Post #359120 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Feb 4, 2008 3:47 PM

Sure...another excuse to procrastinate with the stuff I SHOULD do...:)

I have a bigger version of that snapshot, problem is it that the Tiki on the left is cut off!

I always believed that photo of the tall guy being at the RIGHT driveway because of the wall and the two-story Motel behind it...and because that little stone Moai is still in that spot. I could be wrong, but here is my theory: Maybe there were TWO tall Tikis, one at the right and one at the left. The one in your small photo is in silhouette, so we cannot positively ID as the Tongue Tiki. It possibly was THIS Tiki:

...which in 1992 was standing on the lawn in front of the office, in the position the one not cut off in your small photo is in. He obviously had the same problem with wood-rot that the Tongue Tiki had. (The reason so many Tikis at the Tropics lasted so much longer than in other locales is the dry desert climate. My theory is that these two front Tikis, as opposed to some of the parking lot Tikis, were water-doused more intensely because they were on green lawn parcels which had to be sprinkler irrigated more often.) Maybe he was tall Tiki number two. The problem in proving this is that all old brochures just show photos of the A-frame entrance, and of the Motel interior like the pool area, never a complete wide shot of the exterior.

The rendering does not prove much, because it is a fanciful version of what the Tropics became. I do not own the postcard, this is just a slide, otherwise I could zoom into the Tikis on it: There ARE a couple of big ones at the right entrance, one biggy in front of the Coffee shop, and one in front of the office left of the sign (it's almost all cut off in the slide scan here). If anybody has that postcard, how about a nicer scan here?

The rendering of the ROSEMEAD Tropics on page 208 really shows a Tiki of the size of the original Tongue Tiki. (This one though is a fountain Tiki holding a bowl, from which the Tropics Modesto matchbook on the same page took ITS rendering). To this day I have never come upon any photos or brochures of that Tropics location. Being in faster turn-over LA, it disappeared completely in the 80s

But what the snapshot above DOES show, even if partially blocked by the car, is another great concept that did not survive: The original Outrigger Sail sign, documented here in a nice B&W Polaroid from the O.A. archives:

This is a very cool Polynesian pop sign that I have not seen done like this anywhere else. Here it is behind the '55 Ford again:

I have photographed all the surviving Tikis at the Palm Springs, Indio and Modesto locations, but regrettably never made it to Blythe to see if that great, memorable palmroot-ball hair Tiki from BOT page 38 still stands.