Post #236523 by Hot Lava on Wed, Jun 7, 2006 11:15 AM

I think it would be very difficult to "promote" the concept of tiki, but you certainly can make it more accessible to people.

I'd be willing to guess that the majority of us had childhood brushes with tiki that have been floating around in the back of our heads along with a thousand other pieces of pop culture competing for our attention. Occasionally you'd meet like minded people to discuss and foster the interest. Now thanks to the Internet, there's a place like Tiki Central filled to the brim with people willing to share opinions, ideas, and history.

I started http://tikitalk.astropad.com over six months ago as a fun project for me that would give the world bite-sized pieces of tiki to chew on (TC is like a warehouse-sized buffet for the first-time visitor—very overwhelming). Since then, I've had nearly 15,000 unique visitors, the vast majority of which have come from Internet searches, mainly Google.

People are actively looking for tiki, and they're having a hard time finding it. The interest is there, and places like TC and events like Hukilau do a great job of transitioning people from the pure "party mindset" to taking a deeper interest in the culture.