Matchbook Covers - Tiki & non

damn nice post from the tiki's!!! makes me sad

:o !!! I wonder how many of those matchbooks survived, and are still buried in someones kitchen drawer, or stored in one of those 70's-styled giant glass brandy snifters ??? What a cool momento! Thanks for sharing Sven!

On 2009-01-17 14:05, Psycho Tiki D wrote:
Posted most of these in tiki finds today. The last two are from Candy's Whore House (where the customer comes first)!

Please come again!

PTD

[ Edited by: Psycho Tiki D 2009-01-17 14:06 ]

I have a set of hand/dish towels from Mabel's Whore House with the same saying. Those matchbooks are great!

On 2009-01-19 21:50, bigbrotiki wrote:
And PTD, having to look at all those out of focus images still hurts my eyes.

Sorry Bigbro, I thought trying to take the pictures outside would help, but for some reason my camera makes the smaller items I find blurry and out of focus when I take pitures. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, maybe I need a new camera?

PTD

[ Edited by: Psycho Tiki D 2009-01-20 16:56 ]

On 2009-01-20 16:54, Psycho Tiki D wrote:

On 2009-01-19 21:50, bigbrotiki wrote:
And PTD, having to look at all those out of focus images still hurts my eyes.

Sorry Bigbro, I thought trying to take the pictures outside would help, but for some reason my camera makes the smaller items I find blurry and out of focus when I take pitures. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, maybe I need a new camera?

PTD

[ Edited by: Psycho Tiki D 2009-01-20 16:56 ]

Hey, PTD.

This is a common problem when taking pictures of small objects with a digital camera. It happens with just about every camera. There are two easy solutions.

1. Stand back further but increase the resolution setting on the camera (say from 640x480 to 1024x768, or just pick the highest resolution setting your camera has.) The matchbook will only take up a small part of the viewfinder because you're standing futher away, but it will be in focus. Later, when editing the photo, crop-out the matchbook and a little border around it. Since you took a higher-resolution picture, the cropped matchbook will still be plenty large.

2. Find the Macro setting on your camera. It might be a button or it might be on one of the menus. It's usually represented by a picture of a small flower. If you turn the Macro setting "on", then you can move close to the matchbook and the camera will get it in focus.

Hope that helps.

Sabu

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2009-01-20 17:36 ]

Sabu,

Thanks for helping PTD out, those close-up matchbook photos were killing me too.

Option 3, get a printer/scanner for the computer. No muss, no fuss and a perfect image.

DC

Yes, thank you Sabu,

I will try your suggestions tonight and see if I can't re-shoot them correctly. I also have a scanner/printer/copier, so if the camera advice doesn't work, I will give that a go!

Thanks!

PTD

Stardust & AKU AKU in Las Vegas.
I have one extra to trade.

The Fabulous Fairmont Hotel home of the famous Tonga Room.

I have one extra to trade
Orale!

Matson lines

S.S. Mariposa means Butterfly
Nice design, reminds me of Derek Yaniger.
Hasta luego...

Hola again...

Trader Vic's Menehunes Toronto and Vancouver, any info on these places?
Agur

Hilton Hawaiian Village

Rainbow Tower

Aloha Motel Restaurant San Antonio

Swimming and recreation for the whole family.
I love this one...

Polynesian Village Resort Disney World

I have one extra for trade

I´m amazed.
Zeta your contribution to this thread seems endless.
Did you win some kind of matchbook lotto?

[ Edited by: Mister Naufrago 2009-01-21 13:07 ]

[ Edited by: Mister Naufrago 2009-11-30 06:57 ]

O.K. Hopefully this is better...

Pago Pago 2201 Oracle Road Tucson, Arizona.

Waiohai Hotel And Bungalows on the beach at Poipu Koloa, Kauai.

Halekulani Hotel and Bungalows on the beach at Waikiki.

Don the Beachcomber 1727 North McCadden Place Hollywood, CA

Billingsley's Outrigger Santa Monica at the Pier and 1515 S. Coast Highway Laguna Beach.

PTD

PTD, You Did It! The pictures look great, thanks.

Zeta,

Here is a matchbook from the Aloha Cafe you might like. I also have a postcard menu from this place.

DC

If you want to see an ultra swank motel Google the Gobbler Motel. I think you will enjoy it.

"Anyone who has ever seen them is thereafter haunted as if by a feverish dream" Karl Woermann

[ Edited by: uncle trav 2009-01-21 18:01 ]

[ Edited by: uncle trav 2009-01-21 18:04 ]

[ Edited by: uncle trav 2009-01-21 18:06 ]

Dustycajun! :o That matchbook es muy bonito! So beautiful it made me cry...:cry: Please post the postcard you have too! How you got them?
Muchas mahalos!

