Post #470112 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Jul 19, 2009 9:59 AM

Though the Ilikai is a cool example of Honolulu modernism, it can also be seen as the beginning of the end of the "old Hawaii", purported in Polynesian pop on the mainland. It was one of the first high rise towers, which then began to multiply like mushrooms and change the face of Waikiki forever, eventually turning off tourists, as it began to look like many other American downtown skylines. This fact is made even more poignant by the fact that the Ilikai tower was built right next to, and literally overshadowed that wonderful icon of Tiki style, the Waikikian Hotel, its Tiki Gardens, and its Tahitian Lanai Bar, just built five years earlier.

The effect can be compared to the original Hawaiian Village Hotel, here in the 50's, (just on the other side of the Waikikian):

..and the same Hotel, just a few years later, in its newer 1960s version:

Still cool, but not the same.

For the same reason do I count the "Hawaiian Eye" TV series as Tiki, while I consider Hawaii 5-0 as post-Tiki.

The same goes for the original International Marketplace with Don The Beachcomber's, which was conceived by him as a one story palm frond roofed village, and then got built up to a two-story shopping mall. With the jet travel and Hawaiian statehood success of Hawaii, progress and development quickly outdid Polynesian romanticism in Waikiki.