J. Popo Galsini

1900–1982

One of the most famous West Coast bartenders of the Cold War era; invented the Saturn cocktail

Born in the Philippines, José Valencia Galsim emigrated to the United States (San Francisco) in 1928. He worked at Harry Arnheim’s Tropics in Hollywood from around its opening in 1939 and is known to have been an early member of the Los Angeles chapter of the UKBG (later the California Bartenders Guild) circa 1952. Popo Galsini, as he was calling himself at this point, began winning cocktail competitions in 1952, and continued to do so into the early 1970s, along the way working short stints at an seemingly endless sequence of bars, mostly in California. The most famous of his many winning originals is the Saturn cocktail (originally called the X-15), today a Tiki staple.