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Matty Dread makes cool tikis out of cardboard. He also likes cheap-ass guitars and runs a refreshingly low-tech 'blog called, Behind the Eyeball. That's a name I can definitely appreciate.
[Link: Cardboard tikis]
[Link: Cheap guitars]
[Link: Blog]
Gruss Gott!
I'm in Munich this week. After all the eating and drinking I did in Barcelona, I'm taking it easy. There's not much to report at this point, so I'm just going to post a couple of cool links, then disappear again for a couple of days.
The Palace of Culture presents, The Future We Were Promised, a collection of incredible retro-future artworks by illustrator, Arthur Radebaugh.
Next up, the website of Untamed Highway, a self-published comic book that, in its own words, "is a road trip freak show slapstick mystery, cartoon noir, with tiki bars, Kreeps, Kustom Kulture, cars, shmoes, a poisonous drinking bird and an uptight sock puppet, freaks, Exotica, Film Noir, a secret Shriner like Society, hypnotism, gorilla mask, tikis, Roadside Attractions, and Tor!"
[Link]
Auf Weinersehen.
I received the 2 boxes of booty that I shipped to myself from L.A. last Monday. Click on each thumbnail to view a larger image. The first box contained my carefully-wrapped booze:
The 2nd box contained my 3 antique-store scores:
Here's a shot of my entire mask collection in its native habitat:
I'm off to watch the new Dr. Who on SciFi now.
View the fabulously wry tiki art of Doug Horn at the Swamp Fire Lounge [Link]
Lo, I have returned from Los Angeles, belly sloshing with exotic drinks, and arms heavily laden with copious amounts of Tiki schwag. Some of my scores will be arriving via UPS later in the week, so for now you'll have to be content with just seeing the vintage Hawaiian ephemera I was able to bring home in my carry-on. Hold your mouse over the image to see a description, and click on the thumbnail to view a full-size image in a pop-up window.
I undertook a tiki crawl on Wednesday evening, beginning with the Tonga Hut in North Hollywood. The Hut is a classic blue-collar bar that'd fallen on hard times in recent years, but it's recently been purchased by new owners who are trying to restore its former glory. Well, all I can say is that if what I saw Tuesday night is typical, they've got a lot more restoration to do!
The bar was practically empty when I walked in. There was a little old lady bellied up to the bar with 2 drinks in front of her, plus a hooker sitting at the poker machine with a gentleman who I assume from the way he was dressed, was a trick, not a pimp. There was no bartender in sight, so I sat at the bar and looked around at the decorations, which I admit were very nice. Lot's of moais, with a beautiful multi-level fountain behind the bar that was unfortunately, not working.
Eventually, a fat, drunken woman stumbled out of the ladies room and walked behind the bar. Apparently, this was the bartender. She was wearing a bare-midriff blouse, and a huge slab of belly fat hung down over the front of her pants like a flap. As if that wasn't seXXy enough, her navel was pierced. ¡Ai, Caramba! She managed to slur out something that sounded like, "Whadda ya have?" I'd heard that the new owner had taught the bartenders to make classic Trader Vic's Mai Tais, so against my better judgement, I asked the fat, drunk, wobbly hooker standing in front of me to make me one. Big mistake.
"Hey," she yelled at the other hooker playing the poker machine, "How do I make one of them?" To which Ho #2 replied, "Use pineapple juice, Meyer's dark rum, and some of that Or-got stuff." When Ho #1 then proceeded to dump the 3 ingredients into a hurricane glass without any measurement whatsoever. I knew that I would not be drinking anything even remotely resembling a classic Mai Tai.
I decided that the best approach would be to drink my Ho Tai quickly, then split for the Tiki Ti, where I was supposed to meet Eddie Mort and Lili Chin from fwak. I choked it down and bid "Aloha Oe" to my charming and glamourous hostesses, vowing I would never return to the Tonga Hut.
I made it to the Ti right as it opened, ordered a Rum Barrel from Mike the bartender, and plunked myself down at a table. Mike's mad mixology skillz soon made me forget all about that nasty hooker cocktail.
While I waited for my friends to show up, a man and a woman sat down at the table next to mine. The woman, Maggie, introduced herself and her partner Mike, and asked if I was a member of Tiki Central. I told her that I was, so we moved our tables together and gabbed for a while. Turns out that Mike and Maggie live in Arizona and are purveyors of beautiful stained-glass Tiki artwork. Check out their website, Velvet Glass [Link]. Lili and Eddie showed up a bit later, and we all spent a couple of hours chatting. After I finished the Rum Barrel, I had a Chief Lapu Lapu which was also excellent.
