new guy-skipper kent's question

Hello, I'm a new guy here and was wondering if anyone had any information on when the zombie village in Oak. opened and closed? I was also wondering about the same info for Skipper kent's in S. F.?

I am at the tail end of curating a show for the San Francisco airport museum and am in the middle of writing the text. We have some objects from both places and I want to make sure I get all of my facts correct.

Thanks for the help, Jeff

Hey Jeff, did my stuff ever arrive?

I'm not sure. Who is this?
-Jeff

I sent you a Skipper Kent matchbook and place card.... :wink:
Haven't heard back from Kenn so far.
Did you try the search function here? I am not exactly sure as to those dates, but there were posts on S. K. in the past

Hello there, I thought you were out of town. I will ask Kenn on Monday if your objects arrived. By the way, do you have any info on Tiki Bob's? I am trying to find out when it opened and closed as well as any other info not in the book of tiki,
Thanks, Jeff

Jeff -

Here's an interesting side of Tiki Bob's that you might not have seen before:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=5474&forum=1

Sabu

The wonders of the internet! Even though I am snowed in in the Bavarian backwoods, a few mouse clicks make me feel back at home with the Tiki community.

Tiki Bob's..OK...here we go:

As I did mention in the BOT, it was opened in 1955, after Bob Bryant had a falling out with Trader Vic (which I am sure was not hard to do with the ol' hard ass). The Trader had hired him away from the Matson Line (or was it Lurline?) when he met him aboard on one of his Hawaii trips.
Apart from the concept, Bob also lifted Asian beauty Florence Nowlen from the Trader's gift shop and opened Tiki Bob's in partnership with her, just one block away from the Trader's S.F. outpost on Cosmo Place, in a corner bar previously known as the "Castle Rock Bar". The concept was clear: Just like Zombie Village opening across the way from the original Trader Vic's in Oakland, Tiki Bob's would catch the successful Trader's overflow by proximity. Hence TB was also referred to as "the poor man's Trader Vic's".(As proof of the influence of Trader Vic's in Northern California, note that how many Tiki joints that followed in his wake used the "nickname" concept: Trader VIC's--Tiki BOB's--Skipper KENT's--Tiburon TOMMIE's--and of course Tradr SAM's).
Also from knowing him through Trader Vic, Bob hired Alec Yuill-Thornton as the designer for his unique logo Tiki. Alec worked for Gardner-Dailey architects (they built the S.F. Trader), and had previously illustrated Trader Vic's Kitchen Kibitzer Cookbook.
As was the goal of many entrepreneurs ogling the success of Vic and Don, Bob Bryant hoped to franchise out his name. In 1959 he opened "Tiki Bob's Mainland Rendezvous" on 333 Bush street in S.F.'s business district, and when it wasn't an immediate success, he tried to make up for the lack of Polynesian decor with lunch time lingerie fashion shows. The hundreds of curious customers that showed for that brought the cops in, who tried to close it on an indecency charge but didn't, which gave Bob an additional boost in free press PR. The novelty must have worn off quickly though, because after that nothing more was heard of T.B.'s Mainland. In the early 60's, a Tiki Bob's opened under license at the Capitol Inn in Sacramento, but met a similar fate of obscurity.
I have no idea what happened to Bob Bryant later. Florence Nowlen took over Tiki Bob's, moving down to an office building on Market Street in 1969, where she opened "Raffles" on the ground floor. That's where I found her after asking around in the Tiki Bob neighborhood in the early 90s. A few artifacts of Tiki Bob's hung on the walls in what otherwise seemed more like a coffee shop. Thanks to her information and mementos I was able to piece together the pages you see in the BOT. Later a nephew of her's showed up on Tiki Central briefly, but was not heard of again.

I still would name Bob Bryant/Alec Yuill Thornton as among the first to use a highly stylized modern Tiki as a complete business concept in NAME and IMAGE (entrance statue/mug/salt'n'pepper shakers/menu/matchbooks/cocktail), thus marking the beginning of the TIKI period of Polynesian Pop. TB's was the originator of the "Sneaky Tiki" cocktail, later used by Harvey's in Lake Tahoe.

Sabu, you're so good with digging up those old TC posts, was there one that contains the info on that S.F. company/gallery that was selling stuff from Skipper Kent's estate , most notably that amazing Tiki bowl one-off? (Which will be, I might gladly ad, in my new book, together with the above linked cheesecake photos!).
They should have some inside info on the man behind the moniker.

