1950 Trader Vic's article

Last week while thumbing through some stuff at a antique store, my husband came across an article from the Aug. Holiday magazine from the 1950's.
I'm guessing a lot of you have read this already. Many neat tidbits about TV's in the article. If I may I'd like to quote from the article:

"The place is awash in atmosphere in the form of ship model, shark jaws, ships in bottles, tropical sponges, whalers' harpoons, fish nets and exotic dragons in porcelain. Chinese idols, and Buddha’s, Alaskan totem poles and coco matting from the South Seas. There are lanterns from old sailing ships, spars and anchors, and coils of hawser, and there are the inevitable souvenirs of the most recent wars, in the form of rifles, shell cases, fragmentation bombs, and service insignia..
There are conchs, pearl oysters and sheath knives, intricately woven baskets, sprays of tropical coral, and bows and arrows."

I was wondering where are the tiki's? Did the author just forget to mention them--or is this pre-tiki yet? Did he add tiki's later and remove the military stuff ( fragmentation bombs?!) at some point?
I've never been to this Vic's--that's why all the questions.

Was the article about a particular Trader Vic's, or all of them?

gosh, I'm sorry the Oakland address.
Another cute tale is one about the rest room in the early days when the walls were so paper thin you could here the plumbing noises in the rest room.Here's how Vic had that problem handled:

"Whenever a customer disappeared inside, the waiters, barmen, and other interested parties set up a deafening clamor with pots, glasses, trays of dishes and other sources of tumult.
When the crisis had passed, something resembling quiet was restored, but new patrons were invariably puzzled by the alternate lulls and commotion in the crockery dept. until they caught on. Soon they too were participating in the skirmishes with bedlam"

Sounds like it was a fun time!

You see things and say, Why? But I dream things that never were, and say, Why not!

[ Edited by: exotica59 2006-04-20 11:54 ]

Another question. Did Hinky Dinks become the Oakland Trader Vic's on the same plot?
The article just makes mention of the early days thin walls and in another spot about the addition of rooms to the space.This leads me to believe that Vic just kept adding on and changing this building as he was able.
I wish I could just print the whole article, it would be much easier to discuss this. It's 3 front and back pages and a fourth page is a picture of a killer meal. It even has a couple of recipes in the article.

If you look at the rendering of Hinky Dinks and Trader Vic's next to it on BOT page 82 you can see they are the same structure. As often in midcentury architectural renderings, the people are shown smaller than they really would look, to make the building more impressive.

And in 1950 there was only one other Trader Vic's, the Seattle Outrigger.

And yes, 1950 is technically still Pre-Tiki, and even though there were a few Tikis around (see B&W photo at bottom of page 82), they did not dominate. This is probably what the writer refers to as "Alaskan totem poles", showing again that "Tiki" had not become a commonly used term by then.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2006-04-20 17:13 ]