Music video official release!

Following a heralded performance at the 2013 Tiki Oasis festival in San Diego, CA, The Hula Girls decided that they just HAD to record a pair of songs that were received especially well! It has taken a little longer to get this out to you than we planned, but here it is! We were originally going to press a two-song vinyl 45, but with the amount of time that this has taken, we figured that we ought to just get you a digital version right away. 

We ALSO filmed a video for one of the songs! 
Hope you dig it!!

(Be sure to select 1080p HD from the settings option on youtube)

You can buy the tracks at CDBABY, now!

“Hula, Hula! Bang, Bang!”, a never before heard song, got the whole crowd singing along. It’s a fast paced bopper about a seemingly sunny dispositioned beach girl who ends up being a vampy night-time temptress when you really get to know her. The simple, catchy chorus is infectious!

“Rock Around the Island” is a cover of the 1956 song by The Lancers, from southern California. This song was featured in the hit film, “The Lieutenant Wore Skirts.” It’s a wild bopper which is one of the earliest true rockabilly recordings that venture into what we refer to as that ‘hulabilly’ sound!

_________________________________________________________________

Recorded in September of 2013 by CHRIS SPRAGUE 
at the ATOMIC RANCH STUDIO, COSTA MESA, CA

Mixed by CHRIS SPRAGUE and BRIAN “SHORTY” POOLE

Produced by SPIKE MARBLE and BRIAN “SHORTY” POOLE

Model: B DEVILLE

Photography by JOHN GILHOOLEY on location at 
DON THE BEACHCOMBER in SUNSET BEACH, CA

Art Design and Layout by SPIKE MARBLE

Hula! Hula! Bang! Bang!

New music, available tomorrow!!

The Great Aku Aku!

Dreamsville... Las Vegas, 1966... How about dinner and drinks at the Aku Aku? We'll follow it up with some rockabilly from The Collins Kids (!!) and  afterward, some bachelor-pad space-jazz by Esquivel (!!) in the lounge. 

Oh man... There was a time when this was reality. 

After I came across that marquee image, I thought it might be cool to do a little feature on the amazing Aku Aku!
The restaurant opened in January of 1960. It was located in the super atomic Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas.  

From what I can tell, this was the entrance to the restaurant from the inside of the casino. 
Dig that guy's suit and sideburns! That chick is something too!

The front door of the restaurant. Note the two large moai, flanking the door. A lot of tiki bars/ restaurants/ apartment complexes featured a short bridge to cross over... It was the literal crossing out of reality and over into 'paradise'.

My buddy, Bamboo Ben, has direct legacy to this place. His grandfather, Eli Hedley, carved the giant featherstone maoi for the Stardust’s Aku Aku. He also decorated the tiki bar, Pago Pago, Lake Tahoe restaurants, Trader Dick’s and Harvey’s, and was even hired by Walt Disney to decorate Adventureland. He eventually sold hand-carved tikis from his Island Trade Store in Disneyland and at the Orange County Fair in the 1950's. 

In fact, I just found these tikis at an estate sale in Santa Ana. The original owner bought these brand new at the OC Fair in 1959. 

Ben told me that these are Eli Hedley moai, carved from the scraps of the Aku Aku tiki. I have these two tikis, another that looks like it was kinda started and given up on, and one big boulder. Pretty cool to find out about the history of them! 

(Side Note: I put the big boulder in the pond as decor and it FLOATS! I have never heard of floating rocks before. Blew my mind.)

In family tradition, Bamboo Ben designed and decorated the interior of the only tiki bar in Las Vegas today, the amazing Frankie's Tiki Room.

All of the chairs in Frankies were carved by the San Diego carver, Buzzy.  Moss, the owner of Frankies, actually just sold those Buzzy-carved chairs because they kept falling over every night. Now two of them live in my Breezeway bar! I have no issues with them being wobbly. They make for great decore anyway!                                                                                                                                   I believe that they replaced those tiki chairs with vintage chairs from Sam's Seafood (now Don the Beachcomber)... but I'm getting off track here... Back to the Aku Aku!

So welcome to the Stardust's Aku Aku! Where you can get a Zombie for $2.00 (in the 1960s)! Just as at Don the Beachcomber, you can only order two per visit.

These are some of the only interior pictures of the Aku Aku that I've been able to find. Very dark and atmospheric. I wonder if those table lamps are tikis... It looks like the room divider is made up of tikis or kava kava men or something...

