Tonga Room, San Francisco's magnificent tiki bar: doomed?

By Cory Doctorow at 9:47 pm Sunday, Feb 22

The Tonga Room, one of the greatest tiki bars in the world, is under threat now, because the San Francisco Fairmont hotel in which it is housed is slated to be turned into luxury condos (seriously? Is anyone buying luxury condos for anything except scrap copper these days?). Laughing Squid has a great piece on what makes the Tonga so special (here's one thing: it has an actual indoor monsoon several times an hour!):

The last decade has seen nearly $100 million invested in updates to the Fairmont hotel itself which included a $1 Million restoration of the Tonga Room completed in the last few years. So it’s strange that all that history and fairly recent money could soon be bulldozed.

There’s been no explicit statement that the Tonga Room is being destroyed, and no press account that mentions it (except a quizzical commenter on Curbed SF). But clearly the plans for the new condo-ized version of the Fairmont do not include the landmark bar.

Will The Tonga Room Be a Casualty of The Fairmont’s Condo Plans? (via JWZ)