Nice logo

Kauai Surf

Zeta,

Here is a matchbook from the Aloha Cafe you might like. I also have a postcard menu from this place.

DC

"ABIERTO DIA Y NOCHE"/"OPEN DAY & NIGHT"

Great place, open 24 hours, just like Tiki Central.

On 2009-01-21 17:29, Dustycajun wrote:

Here is a matchbook from the Aloha Cafe you might like. I also have a postcard menu from this place.

DC

I've often wondered if this is the same place on Revolucion that is now known as Club Aloha -- a sleazy strip bar.

Uncle Trav, wow, you have a book form The Grass Shack, predecessor to the Kahiki! And that embossed breasts one is great, where was that from? And the Gobbler, what a nice rendering --and yes, what a classic website for this Madonna Inn of the post-Space Age, glad to see it's still up!

I wanted to share some of my Non-Tiki match books, just to continue my "Ode to the art of the matchbook":

Here is a modern tropical place that no one has ever heard of. If postcards do not exist of a place, matchbooks are often the only imagery of the architecture that has survived:

Among the many "feature" (in match collectors talk, extra elaborate treatments) concepts, like images printed on matches, and little pop out stands, embossing is among my favorites, here the name and the frame are raised:

Who has ever heard of this club? And what happened to all those paintings? And who was GLORIA...an especially large and fetching nude?

There was a time when nude paintings were standard decor in bars and supper clubs, but this place must have taken the cake. I was lucky to visit some, like Nickodell's on Melrose, and to this day, some of the Clearman's Inns have a few.

Matchbooks are also of special value to the urban archeologist because they, unlike mugs or menus, sometimes contain detailed maps that show us where the establishment once stood:

Maybe "Gloria" was the "live undraped model"? And were you given pencil and paper to sketch her while you waited for your food? If matchbooks could only talk! Wonder what is there today.

And last, one of my favorites, in color and concept:

This was in my old neighborhood of Telegraph Hill when I moved to the States in 1980. I used to live on the hill, just a block and a half below Coit Tower:

Check out the matches decorated with that classic prop of beatnik bohemia, the "drippy wax candle in wine bottle". When I got there, that place was gone, and only a few vestiges of North Beach's beatnik past were left:

Yours truly in 1980

I have a map from where my pad was exactly, somewhere...
....wait, here it is (red arrow)! That's where I lived while I went to the San Francisco Art Institute :)

...maybe this is where my love affair with "raised features" began.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2009-01-22 11:59 ]

On 2009-01-21 19:13, Zeta wrote:
Dustycajun! :o That matchbook es muy bonito! So beautiful it made me cry...:cry: Please post the postcard you have too! How you got them?
Muchas mahalos!

Zeta,

Here is the postcard menu from the Aloha Cafe.

The cover.

The drink menu pages.

On 2009-01-22 09:27, arriano wrote:
I've often wondered if this is the same place on Revolucion that is now known as Club Aloha -- a sleazy strip bar.

Arriano,

The address is 268 Main Street, don't know if Main Street is now Revolucion?

DC

I'm raiding my husband's Flickr stream as fast as he scans them in.
front
back

front
back

front
back

front

and these just because
front
back

front
Hot Dogs inside!!

Aaaah, thank you, another TCer adopting my "right side up" example. :)

Bigbro the embossed boobs belong to the Grass Shack matchbook. As far as I know a very rare find. I think I had to shell out a quarter.

"Anyone who has ever seen them is thereafter haunted as if by a feverish dream" Karl Woermann

[ Edited by: uncle trav 2009-01-22 13:29 ]

Great pieces everyone!! Here's a couple I've got kicking around that I don't think I saw posted yet:

The Tiki Broiler "Broil Your Own" at the International Market Place. Has a date of 1972 on it.

From the Tiki-Jo restaurant that was located at the Miramar Hotel in
Santa Monica, Ca.

A Samoan Village Motor Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.

A different Pago Pago book from Long Beach, Ca.

The cool inside of the above.

I always thought the Aloha Joe's from Palm Springs had cool designs and logos.

United States Army Officers Mess in Hawaii.

Nice WWII Navy Recreation Center book for place called Breakers. Inside is written Oct. 15th, 1944.

Nice Joe Chasteks Vagabonds House in L.A.

Kind of a cool LAN Airline one with a nice picture of Easter Island.

I guess that's it for now! Mahalo!!
TabooDan

[ Edited by: TabooDan 2009-01-22 16:59 ]

Haven't posted much in a while, so I decided to reach my hand into the ol' oversized brandy snifter and pull out some matchbooks.

Dig the theme building. This also has a white embossed images of the building on the back but doesn't photo well.

Lei Lani Room?

Dustycajun, Gracias for posting the Aloha cafe in Tijuana Menu!
Bigbro, nice beatnik/Kerouac style picture of you! How old where you? you look late twenties...

