Old Santa Monica A Frame Bar?

I've had this match book for a while. I like the surfer drinking a brew while riding a wave. Never found much information on the place other than some blogs from vintage long board surfers as a favorite hang out.

While looking at some movies for the next installment for Tiki Magazine's "South Seas Drive-In Theater" we were watching the 1965 (unreleased "Girls On The Beach" when we spotted this cool looking place

I could not find any images online so we are wondering if the building is the Sip n Surf in Santa Monica? I know that some of our newspaper slueths may be able to dig something up for confirmation.

Great find Ron! All I found with a quick news archive search was an article about a JFK sex scandal. It appears that he met his mistress at the Sip n Surf in 1956.

DC

Wow only 2 posts in and this already looks like a classic TC thread !!...

a) A previously undocumented (from a photographic standpoint) "Tiki" bar
b) identified in an obscure B-Movie
c) which has a direct relationship to Surf culture (iconography-wise and patronage-wise)
d) and which was a site of a JFK sex scandal.

:)

Spotted on a current eBay auction....not mine. Some slides from the 50's...Sip and Surf in La Jolla. OGR

The Santa Monica matchbook and cool-looking building really piqued our interest, we'd been scoping the Santa Monica Canyon area for tiki last year, so we did a little research to see if we could get to the bottom of it ... not quite there yet, but it seems like there's only a sip (sic) or so left!

Here's what 133 Entrada Drive looks like:

No A-frame, not even a place for one ... and it looks like it's been there a long time. Also note the rooms above, which will be important.

It turns out this Sip'n Surf was a hugely important 50s hangout for the surfing and beach volleyball scene. Surfer Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy lived there for a while. There's a short post about this on his blog. It's also mentioned a couple times in Frederick Kohner's Gidget book. It was famous then and it seemed like everyone involved with surfing was there. There also was music by people like Kia Kenney, mentioned here.

We haven't seen the movie but it looks cool. As a '65 surf film, the name Sip'n Surf was most certainly taken from the famous real-life location. According to this synopsis it's a college hangout, which doesn't seem to jibe with location. Don't know if the interior was a set or not but here's a picture of the stage:

One thing that seems fishy is the Sip'n Surf sign itself does not seem right--it looks too much like a cheap prop tacked onto the beam like that. Back in the day the sign would have been freestanding at a place like that, like the sign at the Tiki Kai in Lawndale (which these pictures initially reminded us of, especially with the open-spaced slat style A-frame structure). So was it a set or a real location?

Right behind the Santa Monica Sip'n Surf, at 133 W Channel, is a very cool mid-century apartment building, Chatauqua House, where tikis would not be out of place:

In La Jolla's Sip n Surf (pictured in post directly above), the owner "decorated the windows ... with burlap bags and hired La Jolla artist Michael Dormer to draw Tiki gods on the wall and paint a 27-foot Polynesian mural."

Now this is where some weird synchronicity comes in. In 1963, Dormer created a 400 pound concrete 'surf god' that he installed on Windansea Beach in San Diego, not far from the La Jolla Sip n Surf. He appeared in Muscle Beach Party, a surf B-movie from 1964 ... about Santa Monica! His name is Hot Curl and he's a beer bellied surfer holding a beer in his outstretched hand ... in other words, just like:

bongofury, hold on to that matchbook!

[ Edited by: mike and marie 2014-05-02 20:59 ]

[ Edited by: mike and marie 2014-05-02 21:01 ]

[ Edited by: mike and marie 2014-05-02 21:02 ]

Incredible urban archeology.