Here's a lighter picture of the interior. You can actually see that the table lamps are small boxes with lamp shades. Not tikis. If you look on the tables, you can see some of the barware and plating that they used. Everything was themed perfectly!

They had a pretty good collection of tiki mugs that they used for their cocktails. There's something about vintage tikis mugs that lots of the modern ones just kinda miss. Maybe it's the glaze or something. These two are from my personal collection. 

These folks are drinking out of the black moai mugs....

You can see that they really played up the moai tiki thing by offering two different mugs with that type of design. Perfect theming in tying back to the big moai outside! 

They also offered a standard coconut mug and a rum barrel type mug. I 'm still yet to find these for my own collection.

 A three moai Scorpion bowl too!               

(floral background images: HangTenTiki)

But it doesn't end there! They also had their own branded plating, 'personal clean-up towel', and a hand fan? I guess the fan makes sense for the heat of Las Vegas, right?

One of my absolute favorite tiki finds is this gambling token for the Stardust Casino. Branded to promote the Aku Aku, the other side reads, "Rub my nose for luck". Did they mean rub the nose on the coin, or rub the nose of the giant one outside of the casino?

After seeing this photo,  yeah, they meant on the coin... Unless they were challenging you to climb that thing! Work for your luck!

I wonder where those two moai flanking the restaurant door ended up? They didn't just throw those away when they closed the restaurant, did they??

The mind blowing signage of the Stardust at night! And a little neon tiki for you too...

This was from a vintage postcard (image: HangTenTiki)

After all of the glory that the giant Aku Aku tiki had been a part of, it was eventually appropriately retired to it's own private island at Sunset Park, Las Vegas. It lives on as a bird perch. You can still see it there today!

I hope you enjoyed this look at a piece of tiki history. If you have any more info on the Aku Aku, I'd love to hear it! Please send messages to me at The Hula Girls on Facebook.

For more information, go see the Aku Aku thread on Tiki Central 

The Hula Girls go to the beach!

This Sunday on the north side of the Huntington Beach Pier! 

FREE show to benefit the International Surfing Museum.

11:00 to 11:55am

THE HULA GIRLS

12:15 to 1:10pm

POINT DOOM

1:30 to 2:25pm

THE VOLCANICS

2:45 to 3:40pm

THE DYNOTONES

4:00 to 5:00pm

THE BREAKAWAYS

Don the Beachcomber Saved! (For now)

Well, we did it! Last night, the Huntington Beach City Council voted unanimously. They plan to leave the area alone! No re-zoning!!! I can't believe how the tiki and Sunset Beach community rallied around this effort. It truly is a testament to what Dons/ Sams means to everyone. It IS worth saving. 

Good work friends!! Mahalo!

The council members mentioned that the number of emails received were in the 80s and that they were ALL different. We made a concerted effort NOT to create a form letter. Dons/ Sams means more to everyone than just batch out some form letter. 

Don the Beachcomber music promoter, Christopher Burkhardt addresses the Council.

One council member, Barbara, said that this was probably the work of the restaurant, getting everyone to email and all of that... but it wasn't. Don's had no involvement in creating any promo stuff at all. This was truly grass roots. Thanks again everyone.

If you want to view/ listen to some of the passionate and insightful comments about Don's and Peter's Landing, they can be found on the city's meeting agenda site when it becomes available:

http://huntingtonbeach.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php...

Thank you again, to EVERYONE who wrote letters to the city council. A special thanks to tiki community members, John-O, James Ledbetter, Christopher Burkhardt, Brian Goddard, and any others that I may have missed who spoke on behalf of Don the Beachcomber. Some very moving things were said about the place that we love so much!

Others who took their time out of their busy life to go to the council meeting were Andrew McCain (Giant tiki Head) and his lovely lady, Bamboo Ben and his lovely lady, Pin-up Photographer Riley Kern, lifestyle photographer Tom Stratton and Brandy, Krista Ledbetter, Sabu the Coconut Boy (Tim), and any other I have forgot to mention...

Also, our own Neva Moore and Judy Luck drove all the way from Burbank to be in the crowd at the City Council meeting and show their support. 

Next Friday, The Hula Girls play the Dagger Bar and we're talking with Dons about a special celebration party!

Next on the agenda is getting Don the Beachcomber recognized on the National Historic Registry. Zoning keeps the place from being turned into an apartment complex, but the Historic registry keeps it from being destroyed at all.