Tiki Love

For years, I attended the annual Tiki Night at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood until the theatre was bought by Netflix and closed for renovation.

Eager for a chance to don a tiki shirt and escape to a tropical paradise, I attended a lecture, sponsored by the Little Landers Historical Society, on June 10 at Bolton Hall in Tujunga.

Tiki historian Sven Kirsten chronicled the pre-World War II dawn of tiki bars and restaurants like Don the Beachcomber in Hollywood and Damon’s Steak House in Glendale, the postwar rise and fall of tiki culture and its 21^st century renaissance.

In an article “Is Clock Running On Tiki?” (Los Angeles Times; Nov. 28, 2019), writer John Birdsall fired the opening salvo in a politically correct war on tiki as “cultural appropriation” of Polynesian art (never mind his fondness for mai tais at Trader Vic’s in Emeryville).

Sven Kirsten fired back. “Tiki art was never intended to be taken seriously or to portray the real thing,” he said. “It was always a loving, naïve homage to a culture envied and longed for, and never meant as a parody or patronizing ridicule of another belief.”

I often dream of a voyage to Tahiti where I kneel in the white sands, row an outrigger canoe and wade into the turquoise waters of Bora Bora, where F.W. Murnau filmed “Tabu” before his death in 1931. Until then, I periodically escape to Damon’s Steak House where the bartender serves a classic Trader Vic’s mai tai.

Les Hammer
Pasadena

Regarding the CVWD Public Meeting

I was very disappointed in the outcome of the [CVWD board meeting] on the evening of June 27. The issue of placing a large tax charge on people’s property tax bill is a very contentious one. The water customers/property owners who will be paying this bill showed up in force, irate at this huge charge they are facing. They have every right to be.

The audience responses ranged from polite requests for information to firm requests for a microphone to hear the board members to a 15-year unresponded-to list of Board “We’ll get back to you” to an outright accusation of corruption and malfeasance. The Board chairwoman allowed public comments but [did not provide] a significant amount of time (two minutes per! Seriously!) for each speaker and not nearly the amount of time for significant Q and A of all questions that wanted to be asked. When the audience began to get out of hand, she threatened to clear the room.

Some audience responses to Board member statements were clearly disrespectful but not nearly as the repeated disrespect to the audience to clear the room, as if they were all a bunch of bratty kids.

Repeated calls for more questions by the audience were met with the summarily stated: “Public comment is closed.” Some audience members had legitimate questions of far-reaching import, but were refused. One man was facing an egregious and unconscionable amount of money, simply based on the large size of his home’s water feed, regardless of the actual amount of water used.

After the Board resumed its deliberations, with many in the audience unable to hear the goings-on, people began to leave. The Board chair pleaded for people to stay. Why should they?! They had been told to behave, condescended to and refused any further comment. The disgust of the exiting audience members was palpable.

Without acceding to the audience request to postpone the vote on the issue until more outreach to the community of ratepayers has been done, the Board voted to proceed with the program, giving property owners an “opt- out” option. Ratepayers must make their choice by 15 July.

This rush by the board is mistaken. More outreach to the community is needed, part of the transparency that the audience requested. So a postponement is really the best option. If the board was hoping to avoid less chaos from a public hearing, they’ve sowed the seeds for much more of that in the coming weeks. No mention was made for tenant water use. No mention was made of input by CVWD staff and workers for what is best use of materials and time.

The best course of action is the community and Board working much closer in a concerted effort to solve this very important program. The Board members are elected to serve the ratepayers and as such make the very hard choices. But the property owners and tenants pay for this. We must all be on board!

Stuart Byles
La Crescenta