end of an era - kona kai tiki decor auctioned off-

Recently, the Marriott hotel which houses the Kona Kai in chicago has undergone massive renovation- the hotel rooms and banquet halls have been remodeled. The kona kai and all it's decor was auctioned off a month ago. The entire room and all it's contents has been sold to a bidder on the west coast for a reportedly $10.000 - sorry to be the bearer of bad news. - if anyone knows who or what restaurant has aquired the stuff i would be interested to know.

it was a good run.

here i am with one of the prize tikis - i was invited in to the kona Kai along with a handful of other local tiki folk a couple months back to preview the items and place bids on anything we wanted in the place.

[ Edited by: tipsy mcstagger 2011-06-26 20:33 ]

Great picture Tipsy... How cool it must have been to go and check out all the ol' Kona Kai decor.. Love to see more if you got pictures of what was auctioned off.. That tiki is awesome though..
Mahalo Brada

Very sad...glad I got to see it in person so many years ago. It would be great if it gets resurrected on the West Coast!

There was suprisingly very little in there. What you mainly had were three carved tikis from O.A. - these were the most unique and interesting of all the stuff. There were many war clubs, png masks, some spears and such on the walls but all of it is still made by O.A. to this day and avaialable through their catalog. There were 3 orange glass ball float lamps and only 2- 3 hawaiian hanging lamps and those were in bad shape and in need of repair. There were no smalls. - no menus, no mugs, not a single matchbook. seriously, that's all there was. The bulk of the decor consisted of large 4" - 6" bamboo and about 20 or more carved o.a. poles, carved fence posts and railings. What made the place cool was the rock walls, fountains and small rivers that ran throughout the place but none of that is salvageable to anyone. There were also 2 outrigger canoes.... a small one on the ceiling and a water logged larger one down on the ground by the water. Most of the hanging lights had been replaced years ago by bad contemporary fixtures, paper chinese lanterns or 80's nautical style ship lanterns.....

here's more pics from that day -

these are the last pictures taken of the interior of the Kona Kai that anyone will ever see again.........

the first 2 black and white pics are from a giant photograph in the hall way that was not for sale. It's from china town back in the day. I just thought it was kinda cool.... It shows the old CHIAM restuarant.

these beams had holes at the end out of which hanging lamps were affixed to the end. they hadn't had lamps in them for years but could still be used that way.

an O.A. ku mounted on a wooden tree stump... O.A. sells this ku - it's actually not carved out of the stump but separate, made to look like it was carved out of the stump.- the tiki is removable.

this medium size tiki was one of the 3 tikis of any interest in there.

[ Edited by: Tipsy McStagger 2011-06-27 05:32 ]

Tipsy,

Thanks for sharing the pictures and story.

What were the going prices on the items sold?

PTD

there were no set prices.... it was a silent auction so you never got to see what anyone else bid. I went in, picked out all the stuff i liked, gave them my highest bid i would pay per item and let the dice roll. I was hoping i would get at least one or 2 items that i bid on. As i mentioned earlier, everyone was outbid automatically because someone put up $10,000 for all of it which wiped out anyone that bid on anything by a long shot. no one got anything. Even the new owners of chef shangri-la came down to bid on the stuff but i do not know what or how much they bid on any item. bamboolodge was there at one time as well as a couple other t.c. locals that stopped in to check the place out. The only reason i know how much everything went for was because i was informed by marriott that i would not be getting any items and neither would anyone else because we were all outbid. They told me how much the final bid was but not who was the winner. they just said it was a west coast contact.

for all i know, this stuff could be on a boat to japan by now.....

[ Edited by: Tipsy McStagger 2011-06-27 08:06 ]

"it was a west coast contact"

Hmmmm.... Who could it be???

that's what i thought skip - so i contacted him right away and he told me that not only did he not have 10k to blow on the entire contents (and that he probably would not have if he did) but that this was the first he had heard anything about the kona kai auction.

Also, think about what it must have cost to pack and frieght all that stuff out to the west coast.... it's not cheap.

It's too bad some of the stuff couldn't have gone to the local Ohana. I hope it went to a good home. Someone on here must know who got it. It always depresses me when I see places that were once so cool & hip, abandoned & waiting to be gutted. Sigh! I hate progress!

i agree - midwest tiki should stay in the midwest. It's bad mana to take midwest tikis away from their home of origin. especially to the west coast where they have enjoyed far too much historical tiki already !! it's bad enough the vintage vendors drive out here to plunder our estate sales and shops to load up on stuff to take back to the west coast and sell for outrageous sums of money to the dopes out there willing to pay for it. now they are plundering our tiki temples !

with any luck the place that eventually gets the kona kai stuff will burn to the ground.

there, i said it.

I have a couple of thoughts as to where the items may have ended up, but it is just speculation. Sound suspiciously familiar to the first Trader Vic's warehouse sale when a buyer from LA came in and spent around 10 grand on some larger tikis and other stuff.

I agree with Rick, I hope it ends up appreciated by the buyer. Can't speak to their house burning down, since I am guilty of a few Midwest purchases myself. Of course, I don't resell myself (unless I am purging for space), but I do see quite a bit of Midwest purchases for sale on Etsy. :)

PTD

On 2011-06-27 15:27, Tipsy McStagger wrote:

i agree - midwest tiki should stay in the midwest. It's bad mana to take midwest tikis away from their home of origin. especially to the west coast where they have enjoyed far too much historical tiki already !! ...

But if all of those Tikis originated at OA, aren't they just coming back home ?? :D

And Tipsy, California doesn't have a monopoly on historic Tiki. From what I experienced this year, the best preserved vintage Tiki is in Fort Lauderdale and just outside of Chicago.

c'mon now guys.... I was only partially joking in my last post!

For me I don't care where it ends up.
It's best if it ends up at a place where many people will see, enjoy it.
Would much rather see the Moai I have from the Kahiki in any public space.
But then I also have a lot of Kahiki items here just wasting away.
We don't really own anything, it's all just ours to hold onto for the
next tiki nuts to enjoy.

On 2011-06-27 17:45, tikiskip wrote:
For me I don't care where it ends up.
It's best if it ends up at a place where many people will see, enjoy it.
Would much rather see the Moai I have from the Kahiki in any public space.
But then I also have a lot of Kahiki items here just wasting away.
We don't really own anything, it's all just ours to hold onto for the
next tiki nuts to enjoy.

I agree Skip..... it's only ours for a short time...

Amy

Ps, considering all the emails I received, for the record, let me state here, I did not buy the stuff, didnt event know till I saw this post

[ Edited by: Queen Kamehameha 2011-06-28 17:40 ]

FYI… he ultimately landed in a good home.

Okay, you CANNOT just casually drop that post in a decade-old thread and walk away! How did you end up with him? Do you know the story of the rest of the relics? Who was the mystery bidder? Spill it!

:) I know definitely a tease. It’s quite a story but not mine fully to tell. My wife and I acquired a number of pieces from a friend of mine during Covid while we were building our tiki bar. I just found this site and passed the info along to him. I want to give him a chance to fill in some of the blanks and then I can add on. What I will say is that I grew up in Chicago and when I found out these pieces were from the Kona Kai it brought back fond memories.

Here a few of the others pieces in our collection

[ Edited by iiiericiii on 2024-05-11 11:31:55 ]