Author Archive
October 28, 2014 by tomdalzell
Levi’s Mechanical Rodeo
After looking over the photos of the signs of University Avenue, my friend suggested a ride. We took his car for the occasion, a 1965 Mustang. He doesn’t drive anymore, but keeps the Mustang for special trips. I drove us down University to San Pablo. He directed me north on San Pablo and then east […]
October 21, 2014 by tomdalzell
Blue Cue
October 20, 2014 by tomdalzell
Windmills (and Water Towers)
In Berkeley, we are often accused of tilting at windmills, a phrase taken, as every schoolboy knows, from Cervantes and his Don Quixote. The literary meaning is not particularly kind – to fight imagined enemies. A kinder and gentler sense exists, of engaging in impractical, idealistic ventures. The image of a 16th century Spanish knight engaging […]
October 20, 2014 by tomdalzell
Don Quixote and the Windmills
Chapter VIII of Part 1 of Don Quixote is titled ” Of the valourous Don Quixote’s success in the dreadful and never before imagined Adventure of the Windmills, with other events worthy of happy record.” I admire a chapter with a name like that. Cervantes describes the original encounter between Don Quixote and the windmills with humor: […]
October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell
Tiki Co-opted / Mainstream Tiki
Mass culture in America – probably elsewhere but I don’t know – has a tendency to pull anything innovative from the fringes into the mainstream. So it was with Tiki. What was hip and cool in the 1950s was subject to commodification and marketing in the 1960s. Style for sale! Here are just a few […]
October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell
Local Tiki Joints: Gone and Still Here
As far as I and my research department have been able to ascertain, Berkeley has had one Tiki joint. Ever. Just one. It was at the base of University, closed, gone, no remnant, just remembered: They featured an Aloha Sunday. The Royal Hawaiian Ukulele Band played there frequently. It is now operating as the Handle Bar. […]
October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell
Gabby Collects Tiki
As my friend and I were working on the revised tiki postings, our friend Gabby was in Panama with Young Emily. She went to record and understand the saloma (yodel) in Panamanian rural music. Singers start their performances with a saloma, in essence a warm-up not dissimilar to the manner in which trained singers warm up, but executed in […]
October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell
Kon Tiki
Our consciousness about things Polynesian was raised by publication in 1950 of Kon Tiki, two years after its original publication in Norway. The author was Thor Heyerdahl, who believed that the Polynesian islands could have been populated by South American explorers. He built a raft using the materials and building technology which would have been available at […]
October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell
South Pacific
The American experience in the South Pacific during the second World War was for the large part not idyllic, romantic, exotic, Rousseauvian, or paradisiacal. It was brutal warfare in a lovely place. After the war, the war experience in the South Pacific underwent a revision, or at least was subject to an accentuation of the […]
October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell