Nothing Gold (or TIKI) can Stay, Ponyboy

So,

I was on my way home from the Purple Orchid tonite, and figured I would drive thru an old neighborhood I used to work in..Playa Del Rey. I used to work at this sandwich shop there delivering, this is Spring 95'.

I remember there was this cool Apartment complex, that was Full On Tiki...They had big Tikis in the front with waterfalls,lava rock, and the grounds were all tropical, and the actual architecture was Polynesian style too, as I remember. It was on Pershing...anyone in here familiar with Playa Del Rey...remember this place ?

Well, like most cool buildings in SoCal, it was basically decimated and remodeled in that new "modern", Mediterranian, Posh looking...whatever you call it style...What a HUGE disappointment.

I havent been in PDR since then, but I really wasn't expecting to see the whole place gone..I figured they'd remove the tikis, but keep the waterfalls, maybe paint and change it a little. What a bummer...The rest of the neighborhood on the sidestreets looked the same, but this one great piece of Tiki architecture was just erased.

What is it about Tiki style that people want to get rid of so bad ?

Of course, with it's proximity to the Ocean, Playa Del Rey, even tho it's RIGHT NEXT TO the airport has also totally changed....Now it's all posh, expensive looking restaurants etc...Well, at least the Shack is still there.

Anyone in here know when this great Tiki Apartment building was wiped out ?

Anyway, I was bummed.

Bummed is putting it mildly. An outcry of frustration went through the Tiki and LA modcom community when the Playa Del Rey Polynesian Village apartments (built in 1962 by Armet & Davis), THE best maintained haven of Tiki Modern apartment architecture at the time, was sneakily destroyed by a developer in the late 90s. In memoriam of this paradise, (and as thanks for your CD :) ) I will post a lengthy visual dissertation on this urban oasis here later.

P.S.: In the meantime, see BOT pages 210, 216, 217 and 226 for photos of the place

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-07-18 10:15 ]

Late 90's ? Damn, that's a while ago now.

I was really PO's last night when I did the drive-by. Why would a developer level a perfectly good building ? It certainly wasn't dilapidated as I recall. Every other building in the surrounding 2 blocks looked untouched, they had to raze THAT one ? Unreal.

On a side note, Sven, I just wanna say I've got hooked on Tiki News in the mid 90's (96 maybe?) and it's great to have communique with you in here. It took me a while to figure out that you were BigBroTiki. Anyway, I always loved the stuff you did in Tiki News, and still have almost all the issues. Tiki News was pretty much one of the main things that got me hooked on Tiki, so Mahalo for all the great stuff.

I look forward to the dissertation on Polynesian Village.

Friends of my Aunt used to live in that complex. They said it was cool but infested with termites.

All buildings in Southern California have termites. But not all buildings sit on a lot that has prime Playa Del Rey real estate value. As far as I understand it was completely razed and replaced with new generic condos.

The whole thing came as a shock to everyone because the Polynesian Village Apartments complex was ALWAYS fully rented out, and the landscaping was well maintained, with both main waterfalls still going.
The LA modcom begins to monitor noteworthy buildings once they go into decline, which is usually is a slow, noticeable process. But here the developer had obviously gotten smart, and to undercut the possibility of conservancy and community protests, he quietly removed the tenants one by one, and once the fence was up around the building, the tear down just took a month or two.

To me the unexpected loss of the place was frustrating also because this location was giving me a hard time, photographically, and I was not finished with it yet. I had been there multiple times in the course of my urban archeology expeditions, and never returned with the feeling of having captured the place. Either the afternoon light was coming from the wrong direction, or the direct sunlight was too harsh (it is difficult to photograph the high contrast of BLACK Tikis against WHITE walls), leaving me with over- and underexposed images.
Also, though Armet & Davis are famous for their sweeping Googie coffee shop designs, this building was kinda square, and not easy to capture through the lens. Early photos that have the typical lack of jungle growth because everything is still freshly planted make it look not THAT enticing:

This was one of the few apartment buildings that not only had its own postcard:

but also match books:

but in both the postcard and these early architect's photos below the foliage is still a little sparse in comparison to later, when I found it. To me, modernism works particularly well in Southern California because its clean, sparse lines lose their coldness when juxtaposed with the rich tropical flora that can grow so easily here:


The big waterfall in the middle of the complex was the showpiece, with Tiki torches blazing and gas flames coming out of the water (see also BOT page 217) These were of course not in use any more in the 90s.

