IKE claimes the Balinese Room.

I put an update over on the Balinese Room entry over in locating Tiki, but I wanted to be sure everyone saw the news.

The Balinese Room (with the one time "South Seas Showroom") fell to IKE's fury last night.

I wish I could be more eloquent, but at the moment, I'm afraid the Balinese Room is but one of many, many losses.

..i saw a clip of it on the news....they showed the structure in the background of a news cast....i was wondering what that tiki looking building was....now i know.

Damn. Seeing those first big waves pounding it Friday, it did look inevitable. Still awaiting word on my aunt's beach house on the un-seawalled portion of the island. Has anyone heard anything about Schlitterbahn? I was just at the South Padre location last week, admiring the lovely roof structures and pondering the tiki buildings with no tikis at that location vs. the numerous tikis, but no tiki buildings at the Galveston location. Even though the tikis are mostly the painted variety, it would've been nice to see the two together. Now I'm wondering if residents and clean-up crews will be finding stray tikis in the piles of debris.
Below are a few pics of the roofs at S. Padre. They are obviously missing a lot of thatch from Hurricane Dolly, but the shapes and construction are nice and even looked good underneath. I feel sorry for these folks with 2 out of 3 of their parks hit by hurricanes this summer. It lessens my annoyance about all the dough we shelled out to take the kiddo twice this year.

Interesting that I heard about the Hooters falling into the water several times on the TV news broadcasts, but had to hear about the Balinese here. Even though I pretty much hate ZZ Top, we will still put on "Balinese," and have a tiki drink by the pool to toast the fallen.

[ Edited by: koitiki 2008-09-14 05:24 ]

Didn't take long to get an answer on the stray tiki question.
From the Austin newspaper this AM: "Further into town, huge piles of debris littered Seawall Boulevard... Some spectators pilfered what was left, hauling away anything from flip-flops to a Tiki man that was shoved into the pile."

Koitiki....best luck to your aunt. This pic was taken at 7:45am Friday morning...about 15 hours before IKE arrived. House is (was) at the west end of Galveston.

I still cry when I think that the Balinese is gone. I grew up hearing the stories of the Balinese and my grandfather's gambling forays there. It was as much a part of my culture as SeaArama and Astroworld, both also gone, and the Flagship Hotel, almost gone. :(