Dallas Trader Vic's Tiki Archeology

When Trader Vic's in Dallas was purchased in 2004, the new owners removed three tikis from the property and never returned them.

Well actually two. The third, the 3000 pound Barney West Moai, had been taken, then brought back but put into storage.

This article and picture appeared in D magazine in January 2005, BEFORE they announced plans to reopen the restaurant:

TREASURE HUNTERS: The 14-foot statue is in an “undisclosed location.” Posing with their trophy (from left to right) are Kip Sowden, Jon Dooley of Behringer Harvard Funds, and Jeff Berry.

**In 2000, after standing guard in front of the old Trader Vic’s on Mockingbird Lane for more than 30 years, the giant tiki vanished. Another piece of our history had been erased, and sadness settled over the city like a wet palm frond.

But now the tiki has returned, having survived an arduous, lawsuit-littered journey. And it could be yours.

Joe Hunt was the man who took the tiki. As a kid, his father used to take him to Trader Vic’s. So the local financial consultant offered to buy it from the Hotel Santa Fe for $2,400. But then things got weird. The hotel—which was owned by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s organization and which was part of his plan to establish peace on earth through transcendental meditation—backed out of the deal. Hunt sued. The Maharishi’s people never showed up in court. And a judge awarded the tiki to Hunt, who carted it off to a friend’s warehouse in Ennis.

But then the hotel sued Hunt, and Hunt was forced to return the tiki to the hotel’s heavies in May 2003. But the statue never made it to its rightful post, and its whereabouts remained a mystery to all but a few of the Maharishi’s operatives.

Leap forward to November 2004, when the dilapidated hotel changed ownership. Realty America Group and Behringer Harvard Funds, two Dallas firms, bought the place from the Maharishi Global Development Fund. Soon, an $80 million redevelopment of the property will begin. But the plans do not include the tiki.

Jeff Berry, one of the principal owners of Realty America, says the contents of Trader Vic’s will likely be auctioned off, with proceeds going to charity. That includes the tiki, which Berry says will remain in an “undisclosed location” until the auction. He himself didn’t know the details of the location until after the sale of the hotel had gone through. **

You can see it in this pic or the original entrance:

Then we have these extremely valuable pics taken by TheJab in 1999. These must have been taken not long before it was removed:

The rest of the story is the tiki was just too dilapidated to return to his rightful home. The last I saw of it was in 2007 and it was obviously in bad shape. It has since been moved to another storage facility and it's future remains uncertain.

If you look closely at the picture above from D Magazine you'll see two other tikis. The one on the far left is a 5'8" Marquesan style carving and the other is a 9' tiki. I don't have any pics or info on the the tall one, but I have these pics of the other one. They're currently in two different storage facilities.

First, a Tiki Centralite named Suelo was able to get inside the old restaurant in 2003 before it was purchased. She posted a whole bunch of pics which are now sadly gone but I did manage to save them before they disappeared.

In this photo you can see the tiki in situ along with Suelo. Also directly behind her you can see a little of the 9' tiki:

This is just inside the entrance on the left.

BUT, that one is still around. Here's a recent pic in storage. As you can see he's pretty dirty and scuffed up even more:

So why was he not returned to the restaurant? If I had to guess, I'd say his anatomical correctness wouldn't fly with the conservative types with no appreciation for the art.

Anyone have any info about the likely origins of this guy? All we know is he was in the restaurant when they opened in 1967.

[ Edited by: Kenike 2009-12-24 04:02 ]

[ Edited by: kenike 2011-03-18 13:30 ]

Nice job, Kenike. The fact that that Barney West Moai is rotted at the bottom and split at the top is not necessarily a death sentence, it might ad to the character of being an artefact, if one restores it sensibly.

Well done Kenike, very interesting story. It would be great to know the current status of this great Tiki. Who has it? Where is it? and what condition is it in?

I hope whoever has it respects it and takes good care of it.

I've noticed a lot of similarities between the poles inside the restaurant and this tiki.

I'm pretty sure the poles were made by OA. How possible is it that the tiki is also an OA piece?

I know that O.A. did not make those classic T.V.'s Marquesan big headers. I believe that initially they actually came from Tahiti. But I assume they became mainland sourced at some point, don't know when and where.

On 2009-12-26 12:03, bigbrotiki wrote:
I know that O.A. did not make those classic T.V.'s Marquesan big headers. I believe that initially they actually came from Tahiti. But I assume they became mainland sourced at some point, don't know when and where.

Thanks for that info Bigbro!

I went back through the TV Warehouse sale thread and saw that there were lot's of big head Marquesans that found their way to new homes.

[ Edited by: Kenike 2009-12-26 15:13 ]