South Sea Outpost in Sausalito – Tiki Junction

By Ottis Hill
This article has been excerpted from the October 5-11, 1971 edition of MarinScope.
Barney West is a Sausalito institution.  The 52 year old former sailor and chef, now wood-carver, established Tiki Junction in 1963. His outdoor studio is a testament to his ambition and his love: The giant carved tiki statues and totem poles, surrounded by South Pacific
foliage, adorn the yard and the ground is covered with a thick mat of wood chips and saw dust, the result of the 300 or so pieces which West and his associates carve per year. The pieces range in size from 3 foot high tikis (a ‘tiki’ is a wood or stone image of a Polynesian supernatural power) to an over 40 foot, 4 ton redwood totem pole West carved for the front of a supermarket at Lake Tahoe. The smaller pieces sell for as little as $75 and the larger sculptures, like the 10 foot high carving of a pair of hands delivering a child, made by John Northstrand, sold for $5000. ‘None of us is getting rich,’ he said,
‘but in a a good season we manage to take in enough money to stay off welfare.’
West learned wood sculpture from the natives of the Marquesan Islands in the South Pacific. While serving with the merchant marines during WW II, West’s ship was torpedoed and he swam to a nearby island. He was welcomed by the friendly natives, and lived with them for six months until he was retrieved by a copra boat which came to the islands every six months to coconut oil. ‘I could have been eaten . . . cannibalism was still going on,’ he said, ‘but these people were very good to me, they took me in and treated me like I was one of them.’
Because the Japanese were approaching, the missionaries had fled the area leaving the natives free to return to their old style of life without the harsh morality taught by the Christians: ‘The natives were incredibly happy; the children lived with anyone they felt comfortable with after they were 4 or 5 years old. The island was a beautiful place for a child to grow up on.’
Some ten years later, West began to carve statues similar to the ones he had seen on the islands. He has used redwood almost exclusively for his sculptures because it is the most resistent to insects and disease and also for the beautiful color and grain of the wood. “Some of the trees I’ve carved are more than 1000 years old,” he said. “It almost makes you sad. But then I didn’t cut them down and I only take rejects the sawmills don’t want or donations from local tree surgeons.”
West has carved many of the statues which surround Trader Vic’s Restaurants and has sent pieces all over the United States. During the last few years, he has diversified into more “free-forms” in his approach and at the present time he has an abstract piece on display at Swanson’s Art Gallery in San Francisco. “In the future I’d like to do more abstracts and maybe a female torso.”
His tools are simple - - a chain saw, a few chisels and a sander. And with these tools he can make almost anything from cigar store Indians to twenty foot high figures dressed in flowing robes.
West began carving wood figures in the middle fifties and settled in Sausalito in 1958. Before setting up Tiki Junction he whittled his trees in the “bow of the old Lassen” at the
foot of Johnson Street. His indoor work area at Tiki Junction was the “crews quarters” on a sailing ship named the “Echo” which was pulled up on the mud and left to rot in the early 1930’s. Not far away sits deteriorating remains of another sailing vessel, the “Galilee” which made mail run from San Francisco to Tahiti around the turn of the century.
The atmosphere of Tiki Junction is a pleasant cross of two worlds; it is where primitive art is formed with an electric chain saw and where Tiki Gods glare menacingly at you while sounds of a Bach fugue float in the air from a radio blaring in the cabin of a grounded sailing ship. And then is West himself with his bushy mustache and black seaman’s cap, speaking of the islands with one breath of the world which surrounds him the next.
“The missionaries used to burn the Tiki statues; they were the most destructive thing that ever happened to the islands. They were hell bent to make the natives wear clothes. . . to make them hide their animalness.  Maybe that’s why man is almost merciless in the slaughter of animals. He must fear that part of himself.’’


Tiki Junction was so famous, it even had its own postards.
Photo courtesy of  Sausalito Historical Society

Hollywood Captures Sausalito's Beauty

by Brad Hathaway

Just over 66 years ago, on Saturday night November 30, 1946, the waterfront at Whalers' Cove, where Bridgeway turns into Richardson Street, was the scene of tremendous excitement as a Hollywood motion picture company set up shop to film Orson Welles in a scene for the movie "The Lady From Shanghai."

