Tiki Every Where. How does it feel Sven?

I was just wondering how it feels for our Sven to be watching the plethora of Tiki goodies popping up all over the place? After all BOT is kinda responsible for the resurgence of Tiki on the pop culture stage.

No doubt others attentions ( Otto, James etc ) helped the tiki radar blip gorw brighter. But The Book Of Tiki really got that ball rolling. Just by being on the shelves across America ( and the world ) it put tiki into the collective subconciousness.

I'm glad cool reasonably priced stuff with character is coming out at Target and Spencers, and the others.

So Sven, how does it feel?

Tiki Gardener

TikiGardener,

I learned of the new Tiki "movement" from Robert Williams' juxtapoz magazine (which in turn directed me to Book Of Tiki). Not to say BOT isn't responsible, I'm just giving props! I as well as many of my friends were aware of tiki way before "The Book" (which from now on I will refer to as the New Testament of the New TIki Generation!)

I'm with freakbear, me and my friends were into tiki long before the book.not to say we werent excited when it came out.but there were alot of other things that helped it out. the swing movement,rockabilly, the movie swingers and on and.......

I'm glad cool reasonably priced stuff with character is coming out at Target and Spencers, and the others.

Tikigardener,
I agree. I am surprised to see retailers such as Target and Spencers doing such a tasteful job in making these items available in light of some of the more timely creations I've seen elsewhere.

Last year I picked up the ClayArt mug 4 pack from spencers planning to use them instead of my vintage mugs. There still in the box. I guess I see them to be as collectible as the mugs they're based on.

I think what Tikigardener is refering to is the mass marketing of tiki. Most of us here pre-date BOT as tiki fans... but as far as the general public is concerened, BOT really opened up alot of eyes. Don't forget that Pottery Barn started selling the book about a year after it was published.

-Z

On 2004-07-10 14:56, FreakBear wrote:
TikiGardener,

I learned of the new Tiki "movement" from Robert Williams' juxtapoz magazine (which in turn directed me to Book Of Tiki). Not to say BOT isn't responsible, I'm just giving props! I as well as many of my friends were aware of tiki way before "The Book" (which from now on I will refer to as the New Testament of the New TIki Generation!)

I'm sure the list of sources and exposure of tiki Pre-BOT were numerous, and my not mentioning them was in no way a slight to the true believers.

I do sense though that tiki would have either remained a sub-sub-sub culture icon, or at the very least would have taken several more years to re-emerge.

I have a sneaking suspcion that more than one design student saw the possiblities, and now are telling their bosses at Target or wherever; "Seeeee? I told you this stuff would fly off the shelves."

I just got my handled green Target Tiki mug, some swizzle sticks, and a cool acrylic tiki tumbler.

Ahhhhhhhh the sweet release of consumerism.

I really gotta see a doctor about this!.
TG

I have the utmost admiration for Sven and I truly believe that he's one of the friendliest and most helpful members of TC AND I think he should be the next governor of California but I still think the BOT is mostly a "tiki underground" book.

I don't remember how or when I came to consider "tiki" as an adjective but I know it was a while ago. I personally discovered Tiki Central and thus he BOT less than a year ago.

I think it's more of a "zeitgest" thing where the pop Western world just came under the right set of circumstances to en masse realize that Tiki is ubercool. How many people that shop Dollar Tree or Target have read BOT? The designers may have read BOT but certainly not those making the products leap off the shelves.

There is another person who I think has had a significant influence on the "mainstreamization" of Tiki but I will not mention his name in fear that a collective of Dutch Tulip farmers may wish to jab my eyes out with their pointy little wooden shoes. :D

[ Edited by: Kono on 2004-07-16 22:16 ]

Dutch Tulips?!? Heck put me down for twenty Yosh Agile variety Tulips.

Indeed, Shag has put a lot of vivid imagery into the eye of the public. He is so prolific, that when I wrote the intial post, I completely vegged on his towering contribution to Tikieverywhereitis.

As to stuff flying off the stuff, I wonder how much (by percentage) is actually consumed by Tiki Centralites?

And how much is bought by people buying multiples of items just to sell them on ebay?
TG

Good conversation with y'all so far, I love this place.

