Earth’s Disappearing Groundwater

World losing battle against global warming

Area Beatnik Digs That Crazy Bebop

Beat girls and beautiful basslines: Japanese pop of the 1960s

The Most Powerful Storm on Earth This Year Is Heading for Japan

A Refreshingly Positive Look “Beyond the Obituary” of the Sea…

Solar charging your car, camping or emergency batteries

Pacific Ocean Park book event
Thursday, October 9at 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Small World Books, 1407 Ocean Front Walk, Venice California

Flash Event, This Coming Thursday Evening: In 1960, beatnik poster artist Earl Newman settled into the space where Small World Books in Venice, California, exists today. There, he created posters for The Gas House, The Ash Grove, Venice West, The Troubadour and The Insomniac Cafe, the latter of which would inspire The Beach Boys’ “Smile” album cover. Along with 50 straight years of Monterey Jazz Festival posters, Earl also created a poster series for P.O.P., which are reprinted in our book “Pacific Ocean Park: The Rise and Fall of Los Angeles’ Space Age Nautical Pleasure Pier” (Christopher Merritt/Domenic Priore, 2014 Process Media). Earl and I will be signing books, showing some footage, and I’ll be interviewing Earl and engaging youse all with Q&A. Come see this great artist, now in his mid-’80s who is currently making available prints of his eight Pacific Ocean Park posters suitable for framing.

Kiddie Cocktails

Ebola ‘moving faster than our efforts to control it,’ says World Health Organization

Tom Curren on the creation of Surfrider Foundation Europe in Biarritz

E-Tech High Performance Eco Surfboards

The 14th Tiki Oasis Hits The Beat–Beatnik & Tiki Collide 8/14-8/17

The 14th Tiki Oasis Hits The Beat–Beatnik & Tiki Collide 8/14-8/17

Sacramentan buys 45s, they were his mom’s

Skimboarden – Canadian Open 2009

Legendary Surfers: Maurice Cole Interview

Did we evolve from aquatic apes?

Sydney Beatniks 1959

0+1964 (image)

The one and only Hukilau. Great artwork as usual for this famous east-coast Tiki event.

Quoting Otto von Stroheim’s Tiki Events e-mail:

Ok all you beachcombers, beatniks, bongo-beaters, tiki-carvers, mixologists, and exotica disciples from around the globe – grab your conch shell, grass skirt, aloha wear and that favorite bottle of rum and begin to prepare yourself for the 8th annual pilgrimage to most intimate Tiki festival in the world.

Experience Polynesia in America’s Vacationland

June 11 – 14, 2009
It’s time to make those plans to attend what promises to be a most memorable Polynesian Pop weekend as Tikiphiles unite!! We’re pleased to announce the entertainers that will bring you intoxicating tunes, the dazzlers that will provide mesmerizing performances, the seminars and presentations that will leave you spellbound and of course an incredible night at the historic Mai-Kai Restaurant! The full weekend’s schedule goes live in January.

Don’t Forget To Make Your Mai-Kai Reservations Now – For Those First Timers, The Mai-Kai Dinner Is June 13 – You’Ll Have 2 Shows To Choose From And Can Call 954.563.3272 To Make Your Reservations Today
We are responding to the strain on the economy, as we know it’s on everyone’s mind. Check out our ticket and hotel room prices for some big discounts this coming year – our weekend passes are considerably less and a great value!! Don’t delay and get your tickets now!!

We are so pleased to announce this year’s Headliner
Los Straitjackets!

Harold Golen Gallery of Miami presents the Hukilau Tiki Art Show
We have many first time guests to Hukilau as well as many return presenters and performers:

Please welcome these First Time Entertainers to our Island:

*From Beyond: Los Straitjackets
*From Tampa: The Stolen Idols
*From Boca Raton: Gypsy Blue Acoustic Revue
*From Miami: The Van Orsdels
*From Tampa: DJ Lounge Laura Taylor w/Hukilau Go Go Dance Opening Party!
*From Miami: DJ Laura of Miami throughout the weekend
*The Titillating Tidbits of Dancers Candy Del Rio and Sable Sin Cyr

and of course the first ever Hukilau Room Crawl!!
Those returning to Hukilau:

*King Kukulele returns as Master of Ceremonies
*Jeff “Beachbum Berry with “Who’s Your Daddy? a Mai-Tai Paternity Test
*Jeff Chenault with “More Sounds from Sophisticated Savages” Exotica Music Seminar
*Marina the Mermaid and her school of tail flapping beauties
*Surf Sounds of The Intoxicators

This year’s activities will be centered around the tropical Bahia Cabana Resort. Lots of activities will be in the summer sun so please plan accordingly. Check out our Tips From the Natives on the site so that you can be prepared for South Florida weather. All events will continue rain or shine.
Look for upcoming sculpts of the 2009 Munktiki Mug and we are also thrilled to announce that Tiki Tony will lend us a hand by designing the official Tiki pendant for Hukilau 2009! Hukilau Glassware, T-shirts and other keepsakes will be available at the event only – Hukilau merchandise will not be sent out this year (before or after the event) but can be reserved and picked up at the event only.
Thanks to the lovely wahine Heelgrinder for the amazing website and to all of our entertainers that have shared their music to be played as you browse the site.

