There is a woman I see occasionally around my neighborhood. Well into her sixties, she is never without her jet-black Elizabeth Taylor hairdo, kohl rimmed eyes, muu muu and parasol. Sometimes she has a flower tucked behind her ear and is always surrounded by the perfume of gardenias. Her middle-aged daughter and preteen grandchildren often accompany her. Without fail, they hold the door and pull out the chair for her. She evokes cliché, yet I cannot imagine her being anything other than what she is. In my head, I have dubbed her the Island Queen. When I see Queen, she reminds me of Trader Vic’s.

By the time I visited Trader Vic’s in the 1990s, it was in the twilight of its nearly 50 year history. I was a recent college graduate, cobbling together a living as a production assistant for several different broadcast media outlets. These companies were seemingly always in need of production assistants, I assumed because the jobs were springboards for bigger and better positions.

Vintage Micronesian Wood Storyboard, from my own collection  

It quickly became clear that the title "production assistant" was a loose umbrella for such necessary — but thoroughly unglamorous — tasks such as rewinding tapes, erasing white boards, and ripping scripts. The last of those tasks consisted of grabbing accordions of five-ply paper as they were spewed out of industrial printers, ripping off the perforated edges (these were dot-matrix behemoths), and separating the five different colored sheets of paper for the different people they were supposed to go to. White to the male anchor… pink to the female anchor… yellow to the producer… and the other white to the director. All the while keeping the papers in order, in five neat stacks.

Should a new version of one of the scripts be printed at the last minute, the old one had to be found and discarded, and the update put in its place. Sometimes, if things were really running late, I would have the added pressure of performing these tasks with the on-air talent looking over my shoulder and sighing audibly.

On one such occasion, I rushed to flip through the stacks of paper, which would never seem to stick to my fingers — replacing obsolete printouts with newer ones, and practically collapsing as I finished with a few minutes to spare. But the anchors — a distinctively coiffed woman and a non-descript man — just stood there staring at me.

"Whew! Glad I finished those in time!" I sighed in relief.

Glowering stares.

"Huh?"

"Aren't you going to give them to us?" the man questioned.

"Well, you have hands, don't you?" I rhetorically replied.

 Uh-oh. I think that was a mistake.

 "Here you go," I smiled, placing one stack and then another, into their hands.

"You'd better be careful, or you'll end up like the last production assistant — on the streets, begging for a job!" the woman cackled, as the pair walked off toward the studio.  

One of the things that kept me going during those days was the fact that these companies had fantastic trades with their advertisers and shared the bounty freely with their staff: lift tickets for Sierra ski resorts, box seats at sporting events, free flowing parties at restaurants I had never visited.

 Retro-styled tiki cups

One of those restaurants was Trader Vic's in San Francisco. It was located on Cosmo Place, a chi chi name for what was really an alley hidden amidst low-income housing projects and strip bars in the Tenderloin district — a neighborhood I had been warned not to venture into, especially at night. But I was young, curious, and gussied up with brown MAC lipstick and my best Clothestime finery. I parked my car on a hill that evening, turned the wheels to the curb and made a run for it.

Once safely inside 20 Cosmo Place, I entered a South Pacific hideaway straight out of a Michener novel. Inside the dimly lit restaurant, the walls were thatched and decorated with tiki masks. Upon telling the hostess which party I was there for, I was whisked upstairs to a private room with mirrored walls and a full bar.

Due to my low tolerance for alcohol — which produces a red face after a few sips — I ordered a Midori sour (extra ice!), which I planned to nurse for the entire evening. My friends ordered fanciful cocktails served in kitschy glasses with plenty of paper umbrellas and maraschino cherries.  

Instead of replacing people's individual drinks, the waiter brought in the hugest cocktail I have ever seen. It was served in not so much of a goblet, but a tureen.  Ripe with rum and sweet with pineapple juice, it was called The Scorpion Bowl. Everyone was instructed to grab a straw and stick it in. The communal bowl was supposed to enhance the convivial experience. And if sharing a drink didn’t make everyone feel at home, the rum would do the job. The sweet aroma was tempting and the excitement was contagious, but a sip or two was enough for me.

Maybe it was a sign that the restaurant was advertising so heavily. Within a year after that evening, Trader Vic’s on Cosmo Place poured its last Mai Tai and shuttered its tiki doors for good.

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According to the company's website, the real Trader Vic — the peg-legged Victor Jules Bergeron Jr. of San Francisco — opened his first Polynesian themed saloon in Oakland in 1934. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen famously wrote, "The best restaurant in San Francisco is in Oakland."

Bergeron claims to have invented the Mai Tai in 194os. Legend has it that his Tahitian friend exclaimed, “Mai Tai roa ae!” (Tahitian for ‘out of this world!') upon tasting the new cocktail, and the rest is history.  The San Francisco Trader Vic’s outpost opened in 1951. There are currently twenty-three restaurants, from Scottsdale to Dubai, as well as Trader Vic’s brand spirits, bottled drink mixes and sauces.

Fruity Rum Cocktail for Lightweights

• 1/2 oz. gold rum
• 1/2 oz. dark rum
• dash of orange curacao
• juice of 1/2 lime, shell reserved
• juice of 1/2 orange
• 1/4 oz. simple syrup
• 1/2 oz. orgeat (or almond) syrup
• 2 cups crushed ice
• 1 sprig mint
• 1 pineapple wedge

Shake all the liquid ingredients with crushed ice in a cocktail shaker. Pour into glass without straining. Garnish with the reserved squeezed lime half, mint sprig and wedge of pineapple. Makes one serving.

Recipe adapted from Trader Vic's Mai, Dallas News