Origins....

so we know that tiki comes from the polynesian islands. seems that the french destroyed most, if not all of the tikis a very long time ago. fast forward to 1930s hollywood, california. donn beach opens his first location after spending time in the caribbean. the first "tiki" location? where does tiki in california originate from though? is it safe to assume that don beachcombers had more of a caribbean/island flair and not tiki? at some point in time there wasnt any tiki in the united states but then there was. was it a carver? an artist maybe? would love to hear the stories, speculations, assumptions and everything in between.

You're right, California was a hotbed of poly-pop and tiki and played many roles. Have you done any searches here on Tiki Central, or looked at any of the books which have been mentioned and discussed here in other Tiki Central threads? The whole mid-century poly-pop tiki universe is pretty well documented here in Tiki Central and in various books. Your question is very broad, kinda made me want to do a big "copy and paste" of all of Tiki Central into a single reply, heh...

i have book of tiki and tried a search here but im sure its not an easy question to answer. as far as i can tell, it begins with don beachcomber but that doesnt really answer the first appearance of tikis in california or any other state for that matter. i think its safe to assume that california had the first tiki art e.g. sculptures, paintings, mugs etc..

im only assuming but it seems that the original beachcomber probably had an island theme but not tiki theme.

getting drunk is like borrowing happiness from tomorrow

[ Edited by: nomeus 2014-01-12 21:13 ]

*maybe there were some tikis in cali brought from hawaii pre 1950? another question is, who decided to mix the polynesian tikis with drinks from the caribbean? a lot of drinks are from cuba, jamaica, haiti. i dont think the polynesian people were blending rums and adding fruit juice while sitting underneath giant tiki gods.

Got it, very good. Book Of Tiki is a great start. Jeff Berry's cocktail-centric books discuss a number of things as well. But the history of tiki is not simple and not single-dimensional. It is multi-faceted in that there were several major "vibes" which contributed to the development of tiki. These vibes intersected, overlapped, and synergized together. For example:

• Post-prohibition euphoria
• The fortuitous availability of rum (and pricing situations) after prohibition
• World wars with military personnel having traveled to many tropical locales
• Increased post-war access to more-easily affordable air travel to tropical destinations
• Entrepreneurial activities which capitalized on the above
  ...and more.

Tiki evolved. It is a hybridized blend of things which came together at a very unique series of points in American history. It was shepherded by a handful of very talented people (several luminaries were, as you pointed out, from California) who were creative visionaries and very good at advancing their concepts. Their concepts later developed even further beyond just tropical and into full-blown poly-pop. These are things which various books, in addition to the content of various threads in Tiki Central, help illustrate. It's good stuff.

yea i get all of that but what im saying is...at one point there werent any tikis in the US. idols, statues, carvings.....and then there was. did beachcomber have tikis on opening day? did donn set that trend by having idols in his first establishment? thats what im trying to figure out. there had to be one person somewhere who said hey! you should put this guy somewhere over there in the corner and bam, there was a big tiki statue. someone somewhere had the be THE first to have a tiki in their bar/restaurant. maybe it started in a more private setting at someones home then carried over commercially? i dont know but i do know that there was a defining moment when tikis appeared in the states.

but when and where was that moment?

I dunno, good question. There may not have been a distinct moment, or a single act, of bringing a carving into the US and putting it on display for a fun/decorative purpose. (Interestingly, other world travelers, museum curators, and historians may have already done so ahead of the development of the tiki craze) but for moment that's all I can do - a wild guess. The association I have always made is that carvings were present in tropical cultures and with increased travel, and post-war nostalgia, people started bringing stuff over to the US in a very general touristy way and started decorating with these things. But then you had Donn Beach and Vic Bergeron who were into this stuff, and who also traveled, who may have brought some of this stuff back into their restaurants well ahead of everyone else. I don't think I have ever seen a good compendium of what the interiors of the old restaurants looked like and what they contained. So I will have to leave this for others here on TC to attempt to answer.

"maybe it started in a more private setting at someones home"
Yes this is how I think it started, don't know for sure.
But back in the day rich folks would go to far away places and bring back items they saw
that were oddities and place them in their homes.
Once saw a show that said that Lionel Barrymore had a room that had a shrunken head in it
in fact shrunken heads got so popular that the head shrinkers started taking orders.
Heads with tattoos were ones that people really wanted so they were harvested most.

