Look on the top of most better bar counters and you’ll find cherries, oranges, lemons, limes, sliced, wedged, twisted, and impaled upon little plastic swords with sharp points and tiny little hilts. Next to them you’ll see swirled stacks of bevnaps (the portmanteau word for beverage napkins), swizzle sticks, sip-straws, and those little paper umbrellas that are used to garnish brightly colored sugary drinks that mask the taste of the alcohol. Watch this one-minute video to learn the bartending technique that perfectly swirls your cocktail napkins to make them easy to pick up one at a time without fumbling.
A Closer Look at Those Little Drink Umbrellas
Americans have long held fantasies about tropical islands
To Americans, those islands full of sunshine and palm trees and hula dancing blended the best bits of their images of Hawaii, Tahiti, Polynesia, and the outlying Pacific islands together into an idealized image.
Bali Hai was South Pacific’s special island that calls to you from the mists
- ”If you try, you will find me where the sky meets the sea. Here am I, your special island; Come to me, come to me.”
- Marlon Brando’s Fletcher Christian fell for a young and beautiful local girl (period correct) in a Polynesian picture-book setting.
- Gaugin went gaga over Tahiti, giving up his life and family to stay in this paradise.
Historians note that in tropical climates free of Western ways, many Polynesians wore very little clothing. The idea of an entire island full of lovely and enchanting bare-breasted women was irresistible to many.
Hawaii is 2,500 miles from the California coast
It has long been the jumping off point to East Asia and every island in between. During the WW2 years, ships stopped at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Naval base and aircraft landed at nearby Hickam Field, the United States Army Air Forces base. Every soldier, sailor, and flyboy in WW2 went through Hawaii, a land unlike anything they’d seen in the U.S. Many G.I.s on R&R preferred Hawaii because it was exotic and the Polynesian women in grass skirts were alluring. What did most of them bring back with them as souvenirs? Little paper parasols.
There’s not enough known about when the first miniature paper parasols came along
But as full-size parasols were symbols of elegance and wealth, the imagination easily sees miniature versions used as displays and collectibles. You’re as likely to find scaled-down parasols in Japanese, Hawaiian, and Polynesian gift shops as you are to find miniature Statues of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and souvenir-sized Eiffel Towers and Arcs de Triomphe in Paris.
Before we figure out what’s going on with these miniature bamboo and rice paper decorations, let’s take a closer look at their full-sized parasol ancestors.
The earliest parasol hacks used natural tree leaves and branches. Then artisans experimented with canopies made of animal skins, cloth, and who knows what. Parasols were very expensive to make and very expensive to acquire, so only the high-status very rich and important could afford them. They were used to keep off the sun, not the rain, because Japanese women regarded pale skins as the height of beauty.
They retained their image as a symbol of wealth until mass-produced parasols went viral and people opted for protection from rain more than from sun. They were considered by many to be magic because of how they opened and closed, unlike anything they had seen.
The first recorded existence of parasols was in 22 AD, seen here mounted on a Terracotta Warrior chariot
Many assert insider knowledge of the bartender who was the first to garnish a drink with a tiny paper parasol
Like so many things, it likely popped up independently. Forget Don the Beachcomber, Trader Vic, and all the ambiguous others who claimed they were there first. The most apparently plausible story involves Harry Yee, a bartender at the Waikiki Hilton.
As the Harry story goes, many of the garnishes he used ended up in ashtrays that he had to constantly empty and clean. As the story goes, he chose a little paper umbrella instead. Okay, but where did that little thing come from?
I lean toward the explanation put forward by a UK site called athirstforfirsts.co.uk
“The real origins of cocktail umbrellas almost certainly began in China about 1000 years beforehand. They are, after all, little miniature versions of the traditional Chinese parasols made of colored, lacquered rice paper. The scaled-down versions were a staple of Chinese restaurants since who knows when, used as decorations for important celebrations which then presumably spilled out into the general population.”
This from the ever-shrill People Who Can’t Leave Well Enough Alone
They howl that Americans’ notions of Pacific Island cultures are escapist and theatrical consumerism. For them, the cocktail umbrella became a simplified, decontextualized symbol stripped of its original significance and repackaged as cheerful, disposable fun. It’s a decoration people, not an indictment.
Anthropologist Dr. Linda H. Hooper said “The paper umbrella borrows form without function, symbolism without context, and ritual without reverence. Its disposability mirrors how entire cultures were rendered consumable and discardable in mid-century American leisure.” Ouch, Doc.
Bonus
Sweet drinks are for those who enjoy the effects of alcohol but dislike the taste. Dr Yack was a popular drink in Memphis in the ‘80s. Cognac is aromatic and best enjoyed warm. Brandy snifters. Dr Yack gets a shot of cheap cognac, ice, and fill the rest of the glass with Dr. Pepper. I’d put a parasol in every one, because they’re only ordered by people who want to smother the taste of cognac with fizzy sugar water and 23 secret flavors.
Jukebox Hits
In 1929, Jimmie Rodgers sang Everybody Does It In Hawaii: “I picked me out a hula hula girl before my boat could land.” “She’s got it here, and she’s got it there, she’s shy on clothes, but I don’t care, because Everybody Does It In Hawaii.
John Prine’s Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian includes some wry humor: “Listen to the grass skirts sway; drinking rum from a pineapple; would you like a lei?”