Welles was director, producer, screenwriter and star of the film. He had visited Sausalito in the past and was impressed enough that when he needed a scene in the San Francisco Bay area, he penned in our town.

His co-star was his real-life wife, Rita Hayworth. Everett Sloan, who had been in Welles' masterpiece "Citizen Kane" and was a member of Welles' repertory theater company in New York, the Mercury Theatre, was cast in the role of a defense attorney who involves Welles' character in a murder plot. Welles placed the character on a pair of crutches when Sloan was cast in the role because, he said, as a trained radio actor, Sloan never learned how to move well before the cameras. "Besides," Welles added, "all actors love to play cripples."

The events in the scene played out in front of the old Walhalla – now the "Valhalla" – and many of the shots included features that you can recognize today as you stroll along the wharf in front of the building.

That wharf wasn't big enough, nor impressive enough, for Welles' purposes, however, so he had an additional 36-foot temporary wharf built out of used lumber by Sausalito's Madden and Lewis Boat Works along with a gangway and a float. A twelve man crew headed by George Dias worked all week before the shooting was scheduled to begin and had to wrap up their work earlier than expected because Welles wanted to shoot on November 30th rather than waiting for the planned December 1.

Don't look for the additional wharf, float or gangway today. The permit Madden and Lewis obtained was only for a temporary structure, and no permit for permanent use had been requested from the US Corps of Engineers. (This was, of course, long before the establishment of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission in 1965.)

Most local residents had to content themselves with standing behind police and fire lines set up a block from the action and hope for a brief look at the Hollywood stars. Others were lucky enough to land jobs as "extras" in the movie.

This night's scene featured Welles shooting off a gun in what the convoluted story of the movie presented as an effort to fake a murder. On the cue of the sound a gun being fired by Welles, the local extras rushed out of the "Walhalla" and some of the neighboring houses. Among them were Sausalito fireman "Swede" Pedersen and Sausalito News reporter Joanne Nichols who recorded the experience in the December 5, 1946 issue of the paper.

Rain and foggy weather then settled on Sausalito – this was December, after all.   

Filming in Sausalito didn't resume until Friday, December 6 when it was Rita Hayworth's turn to attract the most attention. It took most of the morning to get the few seconds of screen time which showed Hayworth being ferried to shore in a high speed Higgins boat  from a yacht anchored off shore.

The yacht used for this scene was the White Cloud, a Berkeley-based schooner owned  by Weldon C. Nichols. It was standing in for a more famous yacht which had been used in earlier scenes. That was Errol Flynn's personal yacht, the Zaca, which was built in 1929 at the Nunes Bros. Boatyard in Sausalito’s Old Town. 

Before lunch there was time to film Hayworth debarking from the Higgins boat, walking up the temporary gangplank and exchanging a few lines of dialog with Welles.

While there had been many "extras" required for the first evening's filming, few were needed for the daylight scene. This freed up the space inside the Walhalla. The production company found a good use for that space. They invited wounded veterans who were members of the camera club at the Presidio's Letterman Army Hospital to witness the shoot. Joanne Nichols' report in the Sausalito News reveals that many of these veterans were in wheelchairs or on crutches, but that they all had their cameras at the ready. Since the filming took place just a year and half after the end of World War II, the gesture was particularly well timed.

After the union-mandated lunch break, the company filmed Hayworth walking from the Walhalla, getting into a car and being driven off.

You can see the scene in a clip which has been loaded onto the You Tube website by going to www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoiFoH_aJfo. The clip only runs one and a half minutes, but it took the production company over a week to get the shots they needed.

Posters for "The Lady From Shanghai” featured Rita Hayworth, not Sausalito

The Plant

By Steefenie Wicks

MUSIC

Music is magic.
Music transcends language.
Music transcends social classes.
Music transcends race.
Music transcends gender.
Music transcends cultures.

Music puts the soul into religion.
Music puts the joy into love.

Music can bring back fond memories from your past.
Music can create new memories for your future.
Music can bring old friends together and can help you make new friends.

Music is an integral part of theater, cinema, television and dance.
Music is played at weddings, graduations, sports events, and tailgate parties even funerals.

