Post #42215 by ikitnrev on Tue, Jul 8, 2003 11:00 PM

I wanted to chime in also and say thanks to Swanky, Kiliki, Bre-elle, Tristan, and all the others involved who make the Hukilau 2003 so much fun. It was great to meet so many of you west-coasters, nice to see familiar faces from past grand parties, some new faces, and good to share the festivities with a few others from the DC/Baltimore area.

I think we need a Hukilau high-school like yearbook, then we could all write our little comments of thanks to the individuals we had met individually and shared good times with.

I will share some of my favorite photos from the Hukilau event later this week.

I decided to stretch my vacation to a 12 day Florida vacation, and Hukilau was a great way to start the trip. I did make it to Key West afterwards, and probably walked right by Sloppy Joes while Al, Shelley, Al, Ben, and the others were partying inside. I ended up having sidecar martinis at a neat lounge singer place called Virgilio's a few blocks up the street - highly recommended. I did the very un-tiki thing of walking into Jimmy Buffet's souvenir store on Duvall store - and am pleased to announce that I saw no traces of tikis whatsoever in that store, so perhaps the fears of the future dumbing down of the tiki spirit are a bit premature.

I was also able to visit Butterfly World, the BOK Tower, Hemingway's home, Caribbean Gardens, see the live mermaid show at Weeki Wachee Springs, the glass bottom boats of Silver Springs (where the Creature from the Black Lagoon was filmed), and there were small touches of tiki at many of these places. I spent the fourth of July in Orlando - not by doing Disney, but by hitting the thrifts and ending up at the Bamboo Lounge.

I'm exhausted .... but it was a great 12 days, and once again, thanks to everyone for making those first days of Hukilau activity so much fun.

Vern