Sven Kirsten's book: Tiki Pop

I was getting into the video then it ended!

We were just watching BBC news and Sven came on with an interview about his book and tiki. Very cool, Wendy

My copy arrived today at work. I had a quick flick through it and looks great. I can't wait to read it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28570884?SThisFB

I just found the link that Sven posted with his interview. I was very happy to watch it again.

Sven thank you always for keeping tiki alive, Wendy

Last night while reading Tiki Pop I discovered a visual treat hidden on Page 261. Take a look at the aloha shirt graphic through a magnifying glass. Man, it becomes 3D-like. It seems to have depth. Check it out!

TikiG, what have you been smoking :)

Nice video clip Sven. I agree with above. I was getting into it too then it ended too quickly. But long live the Tiki-Ti. :D

We've made it, folks! :D :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/01/taschen-tiki-pop-sven-kirsten_n_5640183.html

I don't own any shares in any companies, BUT this link got me 45 shares on Facebook :)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2014-08-03 09:06 ]

Congratulations, nice article. I am still surfing through the pictures in Tiki Pop...just amazing.

Alright, alright, alright!

Great book Sven. I will have to dig into it after Tiki Oasis. Visually stunning.

It was a challenge (after two size-able Tiki tomes) to please the neophyte as well as the discerning, experienced Tikiphile such as you, my friend. I am happy if I succeeded. :)

Just got my copy a few days ago. Halfway through, and gotta say it is incredible! I think it is one of the best so far, and love that the pictures are much larger. There are certain elements to tiki I never really quite grasped, things that were touched on in Sven's other books, but not really fully explained. For instance the Hollywood connection and how tiki temples were basically movie sets, it never occurred to me just how true that was and how deep that connection went. I really love how there is more about the pre-tiki poly pop scene, and especially the pictures of the ephemera and memorabilia from those days, personally I'd love to see an entire book on just the early poly pop stuff as it is my personal favorite. I only see a few examples so far of art deco style poly pop, but as I said I am only half through the book.

Thank you Sven for such a treasure of a tome. I am finally able to start putting some of the history together into a more cohesive picture through your thoughtful prose and wonderful photos. This has really enhanced my fascination of tiki and poly pop, and made me fall in love with it all over again.

Thank you for that nice and thoughtful review, tigertail. That really makes me feel like I accomplished my mission.

This book is INCREDIBLE

Received our copy Monday. Cannot wait to sit down and give it my undivided attention.

Its HUGE !! A true Coffee Table Book.

Lots of familiar images and lots of new ones as well.

I like the matte print. Makes it a lot easier to look at the pictures without a glare.

Thanks for your ongoing efforts to keep us entertained and informed Sven.

I still remember the day and location where I found my Book of Tiki. I was on a business trip to San Francisco and was walking around the town after my meetings near Fishermans wharf. Stopped in to a local bookstore and found it on a shelf in 2003. It was the beginning of the end for me.... :)

Sven,
Thanks for coming to sell n sign you new book at the
Surf Guitar 101.com convention.
I really didn't know how sales would be for you.
When you told me you sold out,
I was really shocked and happy.

Did you stay and see the German band?

Jeff btd

I'll see them at Oasis. It was fun to sit with Dom and Jim, and I got a lot of compliments on my work. Even this 12 year old girl told me "I really like your books" :)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2014-08-11 18:29 ]

On 2014-08-06 09:32, Monkeyman wrote:
Its HUGE !! A true Coffee Table Book.

GROG going to put legs on it and use it AS a coffee table.

I saw it at this cute little bookstore.

http://youtu.be/-rlgk3Vd0ZY

On 2014-08-11 19:58, chrisandsarahb wrote:
I saw it at this cute little bookstore.

http://youtu.be/-rlgk3Vd0ZY

Great coverage of all those food stalls & those very underage strippers Chris!
The band is pretty great too, love the theme from "Our Man Flint" :lol:

Reminds me I need to get to the "Gumbo Pot" soon!

[ Edited by: Atomic Tiki Punk 2014-08-11 21:36 ]

On 2014-08-11 18:40, GROG wrote:

On 2014-08-06 09:32, Monkeyman wrote:
Its HUGE !! A true Coffee Table Book.

GROG going to put legs on it and use it AS a coffee table.

Ha! I was thinking the same thing.

Another triumph, I give you credit for keeping some of the great pictures that we have never seen off Tiki Central so we’d all be surprised, it must have taken some restraint. My only issue is I wish there were more text and history with some chapters being a few scant paragraphs long but that might be more on the editor, and right now Tiki Farm has the companion mug for sale, get it while you can.