Music is part of every religious service no matter what religion it is.
Music can enlighten your soul and speak the truth.
Music is based on harmonics of Planets, of our Solar System and of the galaxies.
The harmonics of a plucked or bowed string reflect the order of the Universe.

Music can be spiritual, carnal, humorous, dramatic, serious or whimsical.
Every culture in the world has music that is uniquely its own.
Every culture has its own national anthem.

Musicians in the world are as diverse as Bob Marley and Bach, Beethoven and Billy Joel, Yo Yo Ma and Earl Scruggs, Ali Akbar Khan and John Coltrane

Music can encompass all facets of life, all lifestyles, all cultures and all people.

Long live music!

Written by musician David E. Brown
(Former sound recording engineer at the ‘Plant’ during the late 1970’s)


Tucked away in Sausalito is an old redwood building that is now beginning to see structural damage but at one time … in its heyday, it was one of the best places that musical artists could come to create great music.   A setting close to the waterfront, a part of Sausalito that was almost invisible, and that was its charm.    The story is told of how on Halloween in 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono showed up dressed as trees, and the occasion was the opening night of The Plant.  The redwood sided structure at 2200 Bridgeway (near the Bay Model) may have started out as a recording studio but it became more than that -- it became a legend that would basically hold the DNA of rock and roll music.
The Plant may have been one of the top recording studios in the Bay area but it was with the vision of Arne Frager that it continued to be a place where those that knew rock history wanted to record their music.   From 1988 till its closure in 2008, Arne Frager was the musical visionary behind, The Plant.  In the beginning, Frager, who had run his own music studio in L.A., had to draw on all of his skills as a professional studio engineer and owner, so he made a plan.  He would start by raising funds to renovate and upgrade a process that has never stopped. But he was able to turn this Sausalito recording studio into a Mecca for musicians.  It was to become known as a place where artists could relax, like in his or her own living rooms, and just make music.  The Plant became a home away from home for many artists and that is one of the reasons that the music created there remained pure.
The history of the ‘Plant’ is part of the musical history of Sausalito.   Almost everyone that lives on the Sausalito waterfront has heard the story of how Otis Redding, first had his idea for his top song, ‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay’ on a houseboat here in 1967.   Over the years Stevie Wonder, Rick James, Aretha Franklin, Mick Fleetwood Sly Stone and a who’s who in Rock and Roll, have visited Sausalito just to walk through the doors of a place where life made music and music made art.
It was at The Plant that 11-year-old Beyoncé Knowles and her group ‘Girlstyme’ first recorded.   Frager arranged to have the girl group, which was made up of three singers and three rappers, record an album at The Plant in 1991.  He was also able to get them booked on the program “Star Search,” but the group never really took off under his guidance.   It was much later that he would come across the music created by this multitalented group of youngsters, some of whom were now well known stars in the music industry, and offer the musical tapes back to Mathew Knowles, Beyoncé’s father, in a six figure deal.
Now that no one is recording there the place stands in disrepair.  Arne and his wife Mari ‘Mack’ Tamburo, had envisioned updating the place so that it could produce television shows, run a music publishing company and a non-profit musical arts program.  In 2007 they started this process only to find out that the financial support was not there. But they have not given up hope that some day this dream to reinvent, The Plant will happen.   In the meantime, both Frager and his wife are making music and performing at live musical venues in the Bay Area.  
One of the reasons that Frager believes the music industry and The Plant have suffered is that there is no money in producing music.  If a musical group makes it big they build their own recording studio.   With today’s equipment you can set up your own recording lab in your living room and do your own thing, without the thumbprint of some producer.  How does one react to this? Frager’s answer is simple, “In the music industry you don’t do one thing over and over again, you adapt, you change, and get on with it.”


Arne and Mari still dream of reinventing The Plant.
Photo by Steefenie Wicks.

