Bitten By The Bot!

NO -- I do NOT mean the nasty lil' Bot Fly -- I mean 'The Book Of Tiki', of course!

And I thought it would make for a very interesting thread to find out the How, When, Where, etc. of people's first encounter with that virulently infectious and often life-changing literary cornucopia of all things Tiki.

So please feel free to share your own experiences with the rest of the ohana, told in your own individual way, of how that influential book influenced YOU personally -- what you were doing then and what you're doing now in the unique community we call "tiki".

For me, it all began innocently enough about ten years ago in Santa Monica, California, at an unassuming but koolamundo little bookstore (still there) called Hi De Ho Comics. (LOVE their no parking signs: "We tow very much. Make you sad.") And of course they had SO much more there besides comics. And one of the books they had, which drew me like the proverbial moth to the flame, was... Yep. Uh huh. That's the one.

Flash forward ten or so years and I no longer sleep in a bedroom -- I sleep in a tiki lounge; on my stereo, Bowie/Dylan/The Doors/Cohen/Portishead (whatever) has given way to Baxter, Denny, and Lyman; I used to write poetry -- now I'm writing for Tiki Magazine; I used to paint watercolor landscapes, classical nudes and portraits -- now I paint exotic/erotic wahines surrounded by... tikis; I used to go to random Hollywood parties -- now I attend tiki events by the score; and my kitchen cupboards which used to contain the usual assortment of glasses and plates, etc. are now overflowing with hundreds of tiki mugs!

I only jest in part, but I seriously attribute these various changes to the benignly pernicious influence of Mr. Sven A. Kirsten and his lingering legacy!

Well, that's my story in a nutshell.

What's yours?

Cheers & Mahalo :drink: :tiki:

[ Edited by: KreepyTiki 2009-05-09 16:22 ]

[ Edited by: KreepyTiki 2009-05-09 21:01 ]

[ Edited by: KreepyTiki 2009-05-11 16:51 ]

NOTE: To anyone who read this topic yesterday when I first posted it -- no, you weren't hallucinating.

My original posting was much longer and deliberately over-the-top. But, seeing that no one had yet replied, I thought perhaps the original POINT of this thread was getting lost in all the fevered verbiage -- satirical though it was -- so I thought it best to do some serious pruning and just get ON with it!

So I hope you folks NOW start chiming in yourselves with how Bigbro's ubiquitous tome first entered your own consciousness and what the results have been!

C'mon -- Don't be shy, peeps! Serious, silly, or sordid, I don't care! Let's hear yer STORIES!

I was fortunate enough to purchase the book at it's premier at La Luz de Jesus so I guess that pegs it at Fall of 1999. That ironically was also the same night that we premiered our Tiki mugs. The rest, as they say, is history. Sven had blonde hair.

kreepy tiki, I read your post yesterday and I enjoyed the entire thing. It was well written and funny and to the point. I don't think you should have changed it. I got the BOT in the West Valley Swap Meet of all places, around the same time you got yours,in a small booth that was full of tiki stuff. I couldn't believe my eyes when I found it, and yes it was expensive for me too but I bought this fabulous book. It was love at first sight and we are still pretty much in love and dating. Ahhhhh...

South Coast Plaza. The day after Thanksgiving. Rizzoli Bookstore. There was a big beautiful stack of them all shiny and shrink-wrapped. I was wearing a leather mini skirt and knee socks that had the word "Evil" printed down each side. (I'm so glad my taste in clothing has changed. :blush:)

Stuff-o-rama in San Luis Obispo September 2002 just after selling my first 4 tikis at the Ventura Swap meet a few weeks before. I remember Alene telling me to put it away because we had friends coming over and I had all the next day to read it, but I was obsessed and hooked. I read it from cover to cover that night after my friends left. As my friends were talking I would zone out and glance down at the Book o' Tiki wondering what I could be reading/seeing. Its the best book on earth, then Tiki Modern of coarse!

eXpLoRe tHe eXoTic isLe! http://www.flickr.com/photos/tikitony

[ Edited by: tikitony 2009-05-16 23:35 ]

Stimazkey, Jerusalem Malha Mall, fall 2003(?), soft cover. Like so many other Taschen overstock, a good number of BOT's found their way to Israel. Bought ours all thrilled and happy, only to find out that they were all over the place.

That's why I waited so long for the right publisher: I knew Taschen could spread the fever worldwide. In the heyday of being in print, BOTs were sighted in stores in Bulgaria, Argentina and Norway!

After a trip to Hawaii in 2000, I wondered if anyone out there besides me thought Tiki was fun. I started doing searches for Tiki on the internet, my internet hookup was dial up (remember how long that used to take?) so things moved really slow. I did find out there were others, who knew? I was at a cool tripster store in OB (Ocean Beach) called The Black. On a shelf, in the very back of the store, there it was, The Book of Tiki. I wondered how fast I could get home and start reading. Since then, I've probably purchased 7 BOTs from The Black as gifts for friends and can proudly say that today The Black carries Tiki Magazine.

Nicktiki

On 2009-05-17 09:38, bigbrotiki wrote:
That's why I waited so long for the right publisher: I knew Taschen could spread the fever worldwide. In the heyday of being in print, BOTs were sighted in stores in Bulgaria, Argentina and Norway!

Not to mention The Antipodes

I was on a business trip to San Francisco in 2003 and had nothing to do at night. I found a Barnes and Noble near Fishermans Wharf and found ONE book of tiki on the shelf.

I spent the next two nights in my hotel room reading the book cover to cover and pouring over the imagery.. most of which I had never seen before. It was all new to me. It was amazing to me..

I gave me a real clue what the genre was really all about. Until that time I was one of the plastic party city guys.... I had fun before.. but I had no clue.

Ever since that evening when I purchased my book.. I have been some how or another involved in tiki stuff. 6 years and counting... AMAZING that anything could have given me such a diverse outlet for my creative and social pursuits.

Thank you Sven

I mentioned before in another thread, or two, that I grew up in Monterey Park, on top of a hill that overlooked Danny Balsz's "The Tikis" club. I was never lucky enough to go into that place at the bottom of the hill--although a lot of my neighbors did. On weekends especially, they put on some really loud shows, and the neighbors across the street had a good vantage point on some of this from their backyard...you could occasionally see movement down there at night, and the flickering of volcano flames and torches, very eerie. And most weekend evenings in the 70's there was the ever-present pounding of tribal drums. Haunting to think about such things! Along with Halloween and a few local monster nuts, The Tikis contributed to making the neighborhood a fantasy world.

The first thing I heard about the BOT was that it had coverage--nay, a whole chapter--on this club, and I was pretty well chomping on the bit until I got my copy, and wow, finally, after all those years, I was able to see images of this very special place. The images and the story did not disappoint, and I went around showing the chapter to any family and friends who remembered that this place existed at one time. In one neat package, the chapter is a connection to a part of my childhood that I never saw directly, but of which, once upon a time, I caught tantalizing glimpses.

The rest of the book is just as much a treasure trove. It is a special volume, indeed.