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Entries from April 2006
April 14, 2006  |
Filed under: Art,Events,Los Angeles,People,Tiki — Humuhumu @ 2:32 pm
Crazy Al’s Tiki #3, King Tiki This fall, a Ten Year Retrospective of Crazy Al’s tiki works will be held at La Luz de Jesus gallery in Los Angeles. It takes place on Friday, October 13, and there will be a commemorative mug of Crazy Al’s tiki #3, King Tiki (pictured to the right). Seeing Crazy Al’s early tikis helps one understand just how excellent an artist Crazy Al is — he was producing detailed, balanced, gorgeous tikis right out of the gate. His recent masterpiece, “Tiki Lee Tree,” is five tikis in one: Tikis #107 through #111. As mentioned earlier, it’s on the cover of the latest Tiki Magazine, and the tikis’ owner has just shared pictures of it in its home. When he’s not busy carving tikis, he’s engaged in any number of other creative tiki endeavors: mug design, singing in the band APE, or working on the decor of a new tiki bar (like Hale Tiki, Kona Club and Puka Bar). My personal favorite thing about Crazy Al is that he’s a dancin’ fool. He’s truly talented.
Before the October La Luz show, Crazy Al’s Ten Year Retrospective will also be shown in August at the previously mentioned Long Beach Tiki Fest, and at Bird in San Francisco (details TBA).
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Filed under: Events,Los Angeles,Tiki — Humuhumu @ 1:44 pm
6th Annual Tiki Beach Festival
in Long Beach This year’s Tiki Beach Fest is happening in Long Beach on August 19 & 20th, from sunrise to sunset. It all happens right on the beach, near the Granada St. launch ramp (5101 E Ocean Blvd). This is the festival’s sixth year; I went in 2004, and had a great time. Both days are full of vendors and music, and sunshine. Saturday’s focus is traditional Polynesia, with tiki carvers, hula dancers, and a luau (the luau costs $30). Sunday it’s all about Polynesian Pop, with a Tiki Hot Rod show.
During the festival, Crazy Al will be celebrating ten years (!) in the tiki carving biz. He will have a Ten Year Retrospective, and commemorative hiball and mug of his first two tikis, #1 and #2.
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Filed under: Art,Events,Seattle,Tiki — Humuhumu @ 1:14 pm
Otto von Stroheim’s showcase of tiki in modern art will have its third incarnation in Seattle this fall. The two previous shows, 2004′s Tiki Art Now and 2005′s Tiki Art Two, took place in San Francisco’s Shooting Gallery. This year, the show is headed north to Kirsten Anderson’s celebrated Roq La Rue gallery in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. I went to Roq la Rue frequently when I lived in Seattle; Belltown’s Lava Lounge and ‘Ohana are within stumbling distance, in case you want to make a tiki crawl during the evening. The Roq la Rue website has the opening date as September 8, 2006, while Crazy Al’s website has it opening on September 15 — I’ll update this post with the actual date once I find it out.
UPDATE — Thanks, Kirsten! The shindig’s happening on September 15.
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April 13, 2006 |
Filed under: Art,Los Angeles,Shopping,Tiki — Humuhumu @ 10:32 pm
Tiki Magazine Spring 2006 The latest issue of Tiki Magazine is on its way to people’s homes and select newstands and tiki sellin’ sorts of places. This is the first issue of Tiki Magazine’s second year (which means a bunch of you probably are due to renew your subscriptions!), and the cover features Crazy Al and the absolutely astounding 7′ tiki he created for Tiki Lee’s guest bedroom, dubbed the “Tiki Lee Tree.” Inside, the centerfold spread is of Doctor Z’s home tiki bar, the Castaway Lounge. Doctor Z’s lounge is currently in boxes, as he’s recently moved. The Tiki Magazine profile serves as an historic archive of a happening spot, where many tikiphiles experienced Doctor Z’s legendary (and often all-night) parties. I myself actually got to live at the Castaway Lounge for a while. Doctor Z exhibited extraordinary trust and generosity when he let me stay with him when I first moved to California from Seattle — despite my not having a job lined up, and our having barely met before. The Castaway Lounge has a special place in my heart, and I look forward to seeing the spread. If you’d like a subscription to Tiki Magazine, or you’d like to advertise in it, visit the Tiki Magazine website.