On My Shipmate

By Alan Watts

The following essay was written by Zen philosopher  Alan Watts for a symposium on the eccentric Sausalito artist Jean Varda:

I came to live in California because I was looking for the Mediterranean, and finally settled in Sausalito because it was the nearest thing in the United States to a small town of the Riviera. Then to gild the lily, I was able to acquire the ferryboat Vallejo from my old friend Gordon Onslow-Ford -- and Varda came with it. And with Varda comes all the color, the attitude, the tempo, and the very smell of that most civilized of seas. To be realistic, I suppose this is the dream of every imaginative Englishman sick to death with boiled beef and carrots, and the damp, bone-breaking cold of his country’s winters. Yet, also to be realistic, I got what I wanted.
I had, of course, been warned of Varda’s vagaries and limitations -- his supposedly total irresponsibility in matters of money and business, his alleged propensity for inviting hundreds of guests for all-night orgies, and his weekly habit of beguiling friends into dangerous voyages on the Bay in that lateen-rigged dhow from the Aegean fairyland which is suitably named Perfidia. Nevertheless, I found myself the neighbor and shipmate of a highly civilized person.
The external observer would never imagine that life on the Vallejo is civilized, for, on the outside she is a grey and dilapidated old hulk in an area of the waterfront which certain finicky outsiders consider a houseboat slum. In Europe, Americans are quick to recognize the “fascination that is frantic in a ruin that’s romantic,” but they don’t notice it at home -- where everything aged and feisty, like good cheese, is promptly doused with gallons of Clorox and buried under clean, flat concrete.
Yet every time I slip over to Varda’s end of the ferryboat there is a curious exaltation of the solar-plexus. His sculptures or “conceits” of old wine-bottles filled with vari-colored waters standing along the window suggest an archaic pharmacy or alchemist’s laboratory. The entrance to his studio, looking out over the water towards the hills of Belvedere and Angel Island, through a forest of masts, is planted with a potted pine tree, and with such vaguely heraldic objects as his own mysterious flags and inverted, face-like pots and bottles set on poles.
Varda himself “holds court” sitting at the end of a long table scratched and stained with the memories of innumerable banquets of minced lamb in vine-leaves, stuffed peppers, and fish cooked in herbs and wine. Above, hangs an enormous lantern in the form of an amphisbonic turtle, and along the wall opposite the window are always his most recent collages of celestial cities, courtly ladies, luminous fish, and plants from the gardens of paradise. This is somehow a place where the sun is out even on wet and foggy days.
I say that Varda is highly civilized because he is a true Bohemian, which is a European phenomenon distinct in style from the American beatnik or hippie. It is distinguished above all by what Montaigne called une certaine gaiete d’esprit, for which the recipe is a marvelous amalgamation of exuberance, sensuality, culture, and literacy, salted with that essential recognition of one’s own rascality which is the perfect preservative against stuffiness and lack of humanity.
Since the summer of 1961, when I first came to live on the Vallejo, Varda has been astoundingly productive for a man in the seventies. Knowing, as I do, that in these parts dawn is the most enchanted time of day, we are both up between 6:30 or 7, I in my library, and he in his workshop beyond the wall where I can hear the hammering, scratching, and rustling where-with he converts piles of scraps and debris into his glowing collages, which seem to come out by the hundreds. My wife is a late riser, so it is often that, after two hours or so of work, Varda and I get together in his studio for coffee and hilarious gossip. By this time, too, the first trickle of his endless stream of visitors, students, handymen-helpers, and local friends begins to arrive, and conversation around the table -- half in French and half in English -- gets under way with the cackling and guffawing that goes with Varda’s outrageous fantasies and anecdotes.
There are, of course, the more serious exchanges in which we try to figure out what we must do to keep the boat from collapsing into the mud, how to arrange mutual financial arrangements in which neither of us are interested, and what to do about the excess of callers who both boost our egos and interfere with our work.
Of Varda it is peculiarly true that le style, c’est l’homme meme, that his style is the man himself. Americans, who are apt to affect sincerity and naturalness, find this hard to understand. Americans are apt to see the foreign accent, the mischievous wit, and the many-colored effervescence of a Varda as a big act -- mere showmanship. Yet to maintain such an act — especially upon the diaphanous foundation of a, literally, floating life without any wealth or substance except sheer nerve and joie de vivre -- surely this is the same essential courage which keeps even God going on his own, with nothing to stand on and nowhere to go in emergency.


