Post #168277 by procinema29 on Mon, Jun 27, 2005 10:29 AM

I sort of stumbled onto The Book of Tiki while feverishly searching for material on Danny Balsz's "The Tikis" club. I've mentioned it before, but I thought I would, just for a moment, go into a little more detail regarding the "tail-end" tiki stuff that I remember from the early 70's.

My folks' house was on a hill overlooking the club, and when we visited the people across the street, we could go into their backyard and look down the hill and see a little of what was going on at the Tikis. A lot of the club was hidden behind trees as I recall, but you could see an occasional belch of smoke and flame. The drumming, however, was very loud, and echoed through the valley, especially on weekends.

On a street near our house, there actually was a Tiki head, about three and a half feet tall, roughly chiseled out of dark gray lava rock, sitting right in front of a driveway nestled amongst some attractive plants. It is still there!!!!! And it has been there since the late 60's, at least. A long time ago the (previous) owners used to touch up the eyes and mouth with a little red and green paint, and the "eyesockets" at one point had small bright rocks placed in them for more definition. Somebody on the street liked Tiki enough to keep into going into the mid-late 70's, but when the 80's rolled around, they stopped touching up the paint on the rock head ("Pele," we used to call it).

The plants have since grown over the thing, totally obscuring it, and I suspect that the current inhabitants of the house would prefer not to have their Tiki turn into a tourist attraction. I have refrained from bothering these people, but every time I see the place, well, the yearning is great.

Also, when I was a kid, the house that belonged to our next-door neighbors had an elaborate waterfall in the backyard (which I believe is still there). Recently I have wondered whether this waterfall may not have been built by Danny Balsz himself.