Waikiki Tiki – Hidden at the back of the International Market.
There’s tons of great reasons to get your sketchbook out in Waikiki!
Hidden amongst all the modern glass and steel are reminders of the early days of tourism here – Polynesian “tikis”, relics of a bygone era now. A bit of urban archaeology will locate them: spirits of a vanished past, hidden in odd, forgotten corners near lo-rise “Aloha-Deco” apartment complexes back towards the Ala Wai canal.
Although no longer the poster children of Pacific tourism that they once were, these early gods of cheap air-travel and mass-market 1950s aloha still hold a certain fascination. For me, they conjure up the Pacific that my Grandparents knew – that mysterious, still slightly edgy post-war world complicated by contested memories of war and America’s new colonial aspirations.
Perhaps there is no more appropriate symbol for that era than the stolen iconography of the “Tiki”, now itself reduced to the status of a modern antiquity?
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