Ohana 2023

Ohana: Luau at the Lake is our favorite tiki event and is hosted by The Fraternal Order of the Moai, our fraternity. This is a charity event that brings in 10s of thousands of dollars given as scholarships to high school students on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Friday night is dedicated to room crawls where a bunch of folks create a themed space to give away drinks and collect donations for different charities. Here are some pictures from other room crawls:

Our theme this year was CBTiKi, a tiki themed version of the famous punk rock club in New York City of the 1970s and 80s CBGBs. We put three popups in the parking lot and created a bar, stage, and recreated the famous bathroom. It was a smashing success and we collected something like $500 in tips for our CH-ch-cherry Bomb drink.

Here’s what it looked like just before we opened the doors:

This was the line to get in before we opened:

Lina started the show as Joey from The Ramones and it kept getting better and more authentic throughout the night. here are some photos:

Here are some videos from the night

We also had a visit from Netherhole, which was another room crawl where they created an 80’s band with 40 years of backstory and had a 2023 meet and greet with the band 30 years after their prime.

This is what it looked like the morning after:

The highlight of Saturday is the Mystery Bowl dances, which is a tradition you can find at some Tiki Palaces, like the Mai Kai. At Ohana, attendees bid on a Mystery Dance, bowl, and drinks throughout the night. Lina has participated the last three years and as someone stated on Facebook, “She started the dances with grace and beauty”. She raised $650 for the charity with this dance:

Then our friends took their turns with their dances that raised something like $2,000 for both of them:

Saturday evening is usually pretty chill because everyone is still tired from Friday, but we opened the door and turned on the lights at CBTiKi anyway. A line formed almost immediately, a bartender appeared with cocktail mixing, a band set up in front of the tents, and then we raised another $60 dollars in tips.

Our grand total for tips was $666 and our fraternity matched $500; so we were able to donate $1166 to World Central Kitchen.

Looking forward to next year!