Club Tiki, Canoga Park, CA (restaurant)

Name:Club Tiki
Type:restaurant
Street:20923 Roscoe Blvd.
City:Canoga Park
State:CA
Zip:91304
country:USA
Phone:
Status:defunct

Description:
Very little is known about this place. The only artifact I've seen from it is a matchbook cover in the Book of Tiki (p. 51). I had a brief conversation about it with Sven at Oasis and he didn't know anything else about the place either, so -- since I grew up less than a mile away -- I resolved to piece together as much as I could from family members, friends, and other longtime Valley residents.

From what I've been able to gather, the Club Tiki was quite a jumpin' place in its heyday. Its opening coincided with the explosion of Polynesian Pop in the Valley in the 1950s and the construction of many Tiki-styled apartment houses in the area. It was fairly spacious, with a waterfall, lots of bamboo and tikis numbering anywhere from "a couple" to "more than a dozen." It also had a dance floor and stage, served food as well as drinks, and had live shows frequently.

By the late 1970s the location had become Mancini's, an Italian restaurant/nightclub. When I was in high school and college Mancini's was a popular place for family celebrations and first dates, and an occasional venue for punk and new wave shows. The tikis were long gone, but the waterfall and bamboo had survived. Mancini's finally closed sometime in the late 1990s, and the location is now occupied by a Latino nightclub called Casa Tequila. No word on whether any of the original Club Tiki decor remains.

[ Edited by: DrMiguelito 2007-09-11 17:02 ]

Good detective work! I used to live right over hear there and know where Casa Tequila is! Very interesting!!

One of the best matchbooks ever, love the Tiki font. Here is mine.

DC

European retro-Tiki cigarette case (with designs swiped from the BOT):

Looking at that logo Tiki again. It definitely was rendered from a Mike Gildea carving. I am not only going by the facial features, but by the weird Koala bear feet which match (what I call) the "Teddy Bear"-Tiki at the Redondo Beach Tiki Apartments:

...which makes it likely that "Club Tiki" was outfitted with Tikis by Gildea.