For some, summer is a time of sweet rum drinks with tiny umbrellas and exotic-sounding names. For Tiki culture enthusiasts though, the luau is year-round and liquid aloha fills glasses in a precise combination of quality booze, fresh juices, ingredients almost entirely reserved for these cocktails, and even ice specifications.

But Tiki is more than a cocktail culture populated by Zombies, Mai Tais, Painkillers, Singapore Slings, Fog Cutters, Scorpion Bowls, Blue Hawaiians, and the like—an extended family of colorful drinks fathered in 1930s California by the likes of Donn Beach and Trader Vic.

Tiki culture is an aesthetic, a state of mind, and a way of life inspired by factual (and at times culturally appropriated) visions of Polynesia and larger Oceania, as well as the Caribbean. Summed up thusly in the 1953 Fritz Lang crime noir, The Blue Gardenia: “These aren’t really drinks. They’re trade winds across cool lagoons. They’re the Southern Cross above coral reefs. They’re a lovely maiden bathing at the foot of a waterfall.”

Beginning almost immediately following the repeal of Prohibition and exploding after World War II into Cold War-era 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s—thereby lasting longer than the disco craze that supplanted it—the Tiki movement infused not only drinks, but décor, fashion, music, and movies. Notable names ranging from Howard Hughes to Clark Gable, to Elvis Presley, to Frank Sinatra were into it, and Tiki palaces—fully immersive experiences with faux waterfalls, volcanoes, and streams—became oases across the nation for those wanting to escape the mundane with the drinks, food, and dinner shows (and a few still exist out there, such as the stunning Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale, Florida).