When 9pm rolled around, I took my leave of the Tiki Ti and headed over to The Purple Orchid in El Segundo to meet with my friends Søren and Kathryn. El Segundo is a small city wedged in between LAX and a huge oil refinery, so I was surprised to find a nice little downtown area (much less a tiki bar) there. Their drinks were also very good, although not quite as fabulous as the Tiki Ti. We chatted for a few hours, then I carefully drove myself back to my mom's deluxe mobile home in Hacienda Heights. The amount of liquor in 5 tiki drinks is nothing to trifle with, so I'd made sure to eat a good dinner, take Ibuprofen, and drink lots of water prior to imbibing.
On Friday, I made my way down to Laguna to check out some antique stores and have a drink at the Royal Hawaiian restaurant on the Pacific Coast Highway. The restaurant has been in the same family since the 1940s, so it's an old room filled with lots of tikis and island charm. There have been rumors that the family is going to sell, but I saw no evidence of that when I visited, as the bar and dining room were full. The bartender poured me a pretty decent cocktail there, then I had a lovely dinner with my friends Jonathan and Beth at the Royal Thai restaurant in Newport Beach. I had my usual: an appetizer sampler platter, Crying Tiger (steak medallions with hot pepper sauce) and a Crazy Monkey cocktail.
I spent Saturday with my high-school buddy, Karl.
First, we drove over to Oceanic Arts, where I purchased a mask and a small moai. We chatted with co-owner Bob van Oosting for a while, and as always, the man was a fount of tiki wisdom and a most gracious host. We then drove down to visit the Petersen Automotive Museum [Link], where we got our fill of kustom kar kulture. Afterwards, we had a delicious lunch and a weak Mai Tai at the Encounter Restaurant [Link] at LAX.
I also stopped at the Beverage Warehouse [Link] where I purchased a fifth of Lemon Hart Demerara 151 rum, a bottle of Brazilian Cachaça, and a Mexican coconut liqueur called Kalani, which comes in this very cool bottle [Link]. I'm looking forward to making some new and exciting cocktails once they show up here later on in the week.
I drove up to Monrovia on Sunday for an antique paper show, where I hit a jackpot of printed ephemera in the form of postcards, menus, and old brochures which I've scanned and included with this post. I spent a couple of hours there, but I could have easily lost myself all day long in those endless bins and folders full of glorious polychrome cardstock. Most of what I bought was very reasonably priced, but I sadly had to pass on a few items related to Havana Club Rum, which is apparently highly collectible.
I also scored big at a couple of local antique stores, where I picked up a Maori mask with inlaid eyes, a wooden Tongoroan tiki, and an Aztec mask that was mislabeled as Hawaiian. I'll post pictures of all 3 when the box arrives. One store had so much stuff that I could've easily dropped a couple hundred dollars there just on the Maori carvings alone, but I didn't want to be greedy, so I restrained myself.
Oddly, I did not find a single tiki mug anywhere on my travels through the Southland. I visited a number of flea markets and swap meets, but came up empty-handed wherever I went.
On Sunday night, I had a nice dinner with another high-school buddy, Richard, and his family. We polished off several bottles of vino and watched a concert DVD of a very cool band called Calexico [Link], then another by L.A. punk stalwarts X. Billy Zoom is still a mutant, albeit a much older mutant.
I suppose I could also tell you all about cleaning the cat poop out of my mom's flower beds and dining with relatives who like to use their restaurant napkins as Kleenexes, but I doubt that'd be of much interest to anyone but me.
I'll leave you with a scan of this beautiful 1961 menu from Matson Cruise Lines that I picked up at the paper show. The watercolor painting of a New Zealand tiki and village on the cover is one in a series depicting tropical scenes. Of humorous note: the menu inside is for the cruise's "Bavarian Night Dinner", which features such Polynesian delights as "Weiner Schnitzel mit Ei" and "Kartoffel Puffer".
Well, that's all for now. I've gotta go do some laundry, then start getting ready for Barcelona!
Nice to see there's a Wikipedia entry on Tiki Culture, but it's not exactly the first time somebody's attempted to create an online compendium of Poly-pop Knowledge; that honor probably belongs to the Tikipedia. However, both sites are a little light on entries and could use some fleshing out.