Post #376386 by TorchGuy on Sat, Apr 26, 2008 4:30 AM

I only recently got into tiki and Poly pop in a big way, but I've lived just outside Seattle for my entire 29 years. I can go check up on some of those listed addresses, bring my digital camera, and come report on what I find. Another friend of mine, who drives and has a car (unlike me) will love this idea! So far, here are a few things I know:

That motel, with the Space Needle in the background? Oh, how I wish it still had a tiki sign! But... it DOES have a very funky-looking pool building, and I've often considered going in to explore. This gives me a great excuse!

The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) Hawai'i Pavillion building survived into the early 90s in the Fun Forest amusement area. It was used as storage, and I was inside it a few times. It consisted of a circular roof, with peaks and carved wood top beams, walls... and not much else. Not even a light fixture hanging in the center.

No remains exist of anything Poly on Pier 51. I don't know exactly which pier that is, but I do know that building is no longer extant.

One bit of Seattle Tiki culture was Leilani Lanes, a spectacular bowling alley in the Greenwood area of north Seattle. It had, amoong other things, a lot of carved wood ceiling beams, a circular fountain in the lobby, a lunch counter with some wonderfully tacky 60s decor in gold and Chinese red, and a lounge complete with leather swivel bucket chairs, a carved tiki on the wall, and the coolest fireplace I've ever seen: a hammered copper hood on six chains, which hung further down to hold a thick wood frame surrounding a smoked glass pane on which sat a metal trough filled with lava rocks, with gas flames flickering through. Beneath it was a lava rock waterfall lit by a green spotlight, and one could stand directly in front of it and look down through the glass into the waterfall! Does anyone know whether these were actually as-built equipment: the many, many bowling lanes had the usual gold-and-white screens with lights to indicate which pins remained, and an oval with what would normally the the Brunswick crown, which lights up when a strike is hit... Instead, the light covers were tikis, all molded plastic and all identical. They definately LOOKED original!

I'm still kicking myself over this: it was running well, had great food and good (if ordinary) drinks, was popular... and then suddenly I find out it's gobne. It was all so fast. Closed-and-contents-auctioned-and-demolished, boom, just like that. That was over a year ago. Anyone guess what's there now? If you guessed a parking lot...

...it's worse. NOTHING is there. It's a vacant lot. The buyers (who paid a lot for it) did nothing.

I'll do some investigating and see what I can dig up. If I'm lucky, I'll find some tiki bits poking around... I'm already starting to get that hair-standing-on-end sensation I'm told is common when one pulls back some bushes or looks in a dusty corner of a bar and finds a mysterious, ancient-looking tiki carving glaring out at them.