Absolute Brilliance: The Book of Tiki

I know this posting is probably a candidate for the "Duh!" category, but I received my (true hardcover) edition of Sven's wonderfully packed treasure chest of Tiki lore. I'll try to avoid too much reiteration of appreciation for Sven's excellent work on such a beautiful book, but I don't think he'll mind a little.

I'm still just absorbing the book's contents in a cursory fashion, but already I am awestruck by the extent to which this Tiki culture had swept the US. It's clear to me that I was experiencing only the trailing edge of what remained of Tiki as a boy (in the mid-1970s).

Beachbum's food+drinks booklets reinforce the cultural contexts at play within this movement. It's funny too, because I never established the link between other "Atomic Age" cultural phenomena: modernism, "exotica" (heavy and diverse percussion sections) music and its indelible impact on film and TV soundtracks, the growing appetite for the unusual [an odd "xenophilia" in a post-xenophobic/hardline anti-Red period?], the appeal of "exotic" locations and cultures, and the imparted dreams of a purely imagined culture.

I'm just a bit too young (or was lucky to have grown up on one of the coasts of the US) to have never known Chinese, Indian, Thai, and Japanese restaurants. About the closest thing in my personal experience would be the dissonance I felt during visits to my grandparents in Michigan over the summers; it struck me as odd that the nearest Chinese restaurant was over an hour's drive away, and it was hard to find something I could recognise on the menu [I was never a fan of chop suey and their ilk].

I must admit also to feeling some dissonance within what remains of Tiki culture today. Remember, that my impressions of it back in the 1970s were a boy's. It consisted of "unusual and dramatic" food in a cozy and dark setting which fed my imagination of tropical paradises and the already mythological status Hawai'i has for anyone who has never been there.

Obviously, I never drank alcoholic beverages back then, though I do vividly recall the two full-page spreads on the menus with such hilariously funny (to a 10 year old) drinks like "Shrunken Head","Zombie", and of course, the crowning touch incorporating a "forbidden word": The Suffering Bastard.

But that was not Tiki for me. I'm hardly a teatotaller, but a part of me wishes there was more left of what I remember about Tiki than bars and drinking alcohol. I am not complaining here, but rather, expressing a small pang of grief. I suppose all things change and die, and this grief is identical for all such losses we experience keenly only too late, after they've departed out lives forever.

Sven: Your book's subtitle is perfect. You have performed an excellent work of archaeology, and speaking as someone who nearly diverted into the field [for Mesopotamian/Sumerian focused research], I acutely recognise the care of your gentle excavations of this mostly gone culture which thrived in our very midst.

In essence, we've become caretakers of a dead culture, bookmarked from the time of its last "native speakers", in much the way Manx is both technically a dead language, and one still kept on linguistic life-support by the handful of academics who learned it before its last native-born speaker died in the 1970s.

It's with a whole heart I express my appreciation to those who still live and contribute Tiki to the world: the Mikes (Tiki-Ti), the Shags, the Boskos, the Svens, Ottos, Beachbum Berrys, and all of those who contribute to the Cultural Preserve in which we find ourselves.

In a related area, I wish there were movements to revive Modernism (the essence of it, not the superficial "cheap plastic replicas"). As I see more of it, I'm struck by how well it dates, and how absolutely elegant and beautiful it was/is. The absolutely brilliant buildings of Lautner, Frey, Williams, et al, are as beautiful inside as they are outside. The Eameses' interior works are legendary, and I fully understand the zeal of those who collect such.

Southern California is truly blessed with so many surviving examples in excellent condition, but I know they can't be taken for granted. Demolitions happen every year. Probably lots more are "rotting away" like the Chemosphere was before Herr Taschen bought and rescued it.

Anyway, I just wanted to express my profound appreciation to bigbrotiki for putting so much loving hard work into his book. Maybe someday, when the big cycle of trends come around, we'll see a larger base of Tiki revival, but I remain guardedly dubious about that.

Cheers,
=Kukoae=

[edited by Hanford to fix the title]

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore on 2005-07-02 18:15 ]

You are not alone in loving the "BoT" as it is known around these parts. It is also known as "the bible". My first real introduction to Tiki stuff and I loved it.

It really is a startlingly good book, dense with detail and wisdom. I have had my copy for quite some time now, and I find it bears repeated rereading--always new meanings and different resonances to be deciphered.

