Post #60278 by tikijaksin on Sun, Nov 16, 2003 5:27 PM

hey my 2 cents wirth, first of "the old guy in the keys" is Richard Miller .he taught me a lot of useful information and took me and my partner loonatiki under his wing and taught us the basics. and to him i owe much of the inspiration to start carving tikis.this guy was doing it since the 60's in oregon. and worked his way to the Fl Keys a long ass time ago .he doesnt make "goofy tikis" he's very old now ,and doesnt turn out many more tikis. in fact last time we were over there, he wasnt carving any more.his apprentice Chris now is turning out some bad ass tikis ,and the goofy ones are due to Richard buying Tikis from other tiki carvers who have trouble selling their shit.as for Wayne well I'm just gonna say Ive been asked many times to make one of His Fl. style tikis and i always point the Buyer in his direction. I gotta say while there are a lot of copycats which some are/were guys that worked for him, florida also has some really different carvers too. on tikicentral alone there is about 3 and none do waynes style.there is a carver outta florida named David landry who has got a style all his own while they might be too cartoony/ colorful for most purists, i totally feel this guys shit.oh and those big lipped tikis you see everwhere are there because they simply sell better than any other tiki on the planet, those things are everywhere man. I'm proud that Florida has a State Tiki.how many other states can say that? ..Viva el Wayne!!! Kreepy tiki Jaksin