London Berry describes himself as a "professional bum". Berry fell in love with tiki culture as a child in 1968, when his parents took him to a Chinese restaurant in the
San Fernando Valley in the
Los Angeles area. He loved its faux-Polynesian decor and was fascinated by the elaborate cocktails that were served. He later explained, "It was this weird, mysterious adult thing that was a part of the whole exotic fantasy world.... drinks would come with all kinds of elaborate garnishes. It had a huge impression on me, and that became my favorite place to go." By the 1970s the tiki craze, which had been launched by
Donn Beach and
Victor Bergeron in the 1930s, was fading; formerly popular with celebrities and trend-setters, tiki-themed restaurants forty years later were regarded as "tacky". Berry began to compile the recipes he found through his research into scrapbooks for friends. The
Tonga Hut, Los Angeles's oldest tiki bar, offered customers a Grog Log Challenge: to drink, within a year, all 78 cocktails whose recipes are printed in the
Grog Log. Two years later Berry wrote the chapter on tropical drinks, called "Mixologists and Concoctions", in Sven Kirsten's influential
The Book of Tiki. Tiki-themed bars and restaurants began to come back into style. Soon researching, writing, and giving talks about tropical drinks was his main activity. In 2015 he commented, "All these neo-tiki bars were opening up all over the world... and between 75 and 90 percent of their menus were all recipes I had found." His fourth book, ''Beachbum Berry's Sippin' Safari'' (2007), includes what he believes to be Beach's original recipe for the Zombie, which had never been written down except in code. Some of his rediscovered classic drink mixes are marketed by Trader Tiki. ==Impact==