Post #325701 by stuff-o-rama on Tue, Aug 14, 2007 9:26 PM

*** BUMP ***

Bad news, the Oceano Nursery is closing up and the tikis are all but gone now. They are having a liquidation sale, but honestly there is only one, very sad tiki left.

My Mom's boyfriend confided to me that he always wanted a tiki in his back yard. Back in the day, he spent a lot of weekends at the Coconut Grove and Don the Beachcomber, he tried to tiki-fy his back yard in the 60's but his now ex-wife put her foot down. Every time he comes over to my house he brings it up. He's now in his 80's his health is failing, but he always says he wishes he would have just bought them when he had the chance, now it's too late. So my Mom called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I would go with her to get a couple of large tikis for their back yard as a surprise for him. She heard of a guy a few miles north of here who carved them and she wanted to make sure she was getting a good deal. We ended up in wine country in Templeton, on Vineyard Drive off of the 101 freeway. There's a house just west of the freeway that sells cut wine barrels for $15. When we pulled into the driveway, we were greeted by an army of tikis lining the drive. Imagine how dumb I felt that I didn't have my camera. I found out that they were all carved by R.L. Blair. One of the tikis inside the store was a 5 foot tall bobble head tiki. It was awesome! It is a Ku tiki with a giant industrial spring neck. He also has a bunch of forest gnome creepy faced carvings, some bears like the one's you see in Disney's "Critter Country" too. As for the tikis, some were painted, some were plain, some were woodburned. All of them were cool as hell. The prices ranged from $90 to $400. The most expensive one was a 7 foot totem style pole. There were a few that were obviously Disney Tiki Room inspired, and several were similar to the photos Bongofury posted above, but I saw no fountains.

Here's what she picked out for him:

This guy is 3.5 foot tall, painted and clear coated. $175 made out of palm

and a four foot one to hang on the wall for $120, carved from oak

of course I had to get one for me as well

four foot, made of oak, $200

My Mom's boyfriend's face was priceless when he saw me drive up with the tikis in the bed of my truck; he was smiling from ear to ear. Then his face went to confusion when I started to unload them. He actually teared up when we got the dolly and trucked them into the back yard. He was so touched! It was an amazing experience.