Post #556558 by Otto on Tue, Sep 28, 2010 12:06 AM

Sven, sorry for not jumping in sooner with a BOT memory.
I met you in mid 1994 (?) after you and Pete had done slide shows for SCI-ARC in Santa Monica and I tracked you down by going to a Mod Comm meeting and introducing myself to John and Pete and Chris.

I remember your salon style slide show presentations in artist friends living rooms and at my mug parties in my backyard, then at Madame Wu's!

I remember when BOT was just a concept, a slide show, a pamphlet that was a book proposal that no publisher would publish. The catch 22 of publishing is that no publisher wants a first time author!?! Publishers wanted you to be published first!? So little magazines jumped in like Tiki News, Lounge, Le Pasefika, etc.

The leap from these humble beginnings to the BOT seems huge in retrospect.

But even knowing all that I did at the time, even seeing the artifacts that you were shooting for the book, and going on urban archaeology expeditions, when the book finally came out even I was amazed at the breadth of the presentation of the concepts and the rich imagery therein! Anyone who has discovered Tiki in the last 10 years through your book could easily take it for granted. It is hard to believe that before the BOT there literally was NO chronology, no lineage, no written history of Tiki anywhere. The truth is, you practically created the history of Tiki single-handedly.

Congratulations on getting it published and this anniversary celebration is well deserved.