We got the mug at the exhibition and its better than the pics,If anyone hasnt been yet to The museum you must go and see it as only on till September!!

On 2014-08-12 07:25, naugatiki wrote:
...I wish there were more text and history with some chapters being a few scant paragraphs long...

Me too, me too…but alas, I had to give half of the text up for the damn French, because the book was conceived as the catalog for the Tiki Pop exhibition. Mind you, if the damn French wouldn't have mounted the exhibition - the damn book would not exist! :D

And to tell the whole story of Pre-Tiki and Tiki Pop from its earliest beginnings to its end (and its revival) in one volume, something had to give. As a visual storyteller, the images are holy to me, and tell the tale first, the text is secondary to them.

Sven, it is indeed a very good book. I do, however, wish the pages came laminated with some sort of coating - my drool is starting to cause the pages to curl! :)

Thank you for including so much history and referencing of the tribal art that influenced the creation of tiki pop.
I was happy to see a picture of the handmade Kahiki ashtray in use at the restaurant. I have one and I don't think I had ever seen a picture of it at the restaurant.

As a Neo Tiki Phile I am thankful for all of this pavement and virtually no rough road and path... Any and all info can be thumbed through great books or at a click of a mouse. It is truly a wonder, and blessing.

Thanks!

Aloha,

Tiki Pop: I think it's a wonderful book for the novice and experienced Tiki enthusiast. I especially enjoyed the greater focus on Pre-Tiki Hawaii and the role Hollywood played i creating the faux-paradise that followed in America. The size is wonderful, and the pictures really leap out of the pages. Layout, modern content, and historical background merge into an intoxicating melange of exciting storytelling. Very nice Sven.

best,

Phillip

Sven,

It is without a doubt a great book. . . my only complaint? Physically, its almost too large. It fell over the other night and almost crushed my 15 year old daughter. .. Poor girl, now she is a gimp!

On 2014-08-21 15:09, whorton wrote:
Sven,

It is without a doubt a great book. . . my only complaint? Physically, its almost too large. It fell over the other night and almost crushed my 15 year old daughter. .. Poor girl, now she is a gimp!

That's what she said!

Oh thank god! I couldn't live with myself if anything would have happened!

I agree, it is impractical in its hugeness - yet it is very satisfying to see the images that large. And the goal of topping the previous two books has been achieved. :)

Can we expect a limited edition wheelbarrow from Tiki Farm to accompany your next book?

Because that would look great on my porch.

I love this book! It's grand and glorious and compliments The Book of Tiki and Tiki Modern with yet more layers and depth forging a bigger picture in my mind. Heartfelt thanks!

Trying my best to Tikify my niece and her husband in Omaha, Nebraska. Previously sent her Tiki Modern for Xmas and just sent her Tiki Pop for her birthday. I have a copy of The Book of Tiki to send her for Xmas...plus had sent her a few mugs. I explained the importance of holding onto the trifecta of Tiki books...she is a work in progress, but she knows what Tiki is...thanks to Sven!!!

We're gonna need a bigger book-shelf

Not a sincere complaint. I think the book is great as it is. Mazel Tov Sven!

Thanks everybody! This is very nicely showing that I achieved my goal:

On 2014-08-22 12:56, Pitcairn wrote:
I love this book! It's grand and glorious and compliments The Book of Tiki and Tiki Modern with yet more layers and depth forging a bigger picture in my mind. Heartfelt thanks!

Now that enough time has passed for all the Tikiphiles to get their copy, I want to open the discussion for the book:

To encourage that, I am shedding some light onto some of the book/exhibit catalog's concepts:

1.) THE TITLE "Tiki POP" !!? (from my recent Tiki Oasis lecture):

Those who have followed my musings and ramblings about the revival of Tiki Style might have heard me utter these words: “I am glad that my goal of making Tiki re-enter pop culture has been achieved, but it has become too much POP, and not enough CULTURE !”

So WHY the title TIKI POP, now that I had taken the next hurdle and positioned American Tiki ephemera in a true temple of high culture, the Musee du Quai Branly in the middle of Paris?

The title Tiki Pop was requested by Stephane Martin, the director of the Quai Branly museum. The Quai Branly is a state sponsored museum, the most modern ethnographic museum in Europe. It is a serious institution, with an amazing Oceanic art collection. To clearly separate my American mid-century Tiki items from the authentic artifacts in the museum, the exhibition title "Tiki Pop" was chosen.