•:•:••:•:••:•:••:•:••:•:••:"If you do fine work you will never die":••:•:••:•:••:•:••:•:••:•:•
TIKISKIP

Lights for home and
commercial TIKI bars.

i dont think we will ever get a true answer but i do know that in ww2, US had a base on bora bora. there were probably already tikis associated with restaurants/cocktails before the war ended.

need to see some interiors of the beachcombers hollywood.

not a whole lot of tiki here but then again we arent seeing the whole place

http://imgur.com/a/J00r4

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When Westerners created an economic demand for shrunken heads there was a sharp increase in the rate of killings in an effort to supply tourists and collectors of ethnographic items.[5][6] The terms headhunting and headhunting parties come from this practice.
Guns were usually what the Shuar acquired in exchange for their shrunken heads, the rate being one gun per head. But weapons were not the only items exchanged. Around 1910, shrunken heads were being sold by a curio shop in Lima for one Peruvian gold pound, equal in value to a British gold sovereign.[7] By the 1930s, when heads were freely exchanged, a person could buy a shrunken head for about twenty-five U.S. dollars. A stop was put to this when the Peruvian and Ecuadorian governments worked together to outlaw the traffic in heads.
Also encouraged by this trade, people in Colombia and Panama unconnected to the Jívaros began to make counterfeit tsantsas. They used corpses from morgues, or the heads of monkeys or sloths. Some even used goatskin. Kate Duncan wrote in 2001 that "It has been estimated that about 80 percent of the tsantsas in private and museum hands are fraudulent," including almost all that are female or which include an entire torso rather than just a head.[4] By 1919 the price in Panama's curio shop for shrunken heads had risen to £5.[7]
Thor Heyerdahl recounts in Kon-Tiki (1947) the various problems of getting into the Jívaro (Shuar) area in Ecuador to get balsa wood for his expedition raft. Local people would not guide his team into the jungle for fear of being killed and having their heads shrunk. In 1951 and 1952 sales of such items in London were being advertised in The Times, one example being priced at $250, a hundredfold appreciation since the early twentieth century. [7]
In 1999, the National Museum of the American Indian repatriated the authentic shrunken heads in its collection to Ecuador.[4] Most other countries have also banned the trade. Currently, replica shrunken heads are manufactured as curios for the tourist trade. These are made from leather and animal hides formed to resemble the originals.

link to site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrunken_head

according to wikipedia, trader vic had tikis whereas donn beach had more of the polynesian rattan theme

"Tiki culture in the United States began in 1934 with the opening of Don the Beachcomber, a Polynesian-themed bar and restaurant in Hollywood.[1] The proprietor was Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt, a young man from Louisiana who had sailed throughout the South Pacific; later he legally changed his name to Donn Beach. His restaurant featured Cantonese cuisine and exotic rum punches, with a decor of flaming torches, rattan furniture, flower leis, and brightly colored fabrics. Three years later, Victor Bergeron, better known as Trader Vic, adopted a Tiki theme for his restaurant in Oakland, which eventually grew to become a worldwide chain.[2] The theme took on a life during the restaurant's growth in the Bay Area. The Trader Vic's in Palo Alto even spawned architectural choices, such as the concept behind the odd-looking Tiki Inn Motel,[3] which still exists as the Stanford Terrace Inn.[4] There also currently exists a modern sculpture garden from Papua New Guinea [5] that was made to celebrate the modern form of art that was a large part of the original inspiration for tiki culture.[6]

California's World Fair in 1939 - the Golden Gate International Exposition celebrated for the first time Polynesian culture in the United States. The Theme of this Fair was "Pageant of the Pacific" primarily showcasing the goods of nations bordering the Pacific Ocean. The theme was physically symbolized by "The Tower of the Sun" and a giant, 80-foot statue of Pacifica, goddess of the Pacific ocean."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiki_culture

Whoever wrote this for Wikipedia did a fair job, especially by pointing out the difference between Don and Vic. But it's not clear enough:

OK, you have the Book of Tiki. So you must be able to look at the Evolution of Polynesian Pop chart. In it you see a very clear distinction between PRE-TIKI and TIKI style. It clearly shows that Tiki did not start until the 1950s, so how can Don The Beachcomber be "Tiki"? Show me one piece of text that says Don The Beachcomber IS or WAS Tiki, in my or Jeff Berry's work, please.

