California Road Trip: Tiki Crawl!

I’m back from an incredible adventure along the California coast. Arriving on Halloween, I started in LA, dipped down to San Diego for Tiki Magazine’s “Tiki Island at the Bali Hai” art show and then cruised up to the Bay Area for the Tiki Central Tiki Crawl with all sorts of memorable pit stops along the way. Most of the time, travel buddies Tiki Racer (who'd flown over from England with me) and Chongolio (who’d flown in from Kauai) were by my side. In retrospect, the whole trip seems very Wizard of Oz, with fascinating characters, new and old friends making appearances and plenty of lessons learned. However, when it came time to fly back, I was clicking my heels wishing I could stay just a little bit longer.
























The gods must have been with me when I initially planned to make the Bay Area the final destination of my California Road Trip. Without knowing it, I had arranged to be there just in time for the Seventh Tiki Central Tiki Crawl (Indeed, the Crawl had not even been announced yet). I had almost made it to this event a few times in the past but more pressing matters always managed to get in the way. At long last, this was the year.

I've been gabbin' online at Tiki Central for the better part of a decade and subsequently have made some pretty great friends without ever meeting most of them in person. It was so awesome to finally put names to faces and talk in real time. Gosh, everybody was so flippin' nice. Mahalo to all for the hospitality, especially my hosts for the weekend, TofuJoe and Haole'akamai!

As anyone who was there could tell you, I took several zillion photos during the event. For the time being, I'm gonna hold on to them until my article about the Crawl (with pics) appears in the Spring '08 issue of Tiki Magazine. Of course, there are plenty of photos and commentary over at Barefoot Bloggin', and of course on Tiki Central.

Make sure to check out all my California Road Trip posts!

Photography by Chris Osburn © 2007