Alan Watts aboard the Vallejo.         
Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society

The Docent

By Steefenie Wicks
A dictionary explains the definition of ‘docent’ as a person who leads or guides tours especially through a museum or art gallery.   That being said, one would then refer to Jeanne Fidler as the Grand Dame Docent of the Sausalito Historical Society.  Born in Birmingham, England on August 29, 1932, she has been part of the Sausalito community since 1972.  She not only takes you on tour in the Historical Society but also inspires you with her knowledge of Sausalito and this can be most intriguing when she wears one of her extraordinary hats. Jeanne Fidler is art and inspiration; sharing an afternoon with her is a real adventure in learning about Sausalito.
When asked how did she become involved with the Sausalito Historical Society, she tells how the Society became involved with her. Having always loved tea parties, she attended one that was being presented in what was then the Victorian room that was part of the Historical Society.   Everyone was dressed in Victorian dress and the costumes the women wore were just glorious and they really impressed her.  She was approached by a young man in Victorian dress who asked if she was enjoying herself and she said that she was very impressed by the event, at which point he said that you should come and join us.   That young man was Phil Frank and the year was 1991.
Jeanne began working as a docent with the founder of the Historical Society, Jack Tracy.   She recalls his explanation of how he founded the Historical Society.  He was driving to work one day and just as he was about to cross the bridge into San Francisco, he pulled his car over and the idea of starting a historical society hit him. He turned back into Sausalito to begin the project of putting a Historical Society together, which she believed was his dream.
She goes on to say the learning under Jack Tracy was a grand experience because he was so knowledgeable about Sausalito’s history and could answer any question one might ask.  He trained her by asking her to look for things and bring them to him and that’s how she learned where things were kept.   But the one thing he insisted upon was that a good docent should always treat people with respect and make them always feel welcome at the Historical Society
When asked what she feels is one of the most positive things about the Historical society she thinks back to how she has dealt with the past because she does not mind dealing with the past and memories of those that have passed.  When speaking of those that have passed, her most favorite memories are of working with Phil Frank because he was so full of life and so loved Sausalito and its community.
She recalls that Frank did so much to entertain the community and then to help others understand the history of where they live.    She goes on to explain how both Jack Tracy and Phil Frank had the most influence on the Historical Society and put forth the most in projects to involve the whole town.  
Among her favorite Sausalito characters, Jeanne describes Sally Stanford as a very striking woman who always had her long cigarette holder with a smoking cigarette and how her hair was always put up in an Edwardian style. It  was Sally who donated all of the Victorian furniture to the Historical Society.   Fidler goes on to say that Sally Stanford was only one of those she remembers, along with Sterling Hayden, Allan Watts, Varda and many other talented people who lived here and the history they have left behind, and how it is her job to help them stay remembered.
The biggest change that Jeanne has seen in the Society is how few people now come in to research.  She tells of days when the Research Room was always full with people researching their homes in Sausalito and their families, or the famous artists and writers who lived here.   Then there is the waterfront and the many boats and boat builders whose long, spirited written histories are on file in the Historical Society.  Jeanne feels that most research is now done online, thus decreasing the number of visitors.
Fidler is not only a docent but has also served on the Sausalito Historical Society’s Board of Directors.  She has written for the Historical Society’s newsletter and
has been part of the Society’s school programs with Susan Frank.  When her friend and former Mayor of Sausalito  Amy Belser, passed she wrote her a poem to honor her, which proclaimed:  

        Amy Belser, a woman to love for all reasons.
        Here are some of the reasons, as I knew her for 20 years.
        Amy was a natural beauty, always easy to look at
        for her eyes were blue and true.

        Amy was composed; she always knew what she wanted to do,
        Why she wanted it, and how to get it!  She was together always.
        Amy was genuine in her like for all people.  
        She always did her best for you.

        Amy never had loud words but effective quiet ones.
        Her achievements were many.  A shy winner.

        Amy enjoyed life, loved parties, events, parades,
        Visiting sister cities, and cutting ribbons.

Fidler says, “Memories, wonderful memories.  That’s what the Sausalito Historical Society is all about and that’s what it has become for me, and you can put that in print.”


Jeanne Fidler with the display of Phil Frank cartoons at the Historical Society’s Exhibit Room.
Photo by Steefenie Wicks