2.) The HOLLYWOOD concept:

To further clarify the fact that American Tiki style was more a fantasy than an authentic re-creation of Polynesian culture, I came up with the approach of describing a Tiki lounge as being like a film set, and its accoutrements like props. The French are great lovers of classic Hollywood films, and once the term "Hollywood" would be established, it would be clear that we were dealing with an imagined, heightened image world.

It just so happened that, as I went deeper with my research into film sets, special effects and the movies that inspired them, and added the Hollywood celebrity culture factor of Don's, the Tropics and the Luau, it all made perfect sense :)

The interesting thing is that, as the Tiki became the icon of the style in the late 50s/ early 60s, classic Hollywood film-making was in decline, and the elaborate constructs in Tiki temples like the Mai Kai, the Kahiki and the Kona Kai actually surpassed the cheap sets in feature films! I did not have the space to get into that in the book - one of my regrets due to the necessary dual language requirement.

I also regret some editorial oversights due to the deadline crunch towards the opening of the exhibit…

So: What are your thoughts?

Thank you. I'll print this and keep it with the book. Wendy

Thank You, Wendy.

Nobody else wants to discuss anything about the book?

Here's a bit more behind-the-scenes info:

As the deadline for the book drew nearer, I was still without a cover image - and without a poster image for the museum. The problem was that all the images that I deemed iconic enough (and that had not been used before) were in B&W. Now that was less of an obstacle for the Musee Quai Branly, they had done some fine posters with black & white photos:

But I knew that TASCHEN was not gonna go for a B&W book cover, deeming it not commercial enough. And of course, ideally the book cover and the exhibit poster would be the same.

I tried the ethnographic approach:

A museum poster:

My attempt to show how Tiki Pop was inspired by original Tiki artifacts:

Naah. Too specialist. Even if we would have added a hula babe to spice it up:

I really wanted THIS photo to be the cover:

So my friend Moritz and I played around with colorizing it:

The Andy Warhol look:

A softer version:

The problem was that colorization separated the people from the environment, and made it look like photo shop, compromising the all-important impression of authenticity of this image - so NO GO.

In the meantime, the museum's graphic department was breathing down my neck with proposals like this:

Not bad, but somewhat predictable. Also, they did not know that some of the sources they had used from my materials to make this collage came from postcards, which would not hold up being blown up to poster size -- Hi Res being another requirement for a cover/ poster image. Most of all, this image was lacking a Tiki! :)

It was only two weeks before the cover image had to be locked, and I was getting desperate. I was asking everybody for suggestions, and this is when two old friends came through:

Ron Ferrell informed me that nowadays there were ways of colorizing B&W images so they did not have this retro hand-tinted look (which I wanted to avoid) but looked like real color photographs, and sent me this link:

http://indulgd.com/realistically-colorized-historical-photos/

And then BOSKO came to the rescue by reminding me of THIS series of photographs from a Florida archive, which I had always loved:

This image had everything that was needed: A stylized modern Tiki, a swimsuit babe, and it exuded that happy naivite that constitutes Tiki style:

Plus the girl was gonna help me get it approved by Taschen. So I went to work with the museum's art department, and I think we succeeded with creating an image that, as its first impression at least, seems like an authentic period color photo:

Taschen accepted it as the book cover, and everybody was happy, and the damn image was plastered all over Paris! :) :

Hi, was the Tri-City Suncoast Fiesta board added in later, as I can't see it in the original photo?

On 2014-09-02 02:54, bigbrotiki wrote:
Nobody else wants to discuss anything about the book?

Sven, yessir, I think we do want to discuss the book. (I definitely do.) It will take me (and others here) a lot more time to delve deeper into the pages and the text of your book and then to come up with intelligent and well-reasoned questions. You have demonstrated in this thread to what extent you have researched and thought deeply about the subject matter. And I must say WOW -- not only about the content of your book, but also how rare it is that an author gets to comment so openly and in such detail, in a public forum, on their work after publication. Wendy is right - several of your posts need to be printed out and placed in the front of your book. You are continuing to shed additional light on the book, its contents, and the results of your research. And it is also being recorded here in the Tiki Central repository for the future discovery by many others. (Or until the power runs out, heh.) I applaud you for that, and I am looking forward to spending more time with the book, page-by-page, and cover-to-cover.

The last 12 months have been great for a lot of us tikiphiles, cocktail aficionados, and urban archaeologists. We have seen Potions of the Carribbean, then Tiki Pop, and also the Pacific Ocean Park book. These fine books are a lot of material to process thanks to you and a handful of other researchers and authors.

