Caine Blog

I recently saw the bill from my visit to Hawaiian Tropic Zone sitting in a file folder, getting ready to be expensed.  That made me happy, as did my visit to the perplexing, exceedingly tacky, and surreal place that is the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, “The Hottest Place on Earth.”

Indeed.  Hawaiian Tropic Zone melds two completely disparate milieux: sunscreen and fancy food.  We wondered aloud through the meal whether there weren’t dispensers in the kitchen - like soap dispensers, with a little window through the front - filled with different types of lotion.  Some meals would require the greasy amber of SPF4 tanning oil, while the more complex, French-influenced ones would make use of the SPF30 for a kind of bearnaise effect.

Sadly, this was not the case.  The food was pretty good, not cheap (not that it mattered), and served by a bunch of overtanned waitresses in bikini tops.  I had “The Big Meatloaf,” or something like it, which was in fact a softball-sized mound of meatloaf with little bits of piped mashed potatoes on top.

Obviously the food doesn’t matter.  Far more interesting to me was the clientele, with their gray hair, bulging bellies, and penises.  This is THE business spot for older, wistful men - a place to talk about transactional law while also remembering what it’s like to be young - and as such the vibe is something like strip club meets steakhouse.  As I sat around with my “Mad Men”-like cenacle of media types and cracked dick jokes, I couldn’t have felt more at home, except I’m young, which I guess was like having my cake and eating it too.