Tiki Crawl San Francisco

Well, I charged out to the city of San Francisco on Saturday to hook up with the crawlers at the Bamboo Hut. I thought I was on a lucky streak and popped into a prime parking spot, but was informed by the local bums that my parkin' place, which was unmarked with no tow away warnings clearly visible, was a in fact in a tow zone and that I would not have a truck waitin' for me when I returned . So after 45 minutes of looking for another parkin' place and ranting to myself how much I hate driving in the city I finally found a legit place to park. Sadly, by this time I had missed everyone at the Bamboo Hut and didn't realize it until about and hour later. I finished my drink and decided to try to meet up with everyone at Trader Vic's S.F. As I was leaving I walked past a lady talkin' on her phone who was saying she was gonna catch a cab over to Trader Vic's. I was quick to say to her "You Navigate and i'll drive." The deal was sealed and Kat and I quickly found T.V and a parkin' spot right in front. NICE! So we joined the party inside and had ourselves a blast. The folks at T.V. were super friendly and helped to make it a heck of a good time. Several Mai Tais and smiles later, I was back in the truck and chooglin' back to Santa Cruz. Thinkin' to myself that it was worth the drive and parkin' difficulty to see all my friends again. Once again, I took pics and here they be:

Tiki Crawl VII (South Bay)

The kick off of Tiki Crawl 7 was good fun! Although I missed the action live at Smoke Tiki I was able to watch some of the shenanigans via the live stream
that Hanford had hooked up through the dudes at Justin.tv. I had to remind myself that I was suppose to be enjoying it live so I packed up all my cameras and camcorders and headed toward San Jose to meet up with my ol buddy Bamzeno who runs Tikifreaks.com. We charged over to the San Jose Airport to visit the internationally known Martini Monkey. The bar was packed with friendly familiar faces who all looked to be havin' a good ol time. We were there for about the time it took me to finish my drink before we burned gears over to Trader Vic's Palo Alto. It was a bit more relaxed and quieter than over at the Martini Monkey, but it was much easier to talk with folks and move around. It seemed to me there was some drop off of people along the way but there was still a nice group of people hangin' about. I pulled out my camcorder and cameras while attempting to get some shots but I was plagued with tech gremlins the entire evening with all 3 cameras I had brought along. I am not sure what happened but very little of my video footage survived and what did was Crap! I did manage to get some pics taken by shuffling around batteries and memory cards between devices. So here is a slide show with what I did manage to not screw up.

Tiki Magazine's Art Show at Bali Hai

After six days of non stop music, art, laughter and time spent with good friends and ohana I have finally gotten a chance to catch up with my blog. I left Kauai Thursday afternoon and flew over to Honolulu. Between island flights I had changed seats and left my ipod case along with my camera cables in the seat pocket in front of me. I remembered I had done so as we were taking off for Maui, but by the time I was able to get up out of my seat and go back to where I was sitting it was too late. Fortunately, a flight attendant had found it before anybody could nerp it. Unfortunately, he had given the case to the agent in Honolulu so I was without my tunes and worse yet my cables to get the pictures from my camera onto my laptop. I was hopin' this was not going to be the way my luck was going to go for the rest of my trip.

After what felt like a pretty quick flight, I landed in San Diego around 11:00 pm. My Friend Sean came out to pick me up and stay at his pad in Encinitas. The next day we got up early and caught some really fun (but kinda chilly) 3-4' surf out in front of his house at Cardiff reef.

Sean and his wife Erica lent me their van and hooked me up with a mattress inside so I wouldn't have to worry about driving buzzed back from the Tiki Magazine's Bali Hai Art Show which I was participating in later that night. I left early to get to the Bali Hai and give myself plenty of time to set up and chat before the show. However, I ended sitting in traffic for hours because some idiot was leaving pipe bombs along the highway thus shutting down huge sections of the freeways that lead into San Diego. Those damn Tiki Terrorist had struck again!


Eventually I made it to Shelter Island and was still early enough to get in some quality time with a few of the other artists and early birds as well as secure a nice spot to display my art thanks to Mean Gene at Falling Cocos. The quality of art was mind blowin' and my eyes were droolin'. Seeing so much fantastic art work in one place was making me dizzier than the Mai-Tai's I was slurpin' down. The Tiki Magazine and Bali Hai Staff did a fanatastic job of putting together a history making event that brought together an amazing amount of talent all under one roof. Adding to the ambiance was the smooth sounds of the Smokin' Menehunes and the swaying moves of gorgeous Hula dancers.


After the show a large gaggle of revelers found themselves partyin' with Ali'i in his room at Humphrey's By The Bay which is a hotel with a tropical theme and plenty of tikis near the Bali Hai. As usual, large crowds are hard to keep hushed so security was quickly there to say good night to us all. So we made our way to the club at Humphrey where we all got loose and shook our bones to a funky bunch of dudes singin' music I never thought I would ever ever listen to unless forced by gun point.

So after a few more drinks and the passing of time our troops began to thin. We all made our way to places to lie our heads and let the visions of tropical fantasy escort us into our dreams. Here is a slide show from the fun filled evening of art, music and friends:

Holiday gathering at Hulas Santa Cruz, Ca

A few of the Tiki Central ohana got together for some holiday celebrating at the new Hula's in Santa Cruz for some lively convesation with good freinds, tasty cocktails and some killer eats. We all had a great time basking in the tiki ambiance. The owners did an awesome job of outfitting the new restaurant and bar with some of the finest tiki artist this side of the Hamakua coast. As always Humuhumu has done a nice write up on Humu Kon Tiki.