Tiki alive and well in 1965?

I've been doing some reading about several things going on in 1965 and am looking to the experts on how the first wave of PolyPop Tiki was faring by that year. Was it still on the upswing or was the end in sight?

One of the things that made me start digging was that I have been attending a local Mid Century Modern(MCM)Art&Furniture show and was scratchin my head at the amount of Nehru Jackets and Mini-Skirts being worn along with the Rockabilly and Mad Men.

In my digging/reading I found that '65 was a pivot date for a few things...

Mary Quant ran a popular clothes shop in Kings Road, Chelsea, London, called Bazaar, from which she sold her own designs. In the late 1950s she began experimenting with shorter skirts, culminating in the creation of the miniskirt in 1965.

The Beatles wore Nehru jackets for their famous Shea Stadium performance of 1965.

Mid-Century modern is an architectural, interior and product design form that generally describes mid-20th century developments in modern design, architecture, and urban development from roughly 1933 to 1965.

Surf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture, particularly Orange County and other areas of Southern California. It was particularly popular between 1961 and 1965.

Vietnam War, The United States military advisors arrived beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with U.S. troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965.

So does this make 1965 the year that changed the world??? :-?

Make a Mai Tai and pick up a Ukulele!!!

[ Edited by: Beach Bum Scott 2010-08-28 19:29 ]

It sounds like 1959 was pivotal as well:
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=29358&forum=6

Yes, Tiki was alive and well in 1965 - sort of: Mainly among those who had worshiped it before, and who carried his torch for several years on. But around that time, the generation that had grown up with Polynesian pop and pushed it to its pinnacle with Tiki had involuntarily passed its scepter, and culturally they did not matter any longer. Tiki lingered for quite some time with those folks, but grand projects like the Mauna Loa, and the new The Tikis in Lake Elsinore, were doomed. The young generation had taken over and had other gods.

You list most of the elements, like the Beatles, the Vietnam war and the resulting student revolts. Then there was women's lib, Black Power and Wounded Knee, in general a growing awareness of the crimes that Western imperialism had committed in the rest of the world. When so many things that the parents had stood for turned out wrong, Tiki could not be right. Another death stab for the kind of innocence that allowed Americans to create such dreamworlds as Tiki was the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

I wrote here elsewhere that Tiki's heyday was actually really brief, from the late 1950s to around 1963. That is when most of the Don/Vic/Steve franchises, Tiki apartments buildings and bowling alleys were built, when Tiki mugs came into use, and the name of Tiki was invoked on menus and neon signs. Everything that was invented during that period in terms of Tiki style was merely repeated later, it was the creative peak of the style.

I also mentioned before that to me, the kind of labeling of style decades as "the 50s","the 60s" and "the 70s" is, though convenient, not accurate for what happened. If we look closer, the styles of the late 40s and the early 50s were much more alike, and so were the styles of the late 50s and early 60s. And then definitely, the late 60s and early 70s formed their own style period. So "55-65" and "65-75" would be much more accurate style period denominations.

So I would amend my evolution chart of Polynesian Pop in that manner:

There really was no Tiki in the early 50s. Even though Stephen Crane opened the Luau in 1954, recent postcard comparisons prove that it stayed Pre-Tiki in style until in the late 50s, when Crane began franchising out the concept with his Kon-Tikis: Tiki in name and appearance. One conclusive date for Tiki becoming the logo of Poly pop is the opening of Tiki Bob's in 1955. And Trader Vic menus began to sport Tikis. But it took several years from then on for Tiki to become the pop culture icon we know and love him as now.

My favorite example of that development was DC's recent finding of the name change of Dobb's Luau in Atlanta: "Luau" being a traditional Poly pop concept, was updated in 1962 into "Dobb's TIKI" ! (an example I gladly pointed out in my "Sound of Tiki" CD booklet)

By 1962, Tiki had become "the newest name in fashionable dining" -to those folks who would drive their T-Birds to fashionable supper clubs back then, that is.

But because of the violent nature of the ensuing generation gap, by 1965 Tiki was on the fast track to become OLD-fashioned. Tiki burned brightly but briefly -one reason it disappeared so completely, and was so completely forgotten by the 1980s.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-08-29 03:57 ]

I've been watching the DVDs of all the "Honey West" episodes, aired in 1965-66, and it seems like most of the bad guys have tikis in their offices!?

George C. Scott in Hawaiian shirt, as the quintessential old school American General in Dr.Strangelove, 1964

On 2010-09-08 12:44, OrangeFlash wrote:
I've been watching the DVDs of all the "Honey West" episodes, aired in 1965-66, and it seems like most of the bad guys have tikis in their offices!?

Yup, I noticed that as well, particularly in episode #10...

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=14293&forum=1&vpost=425761

They did some cool mid-60's LA location shooting on "Honey West". I especially like episode #3 that starts out at the Griffith Observatory.

Great stuff !! :)

I was 15 in '65, and here in Tucson the Kon Tiki was going strong. My folks used to take us there for dinner & laughs. And if you smoked pot, it was the place to go to relax, chow down and have fun. There were other places in town similar, like Ports O Call, and Phoenix had loads of Tiki motels & restaurants.

Actually though, I consider 1963 as the more pivotal year.

This might have been America's last "good" year, especially for adult cocktail culture reigning supreme. (If you were Black and living in the South however, 1963 sucked.)

Here's what I consider the major milestone:

1. Assassination of JFK - Nov 22nd. America loses its innocence with the end of "Camelot". As Bigbro has pointed out, the "1950's" really ended in the early 1960's. I consider this the pivotal date and year.

And on a lesser pop cultural note..

2. Beatles release their first album - March 22. "Please Please Me". It charts at #1 in the UK. The Beatles visit the US the following year ushering in the start of the youth counter-culture. Some might argue that 1964 is more significant for Beatlemania in the U.S., but the seeds were planted in 1963.

And on a much lesser Poly-Pop note...

3. The peak of Surf music - March 22-23. The "Surf Battle of the Bands" at the Deauville Castle Club in Santa Monica. (Source: "Pop Surf Culture", Santa Monica Press, 2008.) This is probably Surf music's last hurrah before the British Invasion changes the game.

A bit late to the game here, but good post Sven. It really brought into focus how short a timeframe Tiki was really "chic" even though the two decades prior were going through a Polynesian love-fest. But I have to say that I was born in 1965 and can think of no better reason to name it a "pivotal year". :wink:

Just because I want to, I'll toss in a couple of photos from my Dad (Air Force pilot) in Hawaii in 1965...

You've gotta love the second photo with torches in the foreground and a battleship in the background.