Post #14938 by fatuhiva on Wed, Nov 27, 2002 12:36 AM

sven- the wife and I have been living in our newly built pad for a couple months now and have been meeting the neighbors in our 2-street neighborhood. Turns out, the woman up the street is a Native Tahitian from a very small island (pop 100ish) in French Polynesia- she moved to Hawaii in the late 50's or early 60's to dance as one of the first dancers at the Polynesian Cultural Center, and was then wooed to Florida in the early 60's by her sister who was one of the early dancers at the Mai Kai. She danced there for years, and her sister married the owner. I believe he died and she is now the owner. I have become good friends with her, swapped some Mai Kai memorabilia and she borrowed the BOT for a few weeks- she and her husband loved it. We are big plant-trading buddies now (she is in her 60's or 70's I would guess) and I just scored her some Tiare (tahitian gardenia) special-ordered from a rare plant nursery and she flipped to have some again.

Anyway- she still sews the Mai Kai dancer costumes for her sister- I just saw her latest creations- pretty nice. When i saw her earlier today she was wearing a "I danced at the MaiKai" T-shirt hahaha

She and her husband have an almost complete collection of MK calendars dating way back, becuase they were all her friends- she gave me an old postcard of her as a young wahine posing with the other dancers. Pretty interesting coincidence.

I have yet to unpack the collection, so I don't think she realizes just how much of this stuff I have collected, but she was suprised to see some of the stuff we did have. She's got that bowl front and center in her living room, but I think it may be the newer version.. she also had some vintage lamps and other odds and ends from the MK- she gave me some napkins made from the old fabric that are the same as the shirt in the BOT. Very nice woman, and she's got some great stories.. I'll post one of the best ones later on..

EDIT: looking at that buffet table pic above, those are the lamps she has in her kitchen with the tapa shades- you cant make it out too well from the pic, but there are tikis on the bases.

[ Edited by: fatuhiva on 2002-11-27 00:43 ]