Since I made up that chart, things have become even more focused: Tiki did not start until around 1955, and the end came around 1965. It's creative peak was between 1960 and 1964. Everything after was repetitious, and the work of Tiki veterans who were doing their thing.

Sorry for the rant, I don't have time to explain it further, if others please would chime in I would be most grateful.

beachcombers had a few tiki elements according to that photo but like i said (via wiki) it had more of a polynesian feel and vics had more tikis.

ill revisit the chart.

On 2014-01-13 09:31, bigbrotiki wrote:
Show me one piece of text that says Don The Beachcomber IS or WAS Tiki, in my or Jeff Berry's work, please.

im not challenging you and even with forgetting about the chart, i had assumed beachcombers was too early. im still trying to pinpoint a defining moment when the tikis appeared in restaurants and homes/home bars. i suppose people were traveling to and from hawaii prior to 1959 (hawaii became a US state) and had their own backyard luaus and most likely tikis.

Wow, this thread took a cool series of directions. I will definitely watch my neck much more carefully the next time I wander into a new jungle, and definitely will set aside plans I made to have my head tattooed, heh...

Following up to some of what Bigbro' said, and a few things I mentioned earlier in this thread, I understand that tiki did not really "start" as much as it developed from multiple influences. Bigbro's chart helps illustrate that, although I don't have it in front of me here at work right now. But the simple appearance of a carved figure would not necessarily indicate the start of tiki as much as it could indicate the underpinnings of things which came to be enjoyed and emulated later and which gained momentum and grew and continued to evolve. So I'm not sure a real "start" of tiki can be found, but it sure is a helluva lot of fun to look and see the things which led up to it all.

Thank the tiki gods that cocktails got thrown into all this otherwise we could all have become a bunch of musty old anthropology nerds hanging out on Anthro Central!

maybe we can just leave it at this...trader vic popularized the tiki idols in his establishments which spawn imitators in the ways of bars, restaurants, hotels, motels and apartments.

I don't think we can leave it at just that. To do so would be an oversimplification and would not address what Vic Bergeron and Donn Beach did so very well -- they created environments where people had a good time, ate decent food, and drank rockin' good cocktails. And their experiences were repeatable - they could bring their friends and share the love of what they enjoyed so much. Yes, the tikis were present to varying degrees, but the whole tiki thing took off as a result of a larger conglomeration of things which were successfully presented and marketed by a couple of sharp entrepreneurs. They captured the hearts and minds of consumers of the time(s).

i will uncover the mystery one of these days. i still maintain that there was a time when you didnt see tiki statues anywhere and then you did. someone had to be first, somewhere.

Awesome, nomeus, and let us know what you find. Don't let me or anyone else discourage you from looking. You could be the one who uncovers something which has not yet seen the light of day and which has otherwise escaped attention. You have certainly raised my awareness of something I have not given much thought to in the past, and sometimes we do take things for granted. Shake them trees and beat those bushes, sir!

:drink:

Defining moments of first appearance: Tiki Bob's, Steve Crane's Luau, Beverly Hills Traders

sven has already put in vast amounts of time, as demonstrated right above. ill never be able to discover something new that he hasnt. perhaps its best left unknown as it's fitting with all that is tiki anyway.

On 2014-01-13 11:25, bigbrotiki wrote:
Defining moments of first appearance: Tiki Bob's, Steve Crane's Luau, Beverly Hills Traders

So those would put us right around the 1955 timeframe. Things before then were "pre-tiki."

On 2014-01-13 10:41, nomeus wrote:
i will uncover the mystery one of these days. i still maintain that there was a time when you didn't see tiki statues anywhere and then you did. someone had to be first, somewhere.

In the early days museums and National Geographic would have been a lot of people's first exposure to Polynesian art.

From the John Rabe Collection at the Oakland Museum of California

-Lori

[ Edited by: tikilongbeach 2014-01-13 12:22 ]

true but i meant on a commercial level....the blend of cocktails (rum) and tiki idols

On 2014-01-13 09:31, bigbrotiki wrote:
Show me one piece of text that says Don The Beachcomber IS or WAS Tiki, in my or Jeff Berry's work, please.