Kukoae,

You get an A on your factual and self-revealing report on the Book of Tiki.

I was proud to have you as a student this semester, and I can tell by your excellent writing skills you'll be on the Dean's list by senior year!

Good luck in all your future endeavors here at the University of Tiki.

http://www.helicopterpage.com/images/sven.jpg

and...Sven is a really nice guy.

I sort of stumbled onto The Book of Tiki while feverishly searching for material on Danny Balsz's "The Tikis" club. I've mentioned it before, but I thought I would, just for a moment, go into a little more detail regarding the "tail-end" tiki stuff that I remember from the early 70's.

My folks' house was on a hill overlooking the club, and when we visited the people across the street, we could go into their backyard and look down the hill and see a little of what was going on at the Tikis. A lot of the club was hidden behind trees as I recall, but you could see an occasional belch of smoke and flame. The drumming, however, was very loud, and echoed through the valley, especially on weekends.

On a street near our house, there actually was a Tiki head, about three and a half feet tall, roughly chiseled out of dark gray lava rock, sitting right in front of a driveway nestled amongst some attractive plants. It is still there!!!!! And it has been there since the late 60's, at least. A long time ago the (previous) owners used to touch up the eyes and mouth with a little red and green paint, and the "eyesockets" at one point had small bright rocks placed in them for more definition. Somebody on the street liked Tiki enough to keep into going into the mid-late 70's, but when the 80's rolled around, they stopped touching up the paint on the rock head ("Pele," we used to call it).

The plants have since grown over the thing, totally obscuring it, and I suspect that the current inhabitants of the house would prefer not to have their Tiki turn into a tourist attraction. I have refrained from bothering these people, but every time I see the place, well, the yearning is great.

Also, when I was a kid, the house that belonged to our next-door neighbors had an elaborate waterfall in the backyard (which I believe is still there). Recently I have wondered whether this waterfall may not have been built by Danny Balsz himself.

That Sven pic is almost life sized! I clicked it and got a giant German Eye staring at me... aaahhh!

I don't think anyone wants to see their face up close like that.

I took it at the Tiki Ti, and posted it full size you your enjoyment. You can reduce it as you desire.

Mahalo everyone for the compliments, I am very grateful that the book turned out so well, too, AND that it had such a wide-ranging effect, helping to revive a pop culture that was on the cusp of dieing out.

I have been an irregular visitor on TC because in the last months I have been cramming on my next book, trying to get as much as possible done before my German TV work hiatus was going to start. I have scanned almost all the images now, and layed out the first five of 19 chapters. I must say I am very excited about the way it looks, and confident it will live up to the BOT. Because I am now publishing it with Taschen again, I have expanded the initial concept from pure Witco to putting William Westenhaver's work in context with midcentury modernism and it's love affair with primitivism, which always was my favourite subject. The full title will now be "TIKI MODERN and The Wild World of Witco".
I am now in Germany, and since the shipping and customs of the Kon-Id mugs to LA was so delayed, I will be busy directing the distribution of the mugs, and writing for the laid out chapters, so I will allow myself to get distracted here only occasionally.

In regards to that BIG HAPPY picture of me, nobody said anything about the OTHER guy in the shot...WHAT am I holding?...and for that matter, WHAT am I wearing? Since WHERE I am was already mentioned, here's the rest of the scoop:

I am clutching a very rare Sascha Brastoff designed ALOHA JHOE'S PALM SPRINGS candle holder, which Mike Senior brought into the Tiki Ti after he remembered that he and his dad gotten one when they actually visited the place in the 60s. Mike's memory was stirred by me showing him one the week before that BONGOFURY had brought into town so I could properly photograph it in my makeshift basement studio for my new book.

And I am wearing a prototype of the Disney Enchanted Tiki Room shirt remake that Kevin and Jody brough to the Ti so we could measure sizes. For your info, the XL comes quite big, because it fit ME.
Never would have dreamed that this would be available again one day! ....Hey, if you miss something that has become unavailable or too rare, put it in a book, and Voila!

PS: I now have 4 PERSONAL MESSAGES blinking for me, but for a while now I have been unable to get to them, sorry...Hanford is working on the problem.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki on 2005-06-30 11:17 ]