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Filed under: Shopping,Tiki — Humuhumu @ 9:37 pm
Cuddly Rigor Mortis Plush Tiki Doll Aw…. look at that cute little tiki. He looks so soft and vulnerable. There’s no way he could be responsible for a curse on anybody. He just wants to come home with you and be your friend. But as soon as you fall asleep….
He’s the creation of Kristen Tercek, who sells her morbid-yet-snuggly plush items through Cuddly Rigor Mortis. Other plushes include a devil, a zombie and a mummy. This cool and well-made tiki isn’t available for purchase yet, if you want to be notified when it becomes available, email Kristen. She does have a slight variation for sale on Etsy, it’s the Luau Tiki Plush, and it has an aloha shirt instead of a skirt, and the fabric is slightly different. She also has a small clutch purse in the shape of a tiki head for sale on her Cuddly Rigor Mortis website; the website is painful to navigate, so here’s a direct link to the Tiki Plush and to the Tiki Mini-Purse. Found via Daddy Types.
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Filed under: Tiki — Humuhumu @ 6:47 pm
The Law of the Island,
by Chris and Emilia Osburn Chris and Emilia Osburn recently undertook one of the most epic travel adventures our planet has to offer: a trip to the world’s most remote spot, Rapa Nui, a.k.a. Easter Island. Rapa Nui is situated right smack dab in the middle of the South Pacific, far to the east of the Polynesian islands, and far to the west of South America. It falls under Chilean rule, and to get there one takes a five-hour flight from Santiago. They’ve turned their trip into a self-published 22-page travelogue titled “The Law of the Island,” (available for $8 with free shipping) detailing their trip with stories and photos. They’ve also started a blog about the fascinating, unique and complex issues facing modern-day Rapa Nui; it’s just getting started, and the first few entries are about proposed development of a casino on Rapa Nui, and the return of an original moai stone statue that had been removed in 1927.
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Filed under: Denver,News,Tiki — Humuhumu @ 5:48 pm
Hula’s in Monterey, photo from Hula’s website Truly great news for Denver tikiphiles — the excellent Hula’s Island Grill and Tiki Bar, which has been enormously successful in Monterey, California, has decided to open a location in Denver. The new place is coming on August 1st to South Broadway. It will be a full bar and restaurant, and will likely be even tiki-er than the Monterey spot. When chatting with one of the owners during a visit last summer, I learned that they were eager to do a second location in another town, and they planned to incorporate a vintage Polynesian Pop feel from day one (the Monterey Hula’s has a very tiki side room that they added on a couple years ago, but the core restaurant is more casual). Denver, you lucky, lucky dogs. The food at Hula’s is delicious — easily the best food I’ve ever had at a tiki restaurant. The Mai Tai I was served was nearly spot-on, and we dined in the shadow of a very large Tiki Tony carving, and beneath some lovely reproduction black velvet paintings. The service was friendly, and the music and lighting were great. As far as I’m aware, there is no connection between this place and the new Tiki Boyd’s that is in the works. The past year has already seen some dramatic movement in the local Denver tiki scene, and this news is the best yet. If we didn’t have Forbidden Island opening here in the Bay Area in just a couple weeks, I’d be downright envious.
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April 12, 2006 |
Filed under: Tiki,What In Polynesian Pop? — Humuhumu @ 12:37 pm
Three of the items in the What In Polynesian Pop game have been correctly guessed by Tangaroa and Helz, leaving six more items to be discovered. Those three items, and the stories behind them, are revealed after the jump:
(more…)
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