We are also very fortunate that there is such interest, globally, to allow these materials to be exhibited and published. Cheers to you, sir!

Sven,

I haven't finished reading all the text but I have gone through most of the book. The initial opinion of this book is that it is a nice coffee table book but after reading it, the reader understands there is a story. I think you originally said that the book supports the exhibit. The reader is shown how the interest in the south seas developed through through early explorers, books and cinema. So far I found chapter 12 most interesting - Francis Langford: The Bamboo Blonde. I purchased the movie to see why the interest in her. There really isn't much tiki or south seas in the movie but it shows how bringing the tropics to a supper club was very popular. I may look more into her life. You did touch a little on her life.

Overall this is an amazing book with a tremendous amount of research. I don't think anyone else could have created a book that explains the tiki pop culture of the 20th century as well as you have. Having lived through the 50's and 60's I was able to experience tiki culture as a child. I wasn't able to go to bars but I had my parents take me to the restaurants. With Hawaii becoming a state everyone was interested in "Paradise." I like that you put in a chapter on "Natural Materials of the Tropics. You also have a chapter on "Tiki at Home." To me I think the chapter on "Tiki at Home" could have used more. You were able to put in furniture, tiki torches and LP records but there really is a lot more. At age 13/14 I went to the store in Pasadena that sold the materials you talk about in chapter 8. I had my own room in the basement that I decorated. I even made a bar in wood shop in middle school. It had black walnut for the top with bamboo and lauhala matting. Through my parents I saw homes that were well decorated in the south seas mode. There was a demand for home decorations. I had an uncle that had a business that made tikis and masks out of Styrofoam.

I know you had limited space but if there was more that could be added I would have liked to see more of the homes that lived the tiki experience.

TC disclaimer: Before everyone comes down on me for criticizing I only did it for the purpose of discussion. I'm
very happy to have this book in my library as well as gaining the knowledge that is in this book.

On 2014-09-02 02:54, bigbrotiki wrote:

This image had everything that was needed: A stylized modern Tiki, a swimsuit babe, and it exuded that happy naivite that constitutes Tiki style:

Plus the girl was gonna help me get it approved by Taschen. So I went to work with the museum's art department, and I think we succeeded with creating an image that, as its first impression at least, seems like an authentic period color photo:

The lovely lady posing with the Tiki was Tri-City Suncoast Festival queen Rita Mathies seen here on the far left in these photos.

Nice photos, Ernie!

On 2014-09-02 06:15, Kon-Hemsby wrote:

Hi, was the Tri-City Suncoast Fiesta board added in later, as I can't see it in the original photo?

Too fast on the scrolling finger there, Kon Hemsby, you went right by version 2 of the photo :)
That's the one I picked - it accommodated the title better.

On 2014-09-02 08:42, MaukaHale wrote:

….I had my own room in the basement that I decorated. I even made a bar in wood shop in middle school. It had black walnut for the top with bamboo and lauhala matting.

Wow, not bad for a young lad!

Through my parents I saw homes that were well decorated in the south seas mode. There was a demand for home decorations.

I can only imagine how many tropical basement bars must have existed in Southern California and the rest of the US. That tradition spanned several decades. It tears my heart out each time I hear about another one being torn out for renovations.

I had an uncle that had a business that made tikis and masks out of Styrofoam.

Any family photos left of that?

I know you had limited space but if there was more that could be added I would have liked to see more of the homes that lived the tiki experience.

That stuff is really hard to come by. Someone should make a book on all the Tiki Revival home bars. That book could have a whole chapter on the original home bars, and one on the original supply places. Of course there is the chapter "Travel to Exotic Places - In your own Basement" in Tiki Modern :)

TC disclaimer: Before everyone comes down on me for criticizing I only did it for the purpose of discussion. I'm
very happy to have this book in my library as well as gaining the knowledge that is in this book.

No one should, this is exactly what I had asked for, some honest and constructive criticism! - Mahalo, Sven

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2014-09-02 10:42 ]

My pre-order at a mom & pop book site went to "Shipping Soon" then "Backordered", then "Canceled"
so two months later I now have to order it somewhere else,
I wish I just picked one up the last time I saw you, Sven!

On 2014-09-02 10:30, bigbrotiki wrote:
Of course there is the chapter "Travel to Exotic Places - In your own Basement" in Tiki Modern :)

Yes I read that chapter but it was about Witco products.