Since I made up that chart, things have become even more focused: Tiki did not start until around 1955, and the end came around 1965. It's creative peak was between 1960 and 1964. Everything after was repetitious, and the work of Tiki veterans who were doing their thing.

Sorry for the rant, I don't have time to explain it further, if others please would chime in I would be most grateful.

I'll chime in, but with a question more than an agreement: If DTB's existed today the way it did when it first opened, how many people would hesitate to call it a tiki bar? It may not have been a "tiki bar" in its day because the association with tiki and Poly-pop simply wasn't there. But wouldn't you agree that most of the features that define what we call a tiki bar today would have been present at both DTB and TV? I understand Donn even had his prized cannibal trio on display, so there was a tiki element, if not by name.

it would absolutely be a tiki bar today, without a doubt. like i said, there are tiki elements in those old photos from the 30s/40s. i see spears and shields that dont appear to be african.

http://i.imgur.com/gRYQpwp.jpg

getting drunk is like borrowing happiness from tomorrow

[ Edited by: nomeus 2014-01-13 14:16 ]

can you please shrink that picture down? :(

if i do that then you wont see the details.... direct link is provided instead

On 2014-01-13 12:23, nomeus wrote:
true but i meant on a commercial level....the blend of cocktails (rum) and tiki idols

You aren't going to find a proverbial Patient Zero, or in this case Tiki Zero because there isn't going to be a specific origin point. At least not one that can be tracked so specifically.

Donn and Vic's original designs were simply escapism. Places that were unlike the work-a-day world where you could get away from it all but still be home in time for the Late Show.

People who traveled through the Pacific would have seen things, brought back things, photographed things, and shared them with Don and/or Vic. And any and everyone else who built a tiki bar. "Hey, Donn! I just got back from Bora Bora and found this cool thingie that made me think of you and your bar...."

Let me share a quick story....This won't help your quest to find Tiki Zero, but it will give you an idea of what you are up against and maybe some ideas of where to look for more information....

Bob and Jack Thornton wanted to build a "tiki bar." They weren't yet called Tiki Bars but to keep the story simple. They did some research, found a deal on some land, and then built the Mai Kai which opened its doors at the end of 1956. Before the Mai Kai opened, the Thorton brothers went on a buying junket through the pacific going to many of the islands and filling shipping containers with stuff to decorate their bar. Some of the stuff they bought were tikis. Masks and/or idols mostly, stuff that would be displayed on the walls as 'house gods' from whatever island. A pacific themed bar should have things that were actually from the pacific, no? And of course your average company man at the time, especially in Florida, had only ever seen this kind of stuff in the pages of National Geographic.

The Thornton brothers weren't the only ones to do this kind of buying. All of the 'big' places did. Or went to wholesalers who shopped the pacific.

Each place that opened wanted to outdo what came before so each place needed more bamboo, less fabric in the waitresses outfit, bigger fountains, taller tikis.... a kind of frenzied one-upmanship that made it so none of the bars had any actual tikis and then suddenly all of them did.

I hope this tiny sliver of information is helpful in some way. Your quest is a worthy one and I wish you the best of luck in your journey.

yea i get you there... thats a good way to put it.

when it comes to the mai kai though, i think most of their stuff if not all came from oceanic arts. its known that OA outfitted the mai kai.

Keep in mind that both Donn and Vic would trade items from visitors in exchange for food and drink. Vic earned the moniker 'Trader Vic' specifically because of this habit. The text about swapping old shrunken heads and such on old placemats and the like was more than just marketing copy.

If only my Grandfather Eli Hedley could speak, now would be the time!!! :wink:

Sorry for chiming in so late. Interesting tread. Finding the exact moment or place of the origins of "Tiki". I don't know if it possible myself but I've thought about it before and I've also thought how difficult it was to do so. Considering if it wasn't for an "outsider" like Sven who realized that "Tiki" existed in the first place in America because us Americans took it for granted or something. Very similar to the nonrecognition by America of the genre of South Seas Cinema, it very much existed but not acknowledged. Because of this same nonrecognition, especially during its origins, it would be hard to pin-point the beginnings of "Tiki", and it could of have had a multiple, over-lapping, or gradual nature of development. There is no documentation, yet to be discovered anyway. Like most "styles" today, they are more of an evolvement, that happens without an exact origin.

