Post #55994 by thejab on Mon, Oct 20, 2003 4:41 PM

I'm sorry that I missed the gathering at Ben's store and at Bong's later, but I had no email access for a week because my old laptop died right after my Chicago road trip. We didn't arrive at Ben's shop until almost 5 on Friday and found it closed - doh! But we got in touch with Ben and were able to see his store (and sign his pole - ooh that came out wrong) on Saturday morning.

I was so glad I finally made it to the show. It was worth the cover price just to see the large showroom area with the waterfall coming out of the lava rock tiki's mouth behind the stage, the numerous large tikis around the room, and the mutiple glass floats and lamps. The show was great and quite long. All the musicians and dancers were top notch. It was a lot different from the Mai Kai's show but equally good. Some of the songs are corny but in a good way. A highlight for me was when the Maori dancer came out of nowhere and thrust his spear right in my face with his tounge hanging out! And Crazy Al's onstage dance was hilarious - he had everyone (including the dancers) laughing their asses off! The food (I had the ribs) was better than I expected but the drinks were pretty bad. Oh well, one can't have everything. The banana daquiri actually was pretty good and made with fresh bananas. But stay away from the Mai Tai.

I enjoyed chatting with several hoiti-toitis but wish I was able to talk to more of them at length. It was over way too early. A few of us went across the street to Turc's and watched the dancers from Sam's show dirty dancing to Led Zeppelin. It's pretty run down but Turc's isn't bad for a dive tiki bar.

I have to go to the next Southern California crawl!