[ Edited by: BaronV on 2004-09-09 20:09 ]

Baron, sage sage words. If this thing digresses into "sellout" I'll be the first to vote for locking it, putting it into a box, and setting it on fire.
TG

And of course this place has been a veritbale Ecyclopeida Tikicanica for the tiki curious.
My deep bow to Hanford.
TG

I can't wait 'til someone comes into my basement, sees my home Tiki bar and says, "Oh cool...just like at Target!"

But, let's give some serious props to a show that probably influenced a great many TCers in its original run or in endless hours of syndication...Say it with me..."Gil-i-gan!" Yes, Gilligan's Island. I soaked in so much of this show as a child that I started dreaming in bamboo. How many of us wanted to live on a tropical island in a thatched-roof hut (compound?) with 6 other stranded castaways?

Every time I hoist a drink in a coconut cup, I give a mental shoutout to Sherwood Schwartz...

I thought that one of the islands directly out my back window in the intra coastal waterway in Clearwater was Gliigans Island when I was a kid! I always wanted to take a canoe and row out and rescue them.

But nobody would let me, so I guess they might still be stranded there.
TG

yes not to turn this into something ugly.i have respect for the new people. but lets not forget "survivor". which helped put this into the mainstream.it seems to me when things like this become popular, thats the beginning of the downfall.it happens all the time.rockabilly in the 80's, swing in the 90's.you get what i mean? things become trendy to the general public. then all of a sudden they turn on it.maybe what i mean is we here are the core, and maybe we shouldnt get too excited about being invaded by the outsiders. there are alot of true believer artists here we should support, before the mass produced stuff. jimmy

I'm all for supporting the fine artists that are TC regulars. The several Rain and Flounder ( theres an aquatic thing goin' on there ) pieces I have hanging on my walls are very welcome additions to my collection.

But when the bills get laid on thick, a $6.00 huge ass tiki mug from Target sates my gotta get some tiki needs.

I'm just waiting for the next Gecko mug...

TG

oh yeah, no doubt, i have the big ass target mugs too.

On 2004-07-09 21:32, TikiGardener wrote:
I was just wondering how it feels for our Sven to be watching the plethora of Tiki goodies popping up all over the place? After all BOT is kinda responsible for the resurgence of Tiki on the pop culture stage.

No doubt others attentions ( Otto, James etc ) helped the tiki radar blip gorw brighter. But The Book Of Tiki really got that ball rolling. Just by being on the shelves across America ( and the world ) it put tiki into the collective subconciousness.

I'm glad cool reasonably priced stuff with character is coming out at Target and Spencers, and the others.

So Sven, how does it feel?

Tiki Gardener

Well....it feels GREAT. Very rewarding. I am not saying that it’s all directly resulting from the BOT....luckily, because I am not neccessarily partial to some of the cheapo candy color plastic Tiki crap that is out there...(but if it would be vintage, who knows?)
Collecting vintage Tiki in the 90s, I never would have imagined that something like Tiki “Soap on a rope” would ever appear again on the market, or that I would have my own Tiki mug out one day...it’s pretty crazy.

I love collecting items that use images directly swiped from the book, like CD covers, T-shirts and Aloha shirts, I even found a pair of boxer shorts with the Pitcairn sign on them. If anyone finds stuff like that, please let me know.

It is really hard to say to what degree the BOT is responsible, or how much Shag’s popularity had an effect, or if now it is starting to be a self-perpetuating trend (BAD Tiki inspiring more bad Tiki?). The easy availability of the Tiki image today muddles the line in recent history when there was almost no Tiki to be found. Nowadays newcomers have no sense of the fact that until the mid- to late 90s, the only thing that would come up when searching for the term “Tiki” on the internet would be “Tiki Barber” the baseball player and some woman’s website who had named her dog “Tiki”. There was no Tiki imagery out there period. It was true Urban Archeology to unearth anything.

One could compare this to the impact of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”: When this film came out, it was so revolutionairy in it’s style and look that people were amazed. Since then it’s stylistic language has become used so commonly and seen so many times in so many films that one can not appreciate the amazement that people felt when no one had seen anything like it before. This will be happening with the BOT also, but that is OK. People will THINK they new about Tiki style before the BOT came out, and take Tiki’s existence for granted. (And I am sure many of you on Tiki Central DID actually know something about it before.)

There were many Tiki enlightening contributions in the 90s, like when Otto and I began to publish Tiki News and hold Tiki Parties and slide shows, there was James Teitelbaum and his work, artist friends like Bosko,Josh Agle and Mark Ryden doing Tiki Art, and later on, House Industries and Doug Nason did their part, and generally many seperate hipsters knew what a Tiki looked like. But the BOT clearly accomplished two things:

1.) It pulled all the different threads of Tiki style together into a coherent picture and overwhelmingly proved that Tiki was a pop culture in it’s own right, which had never been done before, not even in it’s own heyday in the 50s and 60s.

2.) By making the book so chock full of quality color imagery, it glorified Tiki in the eye of the beholder and for the first time (compared to Tiki News and earlier Tiki publications) succeeded in making it a sensory, emotionally gratifying experience that did it justice (and made one want more!)

To me, it is not so much the products out there that give me a thrill, but:

A.) How many more artists and creative people have been inspired to pick up the chisel or the brush (me being an un-realized artist myself) to re-create Tiki in their own way, and with their work helped to spread the Tiki consciousness, and

B.) How many new Tiki temples have been built all over the world as a direct result of viewing the BOT, like:
First the Taboo Cove, then Waikiki Wally’s, the South London Pacific, The Hale Tiki, The Tabou Tiki in Berlin, The Kahiki Moon, AND, making it go full circle, the first new Tiki bar in Waikiki in 30 years, The Tikis Bar and Grill.
PLUS the fact that the BOT saved the Caliente Tropics from being renovated into a generic boutique Hotel. Yay!

All this means very little in the big scheme of things, but it is the game I play, and I am having a ball! And it is great to have a community of “Tiki Agents” spread all over the globe that like to play it too!

And one more thing: Boy am I glad that I started photographing the remaining examples of Tiki culture when I did, because since them MANY have been destroyed or altered beyond recognition. A little too late, and there would be have been much less proof of the grandeur of this lost civilization, because today we mourn:
The Kahiki, The Tikis, The Kona Kai exterior, The Hanalei exterior, the Pitcairn sign, The Samoa Motel, the Polynesian Village in Playa Del Rey, the Exotic Isle, and many other Tiki apartments. I am proud they live on in the pages of the Book of Tiki forever.

Go ahead pop a few buttons swelling with pride Big Bro. I'm sure the BOT didn't start the Tiki revolution by itself, but I'm Positive it kept it going after it kindled the fire. There are photos in your book that really spark the imagination of how it once was and many people want it back again. Like you say many new establishments were hatched out of the BOT nad that in turn inspired many more and we are seeing the snowball roll down the mountan.
Years ago I used to carve Many other things besides tiki and Now I don't see how I can carve anything But tiki.
I was unaware of the BOT until I found my way here (or Stumbled in). I can say the bOt presented to me gave me More than inspiration. In it there was a whole family hiding and loving tiki.
The people I have shown my book to have been blown away also and most ,like me, had no idea it was there and that there was sush an interest in tiki. The Nice thing is how redily they have embraced tiki and made it aprt of their life, even if only to buy the book. I joined a woodcarvers club of crochity old farts who mostly carved birds and looked down on anything else. Now I seem to be the center of their attention in Nice ways and I hear the OLD stories about their past tiki experiences.
Anyway you may not have started it but you Preserved a big chunk of it and made it easy for people to accept thai it is not a passing fad. You did it Sven, not the BOT.

Amazing read this thread has been.
I will admit that my first real exsposure to Tiki as I have come to know and love was by putting on punk shows in Northern NJ at the Gold Coin In Dover NJ, They had a room that I rented out a couple of times called "The Bali Hi room" Way cool, I also got my first mug from Jeckly and Hydes in NYC, I think it was all over from there.
I almost feel guilty by buying tiki mugs, lamps and clocks at places like Target and Spencer, Just seems to take some of the fun out of the hunt. But what the hell, its a quick fix, and means I have mugs I dont mind letting people use (as opposed to the good China which is reseved for special freinds)
I just regret that I moved to Pittsburgh to late to see the Kahiki in Columbus, IWhen I first got BOT I used to dream wistfully of its hallowed halls, and That huge fireplace, then I learned of its demise on TC, sad days indeed.
BOT inspired me to always be on the lookout for a frames and hidden Tikis, (thats how I got my stash of poles here in PA) Thank you So much Sven, you opened my eyes to somthing much larger than an ocasional cool mug or the Maoi in the NY Muesem on Natural History, you brough hidden americana to my imediate vision, not just as an afterthought.
Thanks again

On 2004-07-15 13:54, bigbrotiki wrote:

On 2004-07-09 21:32, TikiGardener wrote:
I was just wondering how it feels for our Sven to be watching the plethora of Tiki goodies popping up all over the place? After all BOT is kinda responsible for the resurgence of Tiki on the pop culture stage.

No doubt others attentions ( Otto, James etc ) helped the tiki radar blip gorw brighter. But The Book Of Tiki really got that ball rolling. Just by being on the shelves across America ( and the world ) it put tiki into the collective subconciousness.

I'm glad cool reasonably priced stuff with character is coming out at Target and Spencers, and the others.

So Sven, how does it feel?

Tiki Gardener

Well....it feels GREAT. Very rewarding. I am not saying that it’s all directly resulting from the BOT....luckily, because I am not neccessarily partial to some of the cheapo candy color plastic Tiki crap that is out there...(but if it would be vintage, who knows?)
Collecting vintage Tiki in the 90s, I never would have imagined that something like Tiki “Soap on a rope” would ever appear again on the market, or that I would have my own Tiki mug out one day...it’s pretty crazy.

I love collecting items that use images directly swiped from the book, like CD covers, T-shirts and Aloha shirts, I even found a pair of boxer shorts with the Pitcairn sign on them. If anyone finds stuff like that, please let me know.

It is really hard to say to what degree the BOT is responsible, or how much Shag’s popularity had an effect,

I think the fact that BOT put a well rounded history of Tiki/Polypop together with a huge collection of absolutely jaw dropping photos contributed heavily to the resurgence.

If someone who knew nothing about Tiki were to look at a Shag painting they'd get the hipster idea to a great degree, but they wouldn't have the history imparted to them.
Which Bot did in one nice heavy package.

or if now it is starting to be a self-perpetuating trend (BAD Tiki inspiring more bad Tiki?). The easy availability of the Tiki image today muddles the line in recent history when there was almost no Tiki to be found. Nowadays newcomers have no sense of the fact that until the mid- to late 90s, the only thing that would come up when searching for the term “Tiki” on the internet would be “Tiki Barber” the baseball player and some woman’s website who had named her dog “Tiki”. There was no Tiki imagery out there period. It was true Urban Archeology to unearth anything.

One could compare this to the impact of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”: When this film came out, it was so revolutionairy in it’s style and look that people were amazed. Since then it’s stylistic language has become used so commonly and seen so many times in so many films that one can not appreciate the amazement that people felt when no one had seen anything like it before. This will be happening with the BOT also, but that is OK. People will THINK they new about Tiki style before the BOT came out, and take Tiki’s existence for granted. (And I am sure many of you on Tiki Central DID actually know something about it before.)

There were many Tiki enlightening contributions in the 90s, like when Otto and I began to publish Tiki News and hold Tiki Parties and slide shows, there was James Teitelbaum and his work, artist friends like Bosko,Josh Agle and Mark Ryden doing Tiki Art, and later on, House Industries and Doug Nason did their part, and generally many seperate hipsters knew what a Tiki looked like. But the BOT clearly accomplished two things:

1.) It pulled all the different threads of Tiki style together into a coherent picture and overwhelmingly proved that Tiki was a pop culture in it’s own right, which had never been done before, not even in it’s own heyday in the 50s and 60s.

2.) By making the book so chock full of quality color imagery, it glorified Tiki in the eye of the beholder and for the first time (compared to Tiki News and earlier Tiki publications) succeeded in making it a sensory, emotionally gratifying experience that did it justice (and made one want more!)

To me, it is not so much the products out there that give me a thrill, but:

A.) How many more artists and creative people have been inspired to pick up the chisel or the brush (me being an un-realized artist myself) to re-create Tiki in their own way, and with their work helped to spread the Tiki consciousness, and

B.) How many new Tiki temples have been built all over the world as a direct result of viewing the BOT, like:
First the Taboo Cove, then Waikiki Wally’s, the South London Pacific, The Hale Tiki, The Tabou Tiki in Berlin, The Kahiki Moon, AND, making it go full circle, the first new Tiki bar in Waikiki in 30 years, The Tikis Bar and Grill.
PLUS the fact that the BOT saved the Caliente Tropics from being renovated into a generic boutique Hotel. Yay!

