Post #420613 by Numastar on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 11:00 AM

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel Mon. Nov 24th 2008

Round two for the tiki Tuesday

The tiki may get a second chance.

The Capitola City Council will reconsider Tuesday night whether to accept a controversial tiki as a gift of public art.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. The council, which usually meets Thursdays, changed the date due to Thanksgiving.

The 3-foot statue installed one summer morning by Jon Nelson, a member of "The Usual Suspects" surfing group, was removed by city staff last month. The council declined to accept the statue Oct. 9. Councilmen Michael Termini and Ron Graves were in favor but Mayor Kirby Nicol, and Councilmen Bob Begun and Sam Storey objected to the statue being installed without the council's approval.

Since then, many community members have let the city know they favored reconsideration.

Steve Krull, a retired police chief from Livermore, a Capitola surfer and owner of the tiki, wrote the city Arts Commission Nov. 6, pleading the tiki's case.

"While not a resident yet I am trying, my wife and I spend a considerable amount of time there and feel a connection to the community," he explained.

The Arts Commission discussed the matter Nov. 11 and voted unanimously, with one member absent, to accept the tiki. Commissioner Dennis Norton, the top vote-getter in the November City Council race, made the motion. He had called the statue's removal "bad juju."

Coincidentally, the current exhibit at the Capitola Historical Museum
tells the story of the Saba restaurant and the Caribbean ballroom near the Esplanade, an island paradise complete with hard-carved tikis -- the place to be in the 1950s.