Finding who brought in the first tiki to American for the purpose of commercial décor is also difficult to trace. Many European museums and societies brought in and had Oceanic artifacts since the late 1500s and the general public has been fascinated by them ever since. The exploitation of the Pacific culture has happen since that first public fascination. "The Market" of Polynesian artifacts or copies of artifacts has been long lasting. The direction of this market has come from all directions of the globe, from the Pacific, Japan, China and from within America. Again the origin is hard to be exact.

Because of this non exactness, there two items I would like to clarify in this thread. The first one is the Don Beach background of the Caribbean. While he did travel around the Gulf, with his family, in his childhood and did live in Jamaica for a short while, this only influenced him in the rum aspect of his first bar. It was more a combination of factors. At 19 he help crew and transport a newly built yacht from Florida to Australia, stopping at Hawaii and Tahiti. Then on his return, he visited many South Seas islands, acquiring many island mementos on the way. He than went to visit is brother who was a career extra in films in Hollywood. There, with his collection, he became a prop assistant an a consultant for the many South Seas films in production at the time. Being wise, he took advantage of his South Seas collection, the fact that prohibition was being lifted, and his knowledge cheap Jamaican rum - wa-la! A Polynesian themed bar was open. Tiki came later but this pre-tiki moment is one of many factors in the future development of "Tiki".

The other clarification was in the Wikipedia article which stated:“California's World Fair in 1939 - the Golden Gate International Exposition celebrated for the first time Polynesian culture in the United States”. I don't know if the author meant the celebration of existing Polynesian culture in the U.S. because it certainly wasn't the first time the Polynesian culture was recognized in America. My research of researchers (academic joke in America-no original thought) has, so far, the first "hula hula" nationally recognized tour of the U.S. in 1850. The whole race to colonized the Hawaiian islands for American started before that which was on the national agenda and news. Other World Fairs, or Exhibitions at that time had Hawaiian pavilions and demonstrations since since 1893. 1939 was way later.

Sorry to bore you guys but I hope some of you gain something.

Tiki Movies & Tiki TV @ southseascinema.org

[ Edited by: creativenative 2014-01-14 16:09 ]

no, thank you for adding to this thread! what is south seas cinema? also that is really interesting about donn beach...i never knew that.

check this post i just made here...

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=46753&forum=1&0

The love for Polynesia certainly started before the likes of Donn Beach. Mark Twain spent four years in Hawaii starting in 1866 and wrote a series of very popular articles for The Sacramento Union. It's now available in a couple of books. They're WAY better reading than Michener's tome on the subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Twain-Hawaii-Roughing-Sandwich/dp/0935180931

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Twains-Letters-Hawaii-Twain/dp/0824802888/ref=pd_sim_b_1

T-shirts based on vintage tiki matchbooks: TikiTees

[ Edited by: TikiTacky 2014-01-14 17:49 ]

Right on TikiTacky. I was going to add on this list of note worthy acts of national attention in regards to pre-1940 Pacific Island issues in America.

Pacific works of great writers:
Herman Melville (1841-48)
Mark Twain (1866)
Jules Verne (1868-73)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1888-92)
Jack London (1907-09,15 & 16)
All traveled the Pacific first hand but Verne
Gauguin (1891-1903)
Traveling Hula Hula shows (since 1850)
Hula Hula Peep shows (Mutoscopes) (1890-1910)
Hula shows in World fairs & Exhibitions, carnivals, vaudeville, VIP (1893-1939)
Documentaries/Shorts/Travelogues/Silents (1898-1929)
Birds of Paradise (1912) hits big on Broadway then off Broadway
The popular Ukulele (1915-present)
Hawaiian sheet music (Honolulu & Tin Pan Alley) (1911-1964)
and the new 78 disc recordings of Hawaiian Music
Toots Paka quasi hula dancer Vaudeville Headliner (1916)
The Pineapple & Sugar Industries and their commercial art in ads
National win a trip to Hawaii sweepstakes
Duke Kahanamoku Surfing (1902-1968)
Artists Charles Bartlett, John Kelly & Arman Manookian (late 20s)

Start of the Golden Years:
Massie trials (1931)
Don the Beachcomber (1934-)
Oscar winning Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Hawaii Calls radio (1935-75)
Pan Am Clipper (1935-45)
Lexington Hotel NYC Hawaiian Room (1937-66) other nightclubs
Trader Vic’s (1937-)
“Sweet Leilani” sung by Bing Cosby wins Oscar for best song (1938)
Art Deco Artists Gill, Macintosh & Savage (1930s)
Golden Gate International Exposition Hawaiian Exhibit (1939)
New York Worlds Fair Hawaiian Exhibit (1939)
Georgia O'Keeffe in Hawaii (1939)

For Nomeus:
The Donn Beach info is from a rare interview about his life, only found in the Hawaii State Archives and in the UH Library in a low access security section, which I have clearance.

South Seas Cinema is the film & TV genre of productions set in the Oceania or the Pacific Islands of Polynesian, Micronesia and Melanesian. See southseascinema.org for more information or check out this thread on the subject. http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=44887&forum=1&9

i forgot about the popularity of the ukelele in the 20s/30s

It seems like its just been one looonnngg evolution with certain periods. Birds evolved from dinosaurs, but its hard to give the exact date when it happened, it just did (no offense to Creationists). This site is great, but it is in a forum/thread format. I would love to see something where you can type in "Tiki Ti", for example, and get everything on one page -History, pictures, mugs, comments, link to business website, etc. That would be the bees knees. It could be something inside of Tiki Central.

On 2014-01-15 12:39, Fez Moai wrote:
... I would love to see something where you can type in "Tiki Ti", for example, and get everything on one page -History, pictures, mugs, comments, link to business website, etc. ...

Perhaps something like this?
http://critiki.com/location/?loc_id=93

Like Critiki, but 10X more. It's not as comprehensive as it should be, which is the gist of what I'm talking about. That page doesn't mention that Ray Buhen worked for Don the Beachcomber, and thus has one of the most authentic Mai Tai recipes. That's interesting. You still have to browse a dozen sites to get all of this information. I use Critiki (I'm King Moai there), but it's not all encompassing with information. This site has a lot, but it's spread out. That's why a "wiki" type of page would be cool where ALL known information is there in one spot. This will cut down on someone posting a question only to get a reply that it's been covered in a thread six years ago. It's my 2 cents, but hey, I'm used to doing research anyway and I enjoy going from site to site. Cheers!

On 2014-01-15 12:46, Hakalugi wrote:
Perhaps something like this?
http://critiki.com/location/?loc_id=93

I love Critiki! It's wonderful. Three cheers for Humuhumu! The interface is sooo much better than the clunky Locating Tiki forum here on TC. I especially like it for trip planning, searching, seeing what places are in an area, what places are near other places, etc.

The only bummer is that Critiki is not collaborative. Apart from entering reviews (your "critiki's" :)), any other input you want to make; new sites, new photos, corrections to information; all this stuff has to go through the administrator. This is good because the administrator does a great job and everything ends up being very high quality, but it is also bad because the administrator invariably becomes a bottleneck. This is no fault of the administrator, mind you, it's just the nature of this type of web site.

So, for better or worse, the TC Locating Tiki forum continues to be the most current and complete repository of information about tiki destinations despite its clunky-ness. I don't see this changing anytime soon either. Yes, a "Tiki Wiki" would be great, but with TC being the product of thousands of people over the course of nearly a decade and a half, it's hard to imagine another site ever catching up to or surpassing its content.

Critiki is nice, but it's also broken. No new users can register, and it's been that way for months. It's also incredibly short on info.

I wholeheartedly agree that a new collaborative resource is needed, and Nomeus and I are trying to see what we can make happen in that regard. Tiki Central has a wealth of information on it, but finding what's relevant is a chore. A lot of the information is also outdated.

what tikitacky said.... we are working on http://www.thetikipedia.com ....it wont be live for a while

*we are definitely looking for people who are versed and love to write. going to need a lot of content

[ Edited by: nomeus 2014-01-15 14:35 ]

I am thinking that your endeavor with "thetikipedia" will benefit from addressing things which have caused other sites to stall or collapse - you hopefully will come up with a long-term plan for funding and continuity. I think that would help attract writers and contributors.

Hope you don't mind the unsolicited advice. I was just reminded how annoying it is when a web site dries up, especially one which provides good benefits to the tiki community.

I wonder what it would take for you to align with Tiki Central so that you could keep things "under one roof?"

Keeping it under the Tiki Central umbrella would be my preference also. The threads are perfect for discussions, events, heck everything that it does.