Post #377478 by Polynesiac on Thu, May 1, 2008 1:57 PM

I've been driving by this place for several years now as a cut through from Pedro to Torrance and I finally had my camera with me, so I decided to stop and snap a few pictures.

Bigbro - it's interesting to see how the place has changed since you took your pictures for the BOT (when did you take yours?), but it would be nice to see how it's changed since Sabu took his 3 years ago. It looked pretty run down the first time I saw it, and it still looks really run down, so I'm assuming it's just deteriorating slowly.

The Kala Kai is nestled between a bunch of cool midcentury modern type apartment complexes that at one time may have been a nice place/area to live. Now, it's directly below the PV landfill, so I would imagine some days smell worse than others.

I had a pleasant conversation with the manager (I think she was, anyway. My spanish is not so good) and she said I could look around and take pictures of the tikis. I did wander back into the complex a little, but didn't see anything really worth photographing - most of the tiki stuff was up front by the street:

What you first see from the street as you're driving down Narbonne towards PCH:

I really dig how they did the sign - it looks almost like they took a section from a wooden boat (you can see the sleight curvature of the planks) and put the apartment name on that:

The tiki formally guarding the lava rock mailboxes now guard the bridge over a now defunct moat/stream:

If you look close you might see some tiki-tagging and little bit of tiki-snot coming out his nose:

The other guard of the bridge is being slowly consumed by the barely in control/too lush vegetation:

This poor fella has seen better days. He has the tongue, but his face is too long to be the missing tiki that was standing over the water jug in the BOT. I'm guessing he was lying down (possibly the fallen idol refernced above?) and someone decided to stand him back up again. Unfortunately, they stood him up up-side down!

One of the two tikis guarding the pool enterence. I really like the simplistic carving of these next two pictures. A simple design, but an overall awesome end result. all from what looks like a 2x6 or 2x8 plank:

No life guard on duty, but plenty of tiki guards!

The jug that once spat water and held a tiki:

The water way - it look dirty, but certainly not ratty. I bet it would still hold water if they got it up and running.

This is originally the site that caught my eye. You don't have much time to see the tikis as you drive down the hill at 35mph, but if you're looking in the right location (IE - not at the road ahead), you'll see the A frames of the front building and the nifty jumbo-sized blocks hanging from them:

The mail boxes look pretty much the same as the pictures in the BOT, except the thatch is still missing (sabu mentioned that above). the Bamboo structure still looks pretty good and felt solid too. the lava rock/bamboo and rope look compliment each other very nicely: