Cool Stuff People Give Us....

This morning at work, one of the guys (not so much a friend - more of a guy I bulls#$%t with over morning coffee) gave me a Mondo Tiki 2003 Pin. What a random act of coolness! He said he collected pins and remembered he had this one, so he dug through his collection so he could give it to me. I'm sure it's happened to most of us over the years....someone saw something Tiki, remembered you were into it and suprised you.
I'd like to start a thread where we can post these (to quote dogbytes) random acts of Tiki. I'm not talkin' birthday, Christmas, etc. gifts, I'm mean out of the blue - Wow, I didn't know you cared, random acts.

Here's the pin:

The big Tiki was from a friend that works for Toshiba. It was a leftover from a Magazine ad campaign photo shoot they did. The little guy is from my wahine's old boss who is from New Zealand:

My best random act of tiki kindness was 6 Hawaiian Cottage tiki mugs my parents picked up for me at a flea market... my parents tend to find cool tiki stuff wherever they go and never disappoint when it comes to looking out for my tiki collection!

In december my neighbor was moving and I was helping them move boxes. I saw this buried in the garage. The husband said I could have it. His wife said no ,it turned out that her grandfather gave it to her 30+ years ago and he had since passed away. No problem I said. A few hours later she knocked on our door and gave it to me saying if it meant that much to her she would have taken better care of it. And I would take better care of it than her.

I also met Slacksferret last week for the first time and he honored me with a tv coconut mug and some stir sticks and cd of music to carve to. Very cool gesture on his part.

Our friend worked on a commercial involving a hut - instead of pitching the entire thing into the trash, he disassembled the whole thing and donated all the bamboo and thatching and matting... and this before we'd even though about starting the bar! Most of it built up the overhang on the lower deck... which is now falling down the hill due to the rains, darn it!

When we moved back to San Diego we stayed with a friend & helped take care of his 88 year old mother. She liked that I enjoyed all the interesting things she'd bought throughout her life: from tiki mugs to Op Art lamps to ads for Andy Warhol museum shows. When she eventually died she left me 4 PMP mugs & 3 Aku Aku coins and left my wife a giant framed 3D fired pottery Egyptian wall piece.

My Dad bought me a monkeypod Ku from Oahu when I was 11 years old. It now hangs over the "band area" of the Lagoon Lounge.

The tiki that welcomes visitors to the Lagoon Lounge was languishing under a trailer and my buddy grabbed it from his brother saying, "I know where this will go perfectly." Since then, I've hit it with some stain and the torch and put a low voltage light on it.

It will be replaced at the entrance this year with a TiKItOny tiki, but will still be a part of the scene there.

A lot of the stuff I've got was given to me and I make sure to pour the drinks strong for those friends whenever they visit.

"MUSIC TO CARVE TO", what a great concept, Slacksferret and Rodeotiki!

Someone who volunteers once a month where I work gave me a TV Volcano bowl. She explained that she and her husband thought that it was tacky, but explained owning it by adding, "Going to kitschy tropical restaurants used to be the trendy thing to do." She thought I'd want it because she remembered seeing me using a bamboo pen one day on my rounds. She still laughs at me enjoying "that tacky hula bowl" so much.

My friends family was going through his deseased gandparents stuff, wnen my friends wife thought, "hey, John might like this." She grabbed this great print that used to hang over the TIKI BAR. Thank God for wives.

The laid-back NYer

http://www.NiceFishy.com

[ Edited by: Raffertiki on 2005-02-23 15:57 ]

This was given to me by one of my mothers nieghbors.

She lives in an "Adult Community", and the woman getting rid of her stuff is about 80. She told me that her husband got this when he was stationed in the Pacific some time in the 50's. Its a very cool piece - not signed - with an animal skin top. Does anyone out there have any idea where it came from?