The Tiki Oasis festival in California hails all things Polynesian

Everything from vintage alohawear and ceramic tiki mugs to hula-themed burlesque can be found at Tiki Oasis 2015 in San Diego, a four-day celebration of the “Polynesian pop” fad that swept across America in the 1950s and ’60s.

More than 3,000 fans are expected to attend the 15th annual convention, being held this year at the island-themed Crowne Plaza Hotel. The event kicks off Thursday with a party and show at the Bali Hai Restaurant on Shelter Island in San Diego Bay.

“Tiki Oasis is the world’s largest tiki festival,” gushed Denny Moynahan, event emcee since its 2001 premiere at Palm Springs’ Tropics Hotel. Known as King Kukulele, Moynahan wears a kooky crown, grass skirt and sneakers when playing hapa-haole ditties with his band, the Friki Tikis, and also entertains at Disneyland.

Tiki Oasis co-founder Otto von Stroheim described the convocation of the tiki tribes as “like a fashion show,” with participants in period Alfred Shaheen apparel, aloha shirts, sarongs, grass skirts and “tons of tiki tattoos.” (Von Stroheim’s legs were inked by New Zealand and Hawaii tattoo artists.)

Among the speakers appearing at 30-plus symposiums is “urban archaeologist” Sven Kirsten, who coined the term “Polynesian pop” and helped spark the tiki revival for newer generations with publication of “The Book of Tiki” in 2000. His third book, 2014’s “Tiki Pop, America Imagines Its Own Paradise,” is going into a second printing.

Kirsten documents the tropical trend at bars, motels, restaurants, bowling alleys, apartment houses and theme parks around the country, even in the heartland. He says it was fueled by a love and fascination for Polynesian culture and the desire to find a way back to the origins of mankind, which makes this year’s Tiki Oasis theme — outer space — seem an odd choice.

But not to von Stroheim, who grew up near the Southern California theme parks.

“Space ties into tiki the way Tomorrowland ties into Adventureland, the Tiki Room and Frontier Cruise at Disneyland,” he said. “So the 1950s’ Modernism and Primitivism were contemporary subcultures. … One was looking out to the stars for the next generation and future, and the other was looking back into the past to obscure islands. Modern man in the ’50s could look to Sputnik or to Thor Heyerdahl sailing across the Pacific on his raft.”

Both offer visions of discovery and fantasy that presumably will be enhanced by sucking up tropical cocktails at a Tiki Oasis mixology symposium co-sponsored by Cruzan Rum.

Maui-born burlesque dancer Violetta Baretta, who lives in Honolulu, has performed and taught Hawaiian dancing at the event since 2010 but this year won’t be staging her trademark striptease — bringing a hula girl lamp to life while clad (at first) in a grass skirt — because she’s producing the upcoming Hawaii Burlesque Festival.

Nevertheless, the convention will present midnight burlesque shows, Tana the Tattooed Lady teaching yoga, Szandora demonstrating hula-hooping and Marina the Fire-Eating Mermaid.

Baretta, who is part-Hawaiian and grew up dancing hula, said the Tiki Oasis crowd “has probably more aloha than any conventioneers I’ve ever encountered. They all enjoy the tiki aesthetic. It’s one of my favorite events to perform at because everyone is so darn nice.”

Other live entertainment includes the Devil-Ettes (a go-go girl group featuring Tiki Oasis co-founder Baby Doe, von Stroheim’s wife), exotica band Tikiyaki Orchestra and Man or Astro-Man?, performing music influenced by sci-fi movie soundtracks.

A marketplace offers ersatz Oceania items, such as handmade wood carvings, ceramic mugs and sculptures by Gecko’z South Sea Arts. This is the third time Michael Souriolle of Makakilo, who goes by the name Gecko, will have a booth at Tiki Oasis. He called the event “a big holiday, kind of like Hawaii, a mixture of ethnic groups, all of these subcultures who are into Hawaii, which is tiki.”

The Philippines-born artist grew up in California and Ewa Beach and traces part of his ancestry to French Polynesia, which he has visited several times. His sculptures sell for as much as $2,000.

“We look at the inspiration of traditional stuff and try to give it our flavor,” explained Souriolle, whose works adorn Keehi Lagoon tiki bar La Mariana.

While Tiki Oasis could be seen as escapist entertainment, others might take offense at the kitchsy representation of Pacific cultures. When the event was described to well-known Hawaiian sovereignty leader Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele, he said it “sounds cheesy.”

“It’s nothing new, just more modern. It’s more and more exploitation of our culture,” he said.

Souriolle was troubled by the suggestion his work exploits indigenous traditions. “It’s my right to create art. And if I’m influenced by the culture I love, I don’t see an issue,” he said, adding, “I mean no disrespect.”

Von Stroheim insists tiki pop culture is “completely different” from what Native Hawaiian nationalists are doing.

“I totally support that movement. What I’m celebrating is an American pop culture phenomenon. … The tiki bar is a homage to Hawaii and the South Seas and influenced by that. They look to the artifacts and primitive art, which has an interesting naivete to it that’s universal. It’s a cartoony, surfy-style based on Hawaiian art, but it’s a reinterpretation.”

Von Stroheim added that some of the proceeds from Tiki Oasis are donated to San Diego historic architecture preservationists and the Surfrider Foundation, environmentalists protecting the ocean.

Not all Hawaiians agree with Kanahele, who had a significant role in the recent Cameron Crowe movie “Aloha,” which was slammed by some for misappropriating the word “aloha.”

Bishop Museum historian DeSoto Brown, a part-Hawaiian, said tiki imagery lost much of its significance long ago when Hawaiians discarded their traditional religions. “When those images were re-appropriated by (Western) outsiders in later years, native peoples no longer had the tremendous emotional, religious attachment to them as part of their religions because they no longer practiced them as they originally had when those images were made,” he said.

Brown said that today’s indigenous people admire the artistry of their ancestors’ relics, and that from movies to tourist luau, “20th-century Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders actively participated in the re-imagining of their cultures to present to mainstream American and other non-Pacific people.”

He added, “Tiki Oasis looks like tremendous fun. I’d enjoy going.”

Online: tikioasis.com

Former Makaha resident Ed Rampell co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book” (Mutual Publishing).