Inspired by my recent post regarding old menus, Humuhumu was struck with a great idea: why not leverage the synergy between the fabulous imagery in the L.A. Public Library's searchable index and her wonderful world-wide database of Tiki-osity to achieve an even higher level of vertical integration? She contacted the library, and they readily agreed to her plan.

The upshot to of all this is that now when you search Critiki to locate some contemporary or long-vanished temple of Polynesian-pop, you not only get reviews, photographs, the joint's location on Google Maps, and an array of signature tiki mugs linked to the establishment in question, you also get beaucoup-cool imagery from their menu, like this great cover for The Luau cocktail lounge in Beverly Hills.

Links:

[Critiki]
[L.A.P.L]
[Tiki-fied Google Maps]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I picked up a couple of interesting items made from abalone shells yesterday. The lamp on the left has 2 shells that reflect the light from the bulbs mounted in front of them, and a base carved from a solid chunk of coral that glows a soft pink and white when the light passes through it. The item on the right is simply a large shell mounted on 3 rubber feet, making it a very simple, yet elegant bowl for holding my bar snacks.

For more lampy goodness that's no abalone, have a look at this Pele's Hut bamboo fixture that Scott McGerik purchased from Oceanic Arts on his recent trip to L.A.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 6:22 PM | Permalink

Humuhumu beat me to posting this, but it's just too good to pass up:

A bemused Sven Kirsten, author of that indispensible guide to faux-Polynesian living, The Book of Tiki, recently discovered that he'd been ripped off wholesale by a con artist calling himself Haapape Tuarii, the Great Maori Magus of Polynesia, in a junk mailer entitled, The Great Tiki of Unlimited Abundance. Sven thoughtfully scanned it and posted the pages in this Tiki Central thread, so we could all share in his conflicted glee.

The mailer contains a pretty common scam of the type perfected years ago by Reverend Ike, that offers to take a mere $50 of your hard-earned cash in exchange for a magical trinket (in this case, a tiki) that will enable you to gain friends, influence people, and WIN BIG AT LOTTO! What makes this so special is that practically every single image in the mailer was lifted directly from Sven's book without so much as a how do you do.

For those familiar with the Book of Tiki, it's absolutely hilarious to see the "Magus" try to pass off an old snapshot of a waiter from the Mai Kai restaurant in Florida as himself, and a photograph purporting to show "the magic place where Haapape Tuarii practices the great ritual ceremonies of the solstice" that's actually the Shelter Isle Apartments of Arcadia, California! Better clean up good after them rituals, buddy, or the super'll keep your deposit!

As despicable as these types of scams are, the utter brazeness of the author's plagiarism and the sublimely bizarre juxtaposition of religion and Polynesian Pop, give this a surreal, prankish feel that's worthy of the Sub-geniuses. Bob would be proud!

Posted by MrBaliHai at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here is the third installment of Vintage Oceania, and the final set of photographs from my 1921 issue of National Geographic. These images were culled from an article entitled The Islands of Polynesia, and I have to admit that I don't find them quite as compelling as the Easter Island photographs. There are a few nice shots of the murals on tribal council huts, but unfortunately, no masks or tikis.

However, there were plenty of those pictures of native women that National Geographic has always been notorious for, and it's highly amusing to think that my father was probably looking at these very photographs back in the 1920s with a flashlight while hiding underneath his covers in bed. I'm not interested in making this site an even bigger target for bizarre search-engine hits than it already is, but I couldn't resist scanning in this rather silly photograph of a Nauru woman (NSFW, or 21st-century sensibilities either) getting ready to do the Dance of the Fish. The accompanying text reads:

"The Dance of the Fish must be a joyous one for its participants. The finny decorations range in color from rainbow to scarlet, blue, yellow, black, and green, and are eaten when the dance is finished."

Of course, the first thing that pops into my mind when I think of dancing and fish is this (828KB AVI).

Posted by MrBaliHai at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As I indicated in an earlier post, I've been working on procuring something very special to add to my collection of Oceanic ephemera. Today, I returned to the antique mall and purchased (for the paltry sum of $5) a pristine copy of the December, 1921 issue of National Geographic which contains 4 (count 'em, 4) wonderfully illustrated articles about Polynesia, plus a color map of the Pacific Ocean!

I spent part of this afternoon scanning 13 photographs and illustrations from the article, The Mystery of Easter Island, and added them to my Vintage Oceania page.

The article was written by the first archaeologist to excavate on the island, Mrs. Scoresby Rutledge (AKA Katherine). It's a fascinating glimpse back in time, and her reaction to the mysterious disappearance of the original Easter culture; a conundrum that scientists have just started to unravel within the past 10 years. It now appears that the inhabitants of Easter were wiped out by a self-inflicted environmental disaster that decimated the island's forests and drove the native flora and fauna to extinction.

I'll be scanning the rest of the articles over the next week, so all you pre-verts who're drooling over the prospect of seeing the requisite NatGeo shots of topless native women will just have to wait!

Posted by MrBaliHai at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)