Post #135285 by Swanky on Thu, Jan 13, 2005 10:00 AM

I know some "old fogey" types who hate what TC has become. They want it to go back the days of Yahoo. A single thread that if you tried to talk off topic, you got chided. They think us talking about all this other stuff is bad and that it means the whole thing is "ruined."

I think that's ridiculous. It has evolved by popular demand and if you want "tiki only" discussion, it's here too. It's all here. It's growing, but will forever remain a small group like those into Studebakers or whatever.

But then, think about how many people go to the Mai Kai every year and have a blast. They have no interest in the history or who carved what. They just enjoy it.

If you have a Studebaker car show, you'll get a lot of people who know little of them, but like them. Would love to drive one, etc. Some may get further into it.

Having more people in on the outskirts and not just hard core tiki people means we eventually make more hard core tiki people and we can have events like Oasis, Exotica and Hukilau that are aimed at the hard core but attended by a lot more and thus are profitable enough. If those events only drew from the die hards, they would die after year one, or be scaled way way down.

There is good and bad in the growth. People are going to buy you crap from Party City and think you will like it. But, that's okay. They can buy the Accoutrements mugs and we'll buy the Tiki Bobs.

Really, more is better. This little group is still so geeky about what we do that most won't really be interested on that level. They will come have a Mai Tai at your party though...