See you in June 2009 – we’ll be waiting for you!
Let the countdown begin!
Yee-Haw & Aloha,
Tiki Kiliki
The Hukilau

Domenic Priore writes:

Saturday, February 9, 2008
10:00 a.m.

Los Angeles Public Library, Atrium Theatre
630 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
(213) 228-7000

Domenic Priore from Dumb Angel writes:

(It’s all about the ocean, mannnnnnn…… — Dom)

It’s been a while since I contacted everyone about a blog or somethin’ cool, but this time, it’s for real….

Dig, The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater is letting us do our “Beatnik Beach Film Night” this Friday night. We did one last summer at Sponto Gallery in Venice, then in December we brought it to the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Now, everybody’s been asking us for months to “do this in town” (Venice is a long haul for most of you), so we’re doin’ it up right then, and including a truly great piece of Beat cinema from 1961, “Night Tide” (starring Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson), plus our slide show of Greater L.A. area Beat coffeehouses and jazz joints of the late ’50s and early ’60s, along with two primordial shorts from the Venice West Cafe back in the day.

If you’ve never been to the Egyptian Theater, it was the immediate predecessor to Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. When Sid Grauman opened it in 1922, it had the same elaborate Hollywood flair (it’s gone through a nice rennovation in its current incarnation as the American Cinematheque). This is gonna be a fun night, in the right place, with all the right people, yeh… We are working on some special guests; all three filmakers may very well be there for Q&A, at least. The American Cinematheque’s description below says it better than I can (o.k., I helped write some of it). Thanks for plannin’, and makin’ an evening of it this Friday. We’re gonna have a ball… — Domenic Priore

Friday, March 30, 2007: Egyptian Theatre

The Friday, March 30th program is a 7:30 PM screening of NIGHT TIDE, (1961, 84 min.). Director Curtis Harrington’s debut indie feature is a masterpiece, a haunted, poetic hymn to the dark world of the fly-by-night carnival, lonely midways at dawn and the siren call of eon’s-old passion spawned by the devils of the deep blue sea. In a fond nod to Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE, at-loose-ends sailor Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) falls in love with sideshow mermaid, Mora (Linda Lawson) who may just somehow be related to the real thing. Shot in and around Santa Monica and Venice Beach in the beat culture’s heyday, the film continues to exert a strong spell, and is brimming with the heady atmosphere of bygone coffee houses, poet hipsters, languid jazz and bongos on the shore. With Luana Anders, Gavin Muir. “…captures an intangible quality of what Santa Monica was like in the early 60s. Quite apart from Los Angeles, it was a quiet residential community. The funfair pier has just the right air of seedy despair about it. Everyone seems to be living ‘just off’ the mainstream.” – Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant Preceded by the shorts: “Venice In The Sixties” (15 min.) directed by Leland Auslender. Originally shot for a television show and never used, this is essentially a full-color look inside the atmosphere of the Venice West coffeehouse, its various sections, activities and people; “The Beat From Within: Reflections of a Beatnik” (10 min.) Produced by Ralph Morin and directed by Tom Koester, this short covers a day in the life of a Venice beatnik in glorious black ‘n’ white.

Plus, following the screening, Authors Domenic Priore and Brian Chidester (Beatsville, Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood, Dumb Angel #4: All Summer Long) will present a unique one-hour slide show documenting the Beat Generation’s long stretch over the Greater Los Angeles area between 1956 and 1966, via visuals of coffeehouses and jazz joints from the Sunset Strip to Malibu, Venice and Newport Beach. Legendary locations only heard about in books or in liner notes, from the Gas House and nearby Venice West Cafe, to the Unicorn and Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, the Lighthouse and Insomniac in Hermosa Beach, then all the way down to Cafe Frankenstein (owned, operated and painted by Burt Shonberg). Arists from John Altoon to Eric “Big Daddy” Nord gave these places a colourful splash, as did the wide variety of Folk singers and poets who performed on their stages.

P.S. Also, a new Dumb Angel blog is at: http://dumbangelmag.blogspot.com/