Escapism · What It Means
What escapism actually means
Rum & Thatch is a club, but escapism is the actual product. Everything else — the tiki bars, the rum, the beach at golden hour, the cigar lounge — is just the delivery mechanism for one hour of feeling like you're somewhere else.
The word has a bad reputation it doesn't fully deserve. Here's what it actually means, why an entire club is organized around it, and ten things some remarkably qualified escapists have said about it.
What escapism actually means
Open a dictionary and escapism reads like a diagnosis: the habitual avoidance of reality, usually through fantasy. That’s fair as far as it goes, but it describes the failure mode, not the thing itself.
The thing itself is older and more useful: the deliberate choice, for a bounded stretch of time, to turn toward wonder instead of the grind. A sailor deserting a whaling ship for a valley in the Marquesas. A bartender in Prohibition-era Hollywood building a room that looked like nowhere real. A songwriter convincing several million people that the island was available on a Tuesday. All of it is the same instinct — that the ordinary week is not the whole of life — aimed in different directions.
We think that instinct is healthy, not childish, and that it works best with other people in the room.
Why we built a club around it
Most things built around escapism sell you one night of it and stop there: a themed bar, a vacation, a song. Rum & Thatch exists because the feeling is better as a standing appointment than a one-off — a Mixer at a great tiki bar, a Driftwood Social on the sand, an Ember Night at a cigar lounge, every month, with people who showed up for the same reason you did.
That’s the whole model. Not a destination you visit once, a habit you keep.
In their own words
Ten real, sourced quotes from writers, sailors, and one bartender who all took this feeling seriously enough to build something out of it, in the order they said it.
“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth… I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, 1881
“If you can't get to paradise, I'll bring it to you.”
— Donn Beach, his own motto, Hollywood, 1934
“I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization.”
— Paul Gauguin, on departing for Tahiti, 1891
“I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was.”
— James A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific, 1947
“Pearls rarely turn up in oysters served to you on a plate; you have to dive for them.”
— Thor Heyerdahl, foreword to Kon-Tiki, 35th anniversary edition, 1990
“If you look on the ground in search of a sixpence, you don't look up, and so miss the moon.”
— W. Somerset Maugham, letter on The Moon and Sixpence, 1956
“Life is a journey that's measured not in miles or years but in experiences, and the route your life takes is built not of roads but of songs.”
— Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, 1998
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 1964
“Who owns paradise, after all? Who in the end gets to own paradise, use paradise, or even visit it?”
— Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown, “Jamaica,” 2014
Escapism isn't denial
The honest objection is worth answering directly: isn’t all this just a nicer word for avoidance?
Sometimes, if it never stops. The version we’re organizing around has an edge to it — a few hours, once a month, with real people, and then it ends and Tuesday is still Tuesday. That boundary is the whole difference. Escapism that never ends is denial. Escapism with a start and an end time is closer to a hobby, or a vacation, or a good book — a place you visit on purpose so you can come back clearer than you left.
Where this comes from
Ten fuller life stories — the people who actually built tropical escapism into a tiki bar, a sound, a movement — are on The Escapists.
Questions people actually ask
- What does escapism mean?
- Literally, the tendency to seek distraction from reality. Rum & Thatch uses it in the older, more generous sense the word used to carry: a deliberate, temporary turn toward wonder, ease, and somewhere-else, taken on purpose rather than stumbled into. Not running from your life — stepping out of it for one good evening a month so you can go back to it clear-headed.
- Isn't escapism just avoiding your problems?
- It can be, if it never ends. The version we're building around is bounded and social: a few hours at a Mixer, a Driftwood Social, or an Ember Night, with real people, and then it's over and Monday is still Monday. Bounded escapism is closer to a hobby or a vacation than to denial — it's the same instinct that sends people to see a film or read a novel, aimed at a room instead of a screen.
- Who are the people behind Rum & Thatch's idea of escapism?
- A long line of writers, sailors, and bartenders who took the feeling seriously enough to build something out of it — from Herman Melville jumping ship in the Marquesas in 1842 to Donn Beach building the first tiki bar in 1933 to Jimmy Buffett turning it into a state of mind. Ten of their actual quotes are on this page, and ten fuller life stories are on The Escapists.
- Is this the same as The Escapists list?
- They're related but different pages. The Escapists ranks ten people who built tropical escapism as a movement — the tiki bar, the music, the drinks. This page is about the idea itself: what escapism means, why we built a club around it, and what some of history's more articulate escapists actually said about it.
Who wrote this, and why
Rum & Thatch is a free tiki social club in Northeast Florida— monthly Mixers at real tiki bars, Driftwood Socials on the sand, and Ember Nights at cigar lounges. We keep this library because the scene deserves a straight answer in one place. Free to join, no invite, strictly 21+.