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Tiki Central / General Tiki / Royal Tahitian

Post #369871 by bigbrotiki on Fri, Mar 28, 2008 12:17 PM

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Aaaah, it's so nice to be able to ask and receive! This postcard, although of cheap quality (pardon, Dustycajun), is the only record of the interiors of the place. The strange Sun Tiki mural must have been impressive in person...

Because of the interest, I decided to move up my post on this subject:
So children, let's open up The Book of Tiki to page 251 to refresh our memories. Now, here are some more angles on the main club house, which because of its modernist slant is one of my all time favorites.

The maps and addresses found on vintage matchbooks have always been a valuable aid for the urban archeologist, just as it was in this case. The matchbook was the first clue to the existence of this place, and intrigued by the boast of 250 Acres of Tropical Plants and Lagoons, I took "Das Boot" down the 60 to Ontario in November of 1993. Here is a wide shot of the place, similar to Johnny's ten years later:

Compare it to this early 60s photo from a paper brochure, and we see that the bamboo bridge has been replaced by a concrete one with an iron pipe railing, and the moat and pond had been filled in. This is a common sign in Tiki apartment devolution, due to safety regulations and the desire for lower maintenance costs. And the cool looking giant plant buckets were not there anymore:

Finding photos of Tiki Temples just after construction is always a trade off, because though you can see all the original fixtures in place, the plantings are mostly all new and scraggly, and not lushly grown in yet to frame the architecture and provide that desired tropical touch. Architectural renderings are usually the most phantasy-full depictions, but rare, here is the fanciful rendition of the A-frame on the matchbook again, jet age architecture par excellence:

Though the scale of the people in the drawing does overstate the building's size, it was quite a large A-frame, which we realize when we find the person entering the place in the B&W photo above on the left.
Next is a side angle that gives us a good idea of the sectioned wall concept that allowed the roof to float on the left side:

And here another shot of the airconditioning cover Tikis..

...which were also used as support beams on the building's golf course side:

Sadly, no Polynesian touches had survived the renovations of the interior, so I took no photos. From what I gather, there was once a sunken bar (similar to the mid-century "sunken livingroom" concept, but now filled in), and balconies in the main room, thus the claim of "Three-level dining" inside the matchbook cover:

To show here that the grounds were indeed populated by Tikis once, here is a photo of the sign from the O.A. archives (also in the BOT), note the A-frame in the right background:

And culled from T.C.'s pages, a record cover. I don't own it and thus cannot show the back. I heard that the MC at the Royal Tahitian was a guy named "Hawaiian Abe" who had made his living in native parts in South Sea films before:

And now on to the apartment building adjacent to the R.T. which in 1993 still sported four fine Milan Guanko Tikis (not there anymore in Johnnie's 2003 photos):

Architecturally not as interesting as a building, the Tikis were unusual because they were totem style, two-Tiki posts. Here we can also see one of the Moai railing posts shown by Johnnie on the previous page. And the female Guanko Tiki had gotten a shot to the head...actually birds nesting in the dry rotted palm trunk:

I think I ran out of film, because I went back later to shoot the Tikis one by one, and they had repaired the hole... but one Tiki was missing, probably rotted on the base.

Here are the other two, all fine Milan Guanko types, that man had a smooth style:

Since these apartments showed no sign of ever having had a name sign, I refer to them as Royal Tahitian Apartments. Hope you enjoyed this little expedition. :)