Post #445339 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Apr 7, 2009 7:15 AM

Man, I really would love to see a close up of those neon-lit Easter Island scenes on that added wall (above)! Too bad that a couple of icebear's images from that aereal shot sequence on page 2 disappeared, but one still can see how the gigantomania of Las Vegas swallowed up the Aku Aku (like everything else that was on a human scale).

Now somehow I missed icebear's later post with that interior shot of the Aku Aku, which blows my mind:

Not only is it cool to see that glass float theme seen in the one interior shot in the BOT continued...

...but since I had never found any other interiors of the place, and Jeff Berry established in Sippin'Safari that Edward Brownlee and Donn Beach had nothing to do with decor anymore after it had burned down, I just assumed that it's style was more minimalist, stripped down Tiki Modern, as the one photo conveyed. But to see THESE figures as room dividers points to the use of an icon in Easter Island imagery so far UNPRECEDENTED in Polynesian pop, the Kava Kava man, or Moai Kava Kava:

The term literally means "figure with ribs". That's why my assumption always was that, since these hunched over, gaunt ancestor images did not befit promises of a sumptuous Polynesian repast, they were never used in South Seas supper clubs. But what I believe we have here...

...are examples of an ethnographic sub-genre of the Kava Kava man, the Moai Papa, or "flat figures":

...or the Moai Tangata, "realistic figures":

....or a combination of the two. In any case, I sure wish that there was more and better quality photographic evidence of this unique feature of this now more than ever mysterious Tiki temple!