Tropix Review: The Endless Summer of the Tropics

‘Tropix’ evokes the tropics – the sun-drenched, palm-fringed band of the earth where summer never ends

Tropix in Clapham holds fifteen hundred and seventy-six reviews and a 4.2 – a large, fair sample – and its name evokes one of the most alluring of all ideas, especially under grey British skies: the tropics, the sun-drenched, palm-fringed band of the earth where summer is eternal and the living is easy.

The endless summer

“Tropix” is a stylish respelling of “tropics” – the warm, sunny regions of the earth lying near the equator, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. This is the band of the planet where the sun is strongest, where the climate is warm year-round, and where, in the popular imagination, an endless summer reigns – palm trees, beaches, warm seas, bright sun, and the whole paradise of tropical ease.

For the British, few ideas are more alluring than the tropics. In a country famous for its grey skies, its rain, and its brief, uncertain summers, the tropics represent everything the British climate is not – guaranteed sun, warmth, colour, and the promise of paradise. The tropical holiday, the beach under the palms, the warm sea and the cocktail at sunset – this is the great British dream of escape, and a bar named “Tropix” taps directly into it, promising a slice of endless summer in the heart of grey London.

The tiki tradition

A tropical-themed bar draws on one of the great and most joyful traditions of bar culture: the tiki bar. The tiki bar – with its bamboo, its carved wooden idols, its flaming torches, its rum-soaked cocktails served in extravagant vessels (the hollowed pineapple, the ceramic mug, the shared flaming bowl) – was an invention of mid-twentieth-century America, a fantastical, escapist recreation of a mythologised Polynesian paradise. It was pure escapism, pure fantasy, pure fun – a made-up tropical dreamworld conjured in the middle of the city.

The tiki tradition, and the tropical bar in general, is built entirely on this promise of escape – the transportation of the drinker, for an evening, to an imagined tropical paradise, all rum and fruit and sunshine and ease. The cocktails are the heart of it: the great rum-based tropical drinks – the Mai Tai, the Pina Colada, the Zombie, the Daiquiri – sweet, fruity, potent, and redolent of the beach and the sun. A “Tropix” bar promises exactly this: colour, warmth, rum, fruit, and a joyful escape from the British weather into an endless tropical summer.

The escape

There is something genuinely appealing in this escapism, especially in a British winter. The tropical bar offers, for an evening, a holiday from the grey – a warm, colourful, sunny fantasy, a taste of paradise conjured from rum and fruit and imagination. It is unpretentious, joyful, and frankly escapist, and there is no shame in that – sometimes a slice of imagined endless summer is exactly what a grey London evening needs. Tropix promises the sun that the British sky so often withholds.

The bar

A large, popular bar doing a fair 4.2 across a large and real sample, named “Tropix” for the tropics – the sun-drenched, palm-fringed paradise of endless summer, conjured in the heart of grey London.

Verdict

Large, popular, and escapistly named after the tropics – the endless-summer paradise of sun, palms and rum, a joyful holiday from the British weather.

Order a rum cocktail, imagine the palms and the warm sea, and enjoy a slice of endless tropical summer at Tropix – the paradise of sun and ease, conjured under the grey London sky.

Alan Nafzger

Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]