An advertisement, & more, from the LUAU 400 (alternately: How I got my Urban Archeology Merit Badge)

My apologies in advance for a bit of a long-winded post.

This all started a couple months ago while I was bumbling thought the local thrift and spotted these:

After making my $6 purchase (for both), I bounded home to find out more about the mugs and about the Luau 400. After the requisite searches through TC and Ooga Mooga, my confirmation of a serious find was made, and I learned of a recording recorded at the 400, but not a whole lot more. So I went to Google and typed in “Luau 400”. The usual multiple links of stuff on TC and Ooga came up, but so did a weird one titled Listserv 14.4 from the Linguistlist.org. So I clicked on it and it returned a snippet of info that had two references to the Luau 400 in the New York Times. And on one of them was a note:

!!!!!!!!

So I knew I had to go save this recipe and the other descriptions of the Luau from obscurity. Thankfully, back in grad school, I had a research project once that required me to spend many, many hours digging through old microfilm copies of the NYT, so I knew exactly where the resources I needed were. The following Saturday, I loaded up my wife and we headed to my alma matter, Colorado State University.

Once there we quickly navigated the drawers of the microfilm, and located our prize.

And after several minutes, we found what we had come for:

Then it was just a quick hit of the print button, and we had our blurry, streaked but still legible copies of a tiny bit of history. One being an advertisement for the Luau 400 (With a bonus add for the Hawaiian Room below it) and the other being a two-page section on “Now a Trend in Polynesian Food” which yielded 4 recipes from the Hawaiian Room, 2 from the Luau 400 and one dessert and two drink recipes from Trader Vic’s.

As we were printing, one of the librarians then walked by and mentioned that they also had all of the NYT on an online database of articles and that I might be able to get a clearer copy of the article there. So we hit that real quick and were disappointed to find out they don’t catalog advertisements, but they did have the article with the recipes in a clean, crisp PDF.

So, after the long winded intro, here are the spoils of my search:

The Luau 400 ad:

FULL SIZE

The Article (Page 1):

FULL SIZE

The Article (Page 2):

FULL SIZE

And since it’s largely recipes, here's a link to the .PDF in the “Tiki Drinks And Food”

Thanks for your patience in reading this!

• Helz

[ Edited by: HelzTiki 2007-05-06 16:59 ]

"Nice Job" is an understatement...Bravo!

May future ceramic vessel finds inspire similar dedication in searching for the truth and bring further enlightenment into the darkest recesses of Tiki culture! :)

As a drive-in theatre researcher, I would only add the following which may be interesting to discover. . .

How long was it open? Any idea why and when it closed?

Who was the proprietor? Is the person still alive? (They usually have interesting pictures and stories to share.)

What is on the site today?

Otherwise, Very good work! thanks for the research.

Wesley Horton
American Institute of Drive-in archaeology