You ROCK! Thank you so much for the information. I might actually finish writing the text for the show and get some sleep tonight!

Talk to you soon, Jeff

Thanks Sabu, I will put that in with my tiki Bob's file. Very interesting

Bigbro - here's the old thread on that Skipper Kent Collection auction, including that rare prototype bowl. Unfortunately all the links and pictures are dead by now.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=7345&forum=5

According to another thread, this was the auction house that was selling stuff from the Skipper Kent's estate. Maybe give them a call or e-mail.

http://www.galwest.com/

Sabu

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2006-02-05 01:01 ]

And here's the link to pictures of Trader Pup's ultra-rare Zombie Village mug which sold for nearly $900 last year:

http://www.traderpup.com/tikipics/zombie.htm

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2006-02-05 01:16 ]

Aaah, cool! Hey Jeff, wake up, wake up! :wink:

i have a skipper kent's surfer girl mug. it's still got quite a bit of the cold paint.

Thanks for the mug offer but I'm supposed to have everything in by tomorrow morning. I think we will have some pretty good examples of some of their goodies.
Thanks, Jeff

On 2006-02-05 00:06, bigbrotiki wrote:
The wonders of the internet! Even though I am snowed in in the Bavarian backwoods, a few mouse clicks make me feel back at home with the Tiki community.

Tiki Bob's..OK...here we go:

As I did mention in the BOT, it was opened in 1955, after Bob Bryant had a falling out with Trader Vic (which I am sure was not hard to do with the ol' hard ass). The Trader had hired him away from the Matson Line (or was it Lurline?) when he met him aboard on one of his Hawaii trips.

The Lurline was a ship in the Matson Line fleet, so one and the same.

I noticed that Trader Vic in his autobiography mentions that Bob Bryant was a childhood friend from grammar school in Oakland. He talks about them as children, but never says anything else about what later happened. I was surprised that he mentioned him at all, if the falling out was so bad ("Bob is dead to me!"), but maybe he'd gone all soft in his old age and forgiven him.

Nah, that can't be it.

On 2006-02-06 06:30, martiki wrote:
I noticed that Trader Vic in his autobiography mentions that Bob Bryant was a childhood friend from grammar school in Oakland. He talks about them as children, but never says anything else about what later happened. I was surprised that he mentioned him at all, if the falling out was so bad ("Bob is dead to")

Wow! Really? I forgot who (and where) gave me that Matson line info....one of the Bergeron boys?...or maybe it was one of those boosted up bios where they wanted to make the meeting of the two men more interesting (like the shark got Vic's leg story).

Does it say anything more about Bob? In what context? I must admit that I never read the WHOLE damn book....

On 2006-02-06 11:47, bigbrotiki wrote:

On 2006-02-06 06:30, martiki wrote:
I noticed that Trader Vic in his autobiography mentions that Bob Bryant was a childhood friend from grammar school in Oakland. He talks about them as children, but never says anything else about what later happened. I was surprised that he mentioned him at all, if the falling out was so bad ("Bob is dead to")

Wow! Really? I forgot who (and where) gave me that Matson line info....one of the Bergeron boys?...or maybe it was one of those boosted up bios where they wanted to make the meeting of the two men more interesting (like the shark got Vic's leg story).

Does it say anything more about Bob? In what context? I must admit that I never read the WHOLE damn book....

Well, it's certainly possible that Bryant worked for Matson as well. It was one of the biggest employers in SF at the time- HQ was on market st in a big building that's still there- they also owned Honolulu Oil Co., which was pretty big.

Of course, since Vic did end up designing drinks for the Matson Line ships and their hotel chain, Bryant working at Matson could explain how that came together.

The book does not mention anything about Bryant beyond he and Vic being childhood friends. I certainly don't blame you for not finishing the book- I hate to say it, but it's among the worst I've ever read! Terrible writing, no editing, disjointed. Sadly, it's really bad.

Thank you both, interesting history.

Sven you felt so close today who would know you were so far away, Wendy

But Wendy, I am ALWAYS close: I am Big Brother Tiki! :)

And trying to be that in a benevolent manner, like a Tiki man-of-the-frock:

"What are your Tiki troubles today, child?"

Some folks find this a bit scary, though. I only aim to spread the gospel. I smile upon the glorification of Tiki, and frown upon taking his name in vain.