To me, the most amazing aspect of the Polynesian Village apartments was the modern stylization of its Tikis. Here is a 1996 article (one of the earliest about Tiki as a pop culture phenomenon) that shows one:

To this day, I have no proof of WHO the carver(s) were that produced these imaginative and endlessly varied designs. My hunch is to say Andres Bumatay/Richard Ellis, but I have found no exact match in their other carvings yet. Whoever did THESE Tikis also did the cool carvings on the Kona Kai and Kona Pali apartments (see BOT page 222/223, and below).

When I discovered the settlement, there were not that many free-standing Tikis left, and the remaining few had severe palm wood rot. The constant sprinkler/direct sun back and forth had taken its toll:

Here are two more:

This is one of my favorites, I have no idea what happened to him. The photo of him on page 226 of the BOT was used by Accoutrements for one of their pencil toppers...so he survives that way:

The most amazing thing were the infinite variety of Tiki concepts that were carved into the building's decorative Outrigger beams. There must have been 40 to 50 beams, and each was individually carved with two or three unique Tiki designs. (You can see some in the background of the photos of page 210 and 216 of the BOT):

As was often the case, the different wings of the complex had different Hawaiian Hotel names. Here's a close up of a marvelously abstract Tiki on top of a beam:

The walk-through between two wings, with a cool midcentury light fixture in the background:

Of course the complex had tons of lava rock built into it, here's just one side wall:

Also, the A-frame car ports were cool:

Nowadays I am glad I have SOMETHING to show for my efforts, but I still feel the essence of the place eluded me. I regret not having photographed each and every individually carved beam. Sometime in the early 2000s a strange notice popped up on TC: An ex-tenant, a girl who was now working in Vegas as a dancer (!), had a line on a whole bunch of the poles. Supposedly they had been termite treated and were in some storage yard in Riverside. But the the price she had in mind was ridiculously high, and after having been laughed off by the TCers, nothing was heard of this loot again.

But a year or so later, a PVA Tiki came to me: I had already heard through the grapevine that during the brief period between closing down and the quick demolish of the complex it had been rented out as a film location, and that some crew people had absconded with some of the artifacts (not unlike the Chin Tiki's story). One day at Trader Joe's I ran into an old Film worker friend of mine who knew a prop guy who had a quickly rotting PVA Tiki in his yard. It was in sad shape, all mush inside, but my promises to take care of and restore the relic got me a free Tiki. I had to gut it completely, and used resin to soak the wood from the inside and foam to fill the empty spaces when I wrapped it around my right porch pole, where it still sits today. Beware of the CLOWN TIKI:

(Below its chin rests a piece of genuine lava rock from the Polynesian Village Apartments)

In addition to this, I would like to point out that the SAME carver(s) who did the above apartment complex also must have done the Kona Kai (Rosemead) and Kona Pali (Granada Hills) apartments, as evidenced by a similar "clown Tiki" in the Kona Kai's courtyard...

...and these Tiki beams, which have the same degree of modernist sylization than the Playa Del Rey apts...

...and are stacked in the same "totem pole" style.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2009-04-21 12:48 ]

Sven,

1000 Mahalos for that presentation.
Man. where do you get all this stuff from ? Amazing.

Yes, those A Frame parking stalls....I remember parking under one of them when I had to deliver food there. The place was confusing, and you had to get buzzed in, and there were entrances on 3 different streets. Because the place was so big, and had many buildings it, really had the feel of it being it's own "village".

I remember going to the place and thinking how cool it was, and admiring all those tikis. I thought, "If I ever moved to Playa Del Rey, THAT is where I'd want to live". It just personified "California Living" to me.

I remember driving down there to take photos with my cheap camera to send to Tiki News for the "Neighborhood Tiki" section of the mag, and getting an email back from Otto saying that, it had already had been covered, but he may include one of my photos. Obviously it was YOU who had already covered it.

And, yes, it definitely WAS hard to capture on film. I remember how disappointed I was when I got the pictures back, and you really couldn't see the carvings very well. What amazed me was how EVERY corner fascia had a tiki carving, and all the tikis on the grounds were hiding in the foliage, which as you stated, had really gotten pretty mature and dense. The place looked like Paradise to me back in 96'.

Driving by there last night was horrifying to see what they put up in it's place. Really just sad.

This had to be one of the coolest examples of Polynesian / Mid Century Apartment buildings in the US.

Thanx again for that dissertation, and I'm glad that you got one of the original Tikis from there.

PS...Sven, do you have any stuff on the still existing Tiki Apartment complex on Rosmead Blvd in Arcadia ?
It has a giant Tiki out front, similar in shape to the PVA oneyou restored.

[ Edited by: tikiyaki 2007-07-18 17:43 ]

You must mean the Outrigger Apartments, pretty much across from the Kona Kai Apts, in the BOT on page 15. Those "infra-red" photographs were taken when the Tiki was still purposely grown over with greenery: The manager told me proudly that they had gotten rid of all their Tikis because they would "date" the place, but this one was structural and could not be removed.

Those are Jeff Berry's hands uncovering the one eye under the jungle growth. The place has nice flat A-frame architecture, no other Tikis left, but interesting bamboo details, an A-frame pool house and an A-frame mail box unit.

P.S.: If you mean by "stufff" brochures and other paper ephemera...no. I always ask, especially if they have the original architectural rendering, that would be the PRIZE....but mostly with no results, because the owners are living somewhere far away, don't wanna be bothered, and think I'm crazy.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-07-18 19:20 ]

On 2007-07-18 19:14, bigbrotiki wrote:
You must mean the Outrigger Apartments, pretty much across from the Kona Kai Apts, in the BOT on page 15. Those "infra-red" photographs were taken when the Tiki was still purposely grown over with greenery: The manager told me proudly that they had gotten rid of all their Tikis because they would "date" the place, but this one was structural and could not be removed.

Those are Jeff Berry's hands uncovering the one eye under the jungle growth. The place has nice flat A-frame architecture, no other Tikis left, but interesting bamboo details, an A-frame pool house and an A-frame mail box unit.

P.S.: If you mean by "stufff" brochures and other paper ephemera...no. I always ask, especially if they have the original architectural rendering, that would be the PRIZE....but mostly with no results, because the owners are living somewhere far away, don't wanna be bothered, and think I'm crazy.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-07-18 19:20 ]

I think that is the one. It's on Rosemead, just south of Trader Joes by Huntington Drive ( I think)

By "Stuff" I mean, anything..photos of the inside etc.

I only got to go inside once, and like I said, there was nothing worthwhile left to shoot. When I began documenting Tiki architecture in the early 90s, already only every 3rd or 4th Polynesian style apartment building had Tikis or other unique details left. Nowadays its even less. And of those photos I took then, I used only the best images in the BOT. That's why none of my PVA photos are in there, they were not good enough.

The book is really a distilled, idealized form of what was, and what is tiki. It had to be, to make an impact. Tiki News was a good fanzine, but it failed to bring the full visual quality of Tiki across because of being limited to low quality B&W photo reproduction. I waited for eight years until I found a publisher that could do Tiki justice in quality and quantity of image reproduction, and it was worth it: The book did its magic.

Here is another angle on the Outrigger apartments on Rosemead Blvd, shot from the garage side. It's a nice example of how the A-frame lines can run into each other:

Here's a nice example of one of the many Tiki-carved beams at the Kona Kai on Rosemead done by the same carver than the PVA Tikis. Both the Kona Kai and the Kona Pali have those, they again are all different, and the degree of stylization is amazing.

And here, one of two freestanding Tikis I found at the Kona Pali Apartements...very wacky, and kinda Bumatay-esque, wouldn't you agree?:

Plus I remembered one more Apartement complex that had BLACK Tikis, very likely by the same carvers: The Shelter Isle ( BOT page 214) was owned Marge and Gower Champion, a once famous dancing/musical couple. A wonderful village that yielded much detail, but aagin had only two freestanding Tikis left, here's a nice sretched one:

(P.S.: Whoever monitors TC, I have noticed lately that the spellcheck is getting lazy lately, how come it did not catch the mis-typing of "again" above? And can't the word "Tiki" be inputted so it gets accepted by it?)