Post #304920 by bigbrotiki on Tue, May 8, 2007 1:48 PM

This is the kind of thing that makes you not wanna talk to the press anymore. I talked to the guy on the phone from home, after I had just had a Navy Grog at the Tiki Ti with a Norwegian journalist who is doing an article on Thor Heyerdahl in Polynesian Pop.

I knew it was gonna be an uphill battle when I had to spell the name "Don The Beachcomber" to the LA Times reporter: While the Norwegian writer knew every obscure joint in America that ever bore the name Kon Tiki, this local did not know anything of the founding father of Poly pop, not to mention of Tiki history, its meaning, and the Tiki revival.

While I was talking, I could already hear that certain things that did not fit were not registered, others were. He even specifically said that he'd heard Vic's was not turning a profit anymore, and I replied that I believed that to be untrue, having seen the bar buzzing each time I had been there, though I never went into the restaurant. And I clearly stated that I expected the new place to be milk toast, and an appeasement move by the new owners.

My hole spiel about the revival being a subculture in the 90s, but taking off in the new millenium, propelled by artists in the LA graphic design community, was reduced to only the first half. And I had to agree that there were less and less Tiki Bars in LA, so that was his gist. He went to the Tiki Ti, but that did not amount to much, I guess.

It's a lesson to be careful with what you say on TC, because the "burn down the place" quote made us look like crank pots, while Humu's critique was much more level headed, and hit the mark.

All in all though, I still believe that there is no bad press, the "Tiki-philes carrying a torch for Trader Vic's" headline certainly validated our feelings....while the sub-header perfectly played along with the developer's PR by not calling it a "closing" but a "downsizing"!:"The iconic restaurant in Beverly Hills was quietly downsized last month, without the send-off some fans feel it deserved."
Like I said, slick talk.

To be fair, we do not know what the original text was like and what was edited out, or what of the headline was written by another editor, but the fact remains and is here proven again that American media is now in the hands of big money, and they will not go against one of their own. Just compare the foreign press coverage of the Irak war with the omitted, smoothed out stuff one gets fed here.