All this means very little in the big scheme of things, but it is the game I play, and I am having a ball! And it is great to have a community of “Tiki Agents” spread all over the globe that like to play it too!

And one more thing: Boy am I glad that I started photographing the remaining examples of Tiki culture when I did, because since them MANY have been destroyed or altered beyond recognition. A little too late, and there would be have been much less proof of the grandeur of this lost civilization, because today we mourn:
The Kahiki, The Tikis, The Kona Kai exterior, The Hanalei exterior, the Pitcairn sign, The Samoa Motel, the Polynesian Village in Playa Del Rey, the Exotic Isle, and many other Tiki apartments. I am proud they live on in the pages of the Book of Tiki forever.

Indeed, and this is the kind of post I really enjoy. I couldn't imagine what sort of response it would generate from the Bigbro. But again, the information contained within this post produces a picture of slightly pre Book of Tiki history.
Great stuff!
TG

It would be interesting to know when everyone who participates in TC started collecting Tiki. We could make a flow chart and see when the resurgance really took off.

I personally read about Munktiki in a House Industries magazine a couple years ago and was the proud owner of my first mug "Super Tiki Deluxe" within a week of reading the article. Now over 120 mugs later, I'm obviously hooked.

And what about ebay? Ebay has made collecting of tiki much more accessable to the world. Could I have a collection of over 100 mugs if it wasn't for the internet and ebay? I think not.

The BOT is an amazing Tiki "text book" of the history of an almost forgotten past. I hope it inspires more Tiki history to resurface.

I just went through the BOT again from cover to cover...Ahh--I'm all warm and gooey inside.

On 2004-07-15 22:26, MauiTiki wrote:
It would be interesting to know when everyone who participates in TC started collecting Tiki. We could make a flow chart and see when the resurgance really took off.

See some stories here...
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=3163&forum=1

OK...which neo-tiki pioneer gets credit for this!?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=6105604454&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

Actually, I think it's pretty cool and once I noted that it was "new in box" and not "used in good condition" I thought about bidding on it, but I didn't want to spend that much on it.

I got to thinking...there are probably people out there who really do collect vintage condom dispensers. You know there has to be. Gack! Blecch!

So is this GOOD tiki or BAD tiki??

That is in my humble opinion AWESOME!!!

It's the thing I could never have imagined that my tiki bar would need!

So tacky its tiki-riffic.

Your mileage may vary.
TG

That's bad, kids, tiz tiz....those "gettin Lei'ed" jokes are getting to be as lame as they became in the 60s...corny/cool/corny ...BUT, this machine is undoubtedly an important artifact for any possible book on the Tiki revival and needs to be archived as such!

Now back to the BOT:

On 2004-07-15 17:06, Benzart wrote:
....I joined a woodcarvers club of crochity old farts who mostly carved birds and looked down on anything else. Now I seem to be the center of their attention in Nice ways and I hear the OLD stories about their past tiki experiences...

Wow, how great! This reminds me of another rewarding result of the BOT being published:

Beginning in 1992, when I first started submitting the BOT idea to publishers, I had been telling Bob and Leroy at Oceanic Arts that they should please save their material for me, and that my book would be THE definitive work on Tiki style. This promise started to sound pretty old at the end of the 90s, and I was beginning to loose belief myself that it would ever come to fruition...

And now it is a great feeling for me to finally have come through for them so fully. Bob and Leroy now have something in their hands that has substance, that they can show to their grandchildren and say “This is what we did in our lives!”. Like many veterans of Tiki that had been through it’s demise and discrimination as bad taste, they initially were kind of crochity and suspicious, then began to look at us Tikiphiles as kind of crazy....but now the response and revival have made them aglow with pride in their life’s work. That is a real satifaction for me.

Which brings up another point (that I might have mentioned here before):
I might loose some of you with this, but bear in mind that I love cross-referencing ancient and modern Polynesian customs. To me, old beliefs are not mere superstition, but often prove themselves as having a core of truth in them.
The Oceanic religions were basically built on ancestor worship, the elders were revered, held in high esteem and deified after their death. There must have been an intrinsic value to this custom. The way old people are forgotten and their wisdom is ignored in today’s Western societies seems like the extreme opposite of that. I am hoping that in contrast, the BOT and the re-validation of lounge culture are an example of beneficial modern ancestor worship!

