Post #693200 by Sabina on Wed, Sep 11, 2013 3:01 PM

It's funny, because I feel like I came to so much of this so very late, finding the community just as the Kahiki was being torn down, and yet I remember TC's yahoo group days and ended up registering here just a little over the 'first 100 member' mark. It's all relative I suppose.

A decade plus on now, my home "Lounge of the Seven Pleasures and Kapu Gardens" is still an ongoing project, I tend to gather with local Tikiphiles here in the DC area roughly once every 2-3 months at House of Foong Lin or Shanghai Village, though some of us cross paths more often. OakTiki and I Try to make Hukilau or Ohana every couple of years, depending on our travel, and we still make a point of hitting Tiki odds and ends as we travel, sometimes connecting with other locals as we go, sometimes we're scheduled a bit too tightly to do so.

Tiki, and so many of the folks we've met through it and TC itself are still an important part of our lives. That said, we're in a relative desert here in Maryland, precious little by way of venues, so we make our own as best we're able. What little we do have, like the Tiki Bar at Solomon's Island, is well worth the visit, but isn't quite our Tiki "home" in the sense of Tiki we mean by the word.

I haven't been stopping by TC anywhere near as much as perhaps I should, but part of that is that I often get some of the Tiki related news I need more by word of mouth. But I do stop in and look around though I've often not much to contribute.

I suppose I am one of those folks still adapting from when Tiki mugs were three for a buck at tag sales and Arthur Lyman records were considered part of that great flotsam and jetsam stream of 'vinyl by the pound.' Some of us were Tiki long before target discovered slapping a "tiki" graphics on anything could make it sell, but then I'm not saying everything 'resurgent' is bad either. Just different. Our world has changed, but it's not just TC. Things like e-bay changed the dynamics of all of it profoundly.

TC has adapted from a time period when being 'into Tiki' or exotica was 'weird' and got you blank stares into a period when so many books have been published, websites, facebook groups, Television series, now college classes etc. taking the entire period seriously, in architecture, in ceramics, fashion, etc. Now when you say "a-frame' people don't necessarily envision an alpine style cabin in the Adirondacks.

So 'old-timers' and TC itself has had to adapt to those changes and the massive influx of new people.

Those who are in it for one form of 'the Tiki'- the history, the architecture, the art, the mixology, the exotica, the carving, etc. etc. etc. who draw together out of wanting to be near others with similar interests, I've always felt a kinship with and done what I can to share whatever I can with.

Those who see particularly some of the events as a 'hella-strong drink' excuse to get wasted and lose a weekend, well it's their 'Tiki' too, but probably not those I'm most likely to be spending my time around, though if those folks ever want to learn more, I'm more than happy to pass along whatever I can. I'm not trying to be condescending, just in that for some of us, there's more to it. That more is what brought us here in the first place.

As others on this thread have said, 'real life' gets in the middle of some of the doing, and as ikitnrev pointed out, curiosity was a common thread for many of us early folks. We came to Tiki with a lifetime's worth of exploration and wanderings between communities and cultures and so stopping, frozen in time at ANY given point just isn't exactly in our natures.

That doesn't mean a nice dim bar like Foundation in Milwaukee, when the music and the drinks are just right won't hold our hearts and our attention for a nice long spell, though.

Some of us are easy to find, you just need to know where to look.