Giant Tucson Icon Unveiled In Historic Event
Friday, August 28th, 2009
Giant Tiki Head at The Hut on Fourth Ave.-Tucson
The giant TIKI head from the closed Magic Carpet Golf property in Tucson has been totally resurrected and a major unveiling celebration event took place August 29, 2009 at its new home The Hut on 4th Ave. Engineering, planning, crane removal, trucking, new structural base creation and the artistic design and creation of a totally new base, has taken over 18 months to complete along with “Save The Tiki” fundraising to finance the complicated process.
The TIKI (Moai) STONE FACE is the creation of the late Lee Koplin of miniature golf fame and was fabricated by Mike Kautza who was an employee of Mr. Koplin at the time almost 40 years ago. The entirely new artistic part of the base of the three-story sculpture was designed and fabricated by Tom Prevatt, a local artist from Amado, AZ. It has been a combined effort of a number of local companies: Galileo Construction, Division 2 Construction, Broderick Engineers, Parson Steel Erectors, Marcos Crane, Caid Industries, Lanning Architects and of course The Hut to make this possible.
The fundraising event Saturday August 29 was historic and over 1500 Tucsonans attended as well as Tiki lovers from around the nation. One of the largest international Tiki conventions (http://www.tikioasis.com) was held recently in San Diego, CA and two of the conventions’ bands headlined The Hut dedication, The Martini Kings and the Del Reys, brought some of their fans with them. The web site: http://www.tikicentral with over 250,000 members from around the world publicized the happening on their web site. (more…)