On 2004-07-18 08:51, bigbrotiki wrote:
The Oceanic religions were basically built on ancestor worship, the elders were revered, held in high esteem and deified after their death. There must have been an intrinsic value to this custom. The way old people are forgotten and their wisdom is ignored in today’s Western societies seems like the extreme opposite of that. I am hoping that in contrast, the BOT and the re-validation of lounge culture are an example of beneficial modern ancestor worship!

The best example of this are the Easter Island moai. Not many people know this, but each moai was built as an effigy to a specific person. All of the moai had names, and the names were the same names as real people (but their images are, shall we say... stylized!).

Sven, perhaps being glorified as a Tiki Farm mug is the first step towards a revival of the the ancestor worship you lament!

Someone will find a Sven-Tiki mug in Goodwill in 2030 and do the research to discover: "Sven Tiki: Who was he?".
:)

The Tabou Tiki Room Berlin wouldn't exist (or it wouldn't look the way it looks) without the help of THE book. It was a morning ritual to flip through BOT before we started working.
More information and pics on the opening coming soon.

Just wanted to answer the "what got me into tiki" question. Does anyone remember a Magazine called POP VOID? No.1 came out in the late 80's/early 90's had an article on the Tonga Room, which got me to visit it shortly after (while Trader Vic's Munich was only 3 hours away from where I lived; and I didn't have a clue). Have to find the Magazine again to see who wrote the article.

bump. Interesting thread

On 2004-07-10 20:57, Feelin' Zombified wrote:
I think what Tikigardener is refering to is the mass marketing of tiki. Most of us here pre-date BOT as tiki fans... but as far as the general public is concerened, BOT really opened up alot of eyes. Don't forget that Pottery Barn started selling the book about a year after it was published.

-Z

Pottery Barn is where I get a lot of my coffee-table books...they have great kitschy home-decorum items there. I too have been attracted to tiki all my life...grew up in San Diego, spent much time hanging around on Shelter Island in the clubs as a kid. Polynesian decor is just sooooo right for me. I was pretty thrilled when I bought BOT at Pottery Barn and read the picture captions front to back...but as usual, I didn't read the full contents, but the book said to me "it's OK to like tiki" and I felt happy to know there were people like Sven who had dedicated so much energy and passion into the subject. I got mostly tikified only a few months ago when I found this message board. My bank acount is slowly being drained, but my lounge is looking better and I have mugs!!! All of this thanks to Pottery Barn, BOT/Sven, and TC. :)

Hmm..yes...and thanks to Taschen, who distributed the book to popular outlets like pottery barn so Tiki could re-enter pop culture!
I had forgotten this thread, it does seem I repeat myself sometimes....but only every other year or so :)

There is one more item I like to share, the back of the new drink menu of Damon's in Glendale. A classic Polynesian pop establishment, it was sold last year (?) and TCers were worried that it would be renovated, but luckily the new owners kept it all intact (well they added some World Market import masks, unfortunately) and it still looks great, in full bamboo, with beautiful island murals, a big tropical fish tank, orchids lamps, and all. I was very relieved to find it unharmed, but absolutely thrilled to find the BOT quoted on their (otherwise quite simple) drink menu:

That really shows how things have gone full circle, the BOT quoting from old restaurant menus (which sometimes quoted the classics, Don and Vic), and now it is quoted on a menu of a historic urban oasis! For me, that's the ultimate stamp of approval. :)

In a way, the BOT acted like a virtual restaurant: Just like many entrepreneurs in the classic Tiki period took their cues from predecessors like Don and Vic, and then were copied by others, the BOT now forms a link in the never-ending "chain of transmission" of Polynesian pop!

The BoT redefined the Tiki experience as something refined, interesting, cool and fun. Most people alive today have either no experience in a tiki bar, or they have had experience in something they thought was a tiki bar and were wrong, or they had a very poor, isolated experience with no reference outside that. Your book made a beacon that showed what it was, or could have been. It cancelled out a lot of bad images. It made us all yearn for the ultimate experience. If Tiki did not exist, we would be forced to create it. And we have. More and more all the time.