Post #485863 by SuperEight on Wed, Sep 30, 2009 6:01 PM

On 2009-09-30 00:06, icebaer69 wrote:

On 2009-09-28 17:23, Coco Loco wrote:
... Some of you may wonder why these items are being sold ...

These items are NOT being sold ... for any other reason
EXCEPT that they cannot reuse the items
as they were customized uniquely for the previous locations ...

what ?

I know it seems like an odd thing to say that the items cannot be reused. I was at the sale and the photos on this thread are very limited in their ability to tell the whole story.
A huge amount of the posts and Tiki's have plug holes in them to allow poles to go into them to form an overhang, a bannister, etc. and this structure would not fit into a new restaurant. Open plug holes and unfinished tops are acceptable to most of us with home bars but would look bad in a fine dining establishment. Could some of them have been resused with a little creativity? Yea, but the scale would often have been off. Why not start clean with some new poles from Oceanic Art etc. rather than try to re-purpose skinny poles that were cool but are only about 25 years old anyway.

Another point is that more than a few items were cracked severely. Cold Berlin can do that to tropical wood as can a voyage across the ocean. And as was explained to me by the main warehouse girl, a few contained some unseen rot.

I will admit that I was excited but a little dismayed at the same time that Trader Vic's was selling items that make up their heritage. From outside it might seem to some that they have less respect for the past than you would like. But then I actually attended the sale. Everyone there the first day, and I mean everyone was a huge Tiki nerd/fanboy/girl and complete strangers were striking up conversations. I even told one person in passing that I was from Palo Alto and he immediately said, "Oh you must be SuperEight." At 115 posts I am not exactly BigBro here but somehow he still remembered me. Any way I can only say that the items that were sold to the public went to serious lovers of this stuff. Some did not know a lot about this stuff but they really like it and there was no Craigslist posting the first day or maybe ever. New locations are given the run of the place and this is what is left over. And anyone like me who peeked behind the many curtains can tell you much, much more was not offered for sale. Its actually very encouraging that Trader Vic's even has a ware house, much less one that big. How much Tiki history has been lost to the saw and dumpster? I would say most. Trader Vic's did not do that. More than anything it was a happy time for most and it really had the feel of a horse auction and each kid got to go home with their own pony.