Post #320156 by bigbrotiki on Fri, Jul 20, 2007 12:19 PM

I only got to go inside once, and like I said, there was nothing worthwhile left to shoot. When I began documenting Tiki architecture in the early 90s, already only every 3rd or 4th Polynesian style apartment building had Tikis or other unique details left. Nowadays its even less. And of those photos I took then, I used only the best images in the BOT. That's why none of my PVA photos are in there, they were not good enough.

The book is really a distilled, idealized form of what was, and what is tiki. It had to be, to make an impact. Tiki News was a good fanzine, but it failed to bring the full visual quality of Tiki across because of being limited to low quality B&W photo reproduction. I waited for eight years until I found a publisher that could do Tiki justice in quality and quantity of image reproduction, and it was worth it: The book did its magic.

Here is another angle on the Outrigger apartments on Rosemead Blvd, shot from the garage side. It's a nice example of how the A-frame lines can run into each other:

Here's a nice example of one of the many Tiki-carved beams at the Kona Kai on Rosemead done by the same carver than the PVA Tikis. Both the Kona Kai and the Kona Pali have those, they again are all different, and the degree of stylization is amazing.

And here, one of two freestanding Tikis I found at the Kona Pali Apartements...very wacky, and kinda Bumatay-esque, wouldn't you agree?:

Plus I remembered one more Apartement complex that had BLACK Tikis, very likely by the same carvers: The Shelter Isle ( BOT page 214) was owned Marge and Gower Champion, a once famous dancing/musical couple. A wonderful village that yielded much detail, but aagin had only two freestanding Tikis left, here's a nice sretched one:

(P.S.: Whoever monitors TC, I have noticed lately that the spellcheck is getting lazy lately, how come it did not catch the mis-typing of "again" above? And can't the word "Tiki" be inputted so it gets accepted by it?)