Maui Surf

Stuck my hand back into the oversized brandy glass a picked out a few more to take pictures of.

Kona Surf

Wow, Tiki shaker, some reeeal cool stuff there! I think it's time someone should do a book on match book graphics again!

I love seeing how the old designers made such great use of the tiny space a matchbook allows. This one is incredible:

Match book noir!

Thanks for the compliment. I really need to put these somewhere so they don't get wrecked. They are starting to lose their luster, getting dusty and getting affected by the ocean air. I actually forgot I even had as many as I did. I thought I gave most of them away. Matchbooks are just one of the millions of things I use to collect that I am starting to get re-interested in. (mainly because of their affordability! haha).

Alright, I went thru more of my matchbooks. This set is mostly tiki/hawaiian. I guess thru the week I'll post the rest of my visually interesting books I have. If anyone gets tired of me posting all these things, let me know. It takes a while to photograph them and crop them.

This first one is one I had no idea I had. One from the Tiki-Ti!

Somehow we ended up with two different threads for matchbook covers. Bora Boris started one in 2007 here...

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=25946&forum=6&18

Take a look, some sweet ones are here too!

PTD

[ Edited by: Psycho Tiki D 2009-01-28 13:03 ]

....and with many more soft-focus match books, too! :wink: :D

This establishment has a seriously perplexing concept: KEYS and KITES ?

I imagine a kind of surrealist, Dali-esque decor, somehow....like a Scopitone set with giant keys, and colorful, frozen in mid-air kites.

On 2009-01-28 14:11, bigbrotiki wrote:
This establishment has a seriously perplexing concept: KEYS and KITES ?

I imagine a kind of surrealist, Dali-esque decor, somehow....like a Scopitone set with giant keys, and colorful, frozen in mid-air kites.

I immediately thought of a Benjamin Franklin theme. Hmm.

Duh! Naturally, given the name of the hotel! My cluelessness makes it obvious that this Auslander has exclusively studied American Tiki history, not American history. :) I won't even ask what ole Ben had to do with keys...

On 2009-01-28 15:00, bigbrotiki wrote:
Duh! Naturally, given the name of the hotel! My cluelessness makes it obvious that this Auslander has exclusively studied American Tiki history, not American history. :) I won't even ask what ole Ben had to do with keys...

Sorry, Sven. I was just goofing around. I'll refrain from discussing the discovery of electricity here though. :wink:

Here are a few more for today.

DC

more...

Nice stuff, Tiki Shaker!

One of my favorite things about matchbooks are the tiny architectural renderings of the buildings. These diminutive works of art are sometimes the only historical reference I can find on what a tiki location looked like. But even if they're not, I tend to prefer them to the real photos. Here are a few of my favorites:

Great stuff Sabu....

Regarding the one you have from Encino on Ventura Blvd., I have that one too. It's for a restaurant called Pucci's. I noticed that there are a few old posts, one by you and one by bongo, about that place. Did you ever find anything out about it? Was it ever tiki? I have a little souvenir menu card from the place. I've always wondered about it.

Thank you, gentlemen, for all the hard work scanning, shooting and posting these images!

Regarding Pucci's: It might never have been Tiki. When I fell in love with A-frame architecture in the wake of my Tiki obsession, I naturally assumed that all true A-frame restaurants must initially have been Polynesian restaurants, but now I believe that some establishments just adopted the style as it was en vogue.

Hey Sabu, I think I photographed the remnants of that Outrigger Motel porte cochere when shooting Witco Hotels in Florida for Tiki Modern:

(it's on page 107 in the Tiki post collage)

And here, that Mauritus stamp of Tiki matchbooks, the rare golden "Kon Tiki"-style Tiki Ti matchbook:

..with that handy drink list to mark which ones you already tried!:

WHAT "is the key"? : ......... :)

On 2009-01-30 16:40, bigbrotiki wrote:
WHAT "is the key"? : ......... :)

Still referring to the Kite and Key Restaurant? The key is:

Ben Franklin believed electricity could be harnessed from lightning. In 1752, he devised an experiment to test his theory. Although details of the experiment remain sketchy to this day, Franklin originally wanted to test his theory atop a spire that was to be built on a Philadelphia church. As he thought about it in detail, he realized that his theory could be better tested by using a mobile kite, rather than a stationary spire. Franklin prepared the kite by tying a handkerchief to two crossed sticks of proper length. Extending vertically about a foot from the vertical stick was a wire. The apparatus was extended into the air by a length of string. Along the string of the apparatus was a metal key that would apparently conduct the electricity. Franklin hypothesized that the wire would draw 'electric fire' from the thunder clouds which would then be conducted through the apparatus and be contained in the key.

Nice Tiki Ti matchbook.

DC