however, that Davidson wasn’t selling authentic Hawaiian fare.
In a Facebook post apology to the community in general, Davidson said he will remove the culturally significant items from the space, and reopen by 7:30 p.m. Sunday, when live music is scheduled to begin. The Downward Dog extension will continue to serve tropical drinks that were offered at the Tiki bar.
The controversy ended up spurring an interesting — and sometimes confusing — community discussion, Davidson acknowledged.
Some Hawaiians and other Polynesians liked the Tiki-themed bar and didn’t want him to change it, Davidson said.
A local Facebook forum also had numerous comments about the situation, including questions of whether it was appropriate for chefs to cook ethnic food that wasn’t from their ancestry, such as a Korean chef running a sushi joint, since the cuisine is Japanese; discussion on the origins of Tiki “culture” as an inauthentic fantasy mashup of tropical influences, and how there are Tiki bars in Hawaii; and comments on the evolution of Hawaiian cuisine to include items from numerous cultures, including those of Asian and Western countries.
This whole situation is just sad. At first I thought he was spineless as fuck for giving in that easy, but then I remembered this is the left and he probably received death threats. ---
Oda break tracker 2017- 5 (2) Super Mario Maker Profile: 1237-0000-0073-02FE