I’m taking a break from raving about fashion to drop the info for the Thing That Consumes My Whole Spring

TIKI-KON: NW Tiki Crawl 2006
Friday, June 23-Sunday, June 25

This year, the NW Tiki Crawl digs its toes in at Portland’s premier boutique motel, The Jupiter, and transforms into the NW Tik-Kon!

Rums provided by 3D Spirits (and others to be announced), tikirific decorations by Bamboo Craftsman, live music, tiki drinks, plenty of shopping time with your favorite tiki vendors, Selector Lopaka’s exotic music mix, social time, The Original NW Tiki Home Bar Tour (with new bars this year!), an exclusive preview of new tiki bar Grass Skirt, chat with all your favorite tiki friends.

Here is our current schedule (subject to change for the better):

Friday: Kick-Off Party at the infamous Castaway Cove, home of Tikimaxton & Pele. This will be for full weekend Crawlers only to get to know your fellow tikiphiles and enjoy the Cove’s famed hospitality. Food & drinks provided.

Saturday: There will be gatherings at Portland tiki bars: (soon to be closed!) Jasmine Tree and the venerable Alibi. Then the Tiki-Kon really gets going that evening at the Jupiter, with Bands! Vendors! Drinks! Socializing! Raffle with Fabulous Prizes! Mysterious Other Things!

Full Weekend crawlers will also be treated to an EXCLUSIVE preview of Portland’s newest tiki bar, Grass Skirt (not yet open to the public!)

Sunday: A special Tiki-Kon Brunch at the Alibi, followed by The Original NW Tiki Home Bar Tour, which this year will include new home bars (transportation provided). The group will then return to the Jupiter for the weekend farewell, allowing more time for shopping, socializing, and maybe a little drinking at the nearby Doug Fir.

The NW Tiki-Kon will once again feature a commemorative mug by our own Tikitronic.

Saturday Jupiter Event Only: $20.00
Full Weekend (No Mug): $39.00
Full Weekend (With Mug): $49.50
Collector’s Special: Add a mug to a ticket $15.00

The tickets will go on sale on Monday, May 1 so watch NW Tiki

Please feel free to post to our boards or here at TC or email any of us @nwtiki.com with questions! We’ve done our best to provide you with a bigger event for less money.

Heather Gregg ~ Tikimama
heather@nwtiki.com

Remember how I said it was going to be my Summer of Disco?

The New York Times is behind me!

I need more wedges. Maybe a pair of Kork-Ease are in order!

Listen, I’m not one to go on about overpriced fashion designer duds, etc. I can’t afford them, I don’t worry about it. Some of my most-complimented pieces are the cheapest (pink skirt from Monoprix, a painted horses tee my sister made) so I’m not convinced of couture superiority. Not that I’m mind some Marc Jacobs (if he made it in my size).

However, at Nordstrom the other day I happened upon Kate Spade’s latest bag, the oaxaca. I know there is nothing new under the sun, but you can buy this bag for $2 in Tijuana. We had scads of them around our house when I was growing up (it was one of those things (like plaster statues and wallets) you’d end up with every time you went to Mexico). But because Ms Spade “made” it, it is $200.

Do you think they are going to sell these in Santee Alley? I have a really cute Kate Spade bag I bought there (which, unlike the one my cousin purchased at Macy’s is real (though probably stolen)). It would be amusing to see these bags alongside the real ones.

I hung out with my 10 year old niece on Thursday night while my sister was working. We watched Pirates of the Carribean (which she’s never seen all the way through) and I tried to sell her on the hotness of Johnny Depp, but she would have none of it and stuck true to Orlando Bloom. I guess I would have liked him at that age, too (he reminds me of my steadfast 11 year old dreamboat: River Phoenix). Craig said later you have to have already had sex to appreciate the appeal of Johnny Depp. Hmmm.

After she went to bed, I watched her favorite movie: 13 Going on 30. It occurred to me that I would have adored this movie when I was her age, but I might not have understood the ending. The movie taps into many of our girlhood fantasies: “when I grow up, I’m going to move to New York and have a fabulous, glamourous life!” I read a lot of Seventeen and Judy Bloom, so I was sure I knew all about New York (which seemed to thrillingly different from Orange County, California, pre-The OC). I would have an exciting job and a famous boyfriend and a closet full of clothes and shoes!

Of course, she later realizes that life is empty, etc etc, and instead goes for the geek boy and buys a pink house. I did this, too: I married the handsome guy

and have lived in a succession of yellow suburban houses

I honestly don’t know if I regret it. I still have moments of wanting to live a different sort of life than I’m leading, something more urban and filled with shopping at Barney’s and such (though I have the cocktails covered). The feeling has gotten weaker over the years, as I’ve done things I thought would be thrilling (working at company I’d dreamed of, taken risks) and found them unsatisfying. I still occasionally get frustrated with myself for not celebrating how good my life is, but those moments are less and less.

Somewhere, I grew up and realized that things you want aren’t always things that make you happy in the end, no matter how good they are in fantasy.

I still want the shoes, though.

I have a confession to make: I adore Life & Style. It is like the cheap girl’s version of Lucky. I love their little style tips and outfit layouts (I actually am wearing almost the exact outfit today that appears in “Style Week”).

As much as I love it, it does have one major drawback: the paparazzi pics.

Today I happened on a picture of Ben Affleck & Jennifer Garner rushing their baby daughter to the hospital. That’s just unacceptably invasive. An astute eyewitness reported “[they] looked so worried!” Of course they look worried, their child was having trouble breathing, you moron. Everytime I see something like this, I vow not to buy L&S anymore, a resolution that usually lasts until I am stuck in an airport. I cannot resist the cheesy Windsor Fashions layouts! I’m weak.

Here’s my idea to allow me to keep buying L&S AND allow those paparazzi guys to make a decent living AND let Eva Longoria to keep getting her picture everywhere (have you noticed she’ll show up at the opening of an envelope?). We have a designated list of places that are acceptable to take candid pics, and a restricted list where they are not allowed. We’ll be generous, so we can still have “shocking” pics of Jessica Simpson looking hagard or Nicky Hilton hungover. Here’s my first draft:

Acceptable Locations
The Ivy (you’re asking for it there anyway)
Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (any in the LA area, and maybe the Valley)
Kitson
Lisa Kline
Fred Seagal
All Bars within the greater LA area
Any Rehab facility (admitting your addiction to everyone is the 5th step anyway)
Jogging in Runyon Canyon
Hamburger Hamlet

Unacceptable Locations
Children’s schools
Hospitals (including emergency rooms, but not including medical rehab)
Drugstores & Grocery Stores (except Gelson’s, come ON!)
Backyards or anywhere you want to sunbathe naked, as is your basic human right
Disneyland

If everyone could please conform to these regulations, I could subscribe to Life & Style guilt free!

I am at heart a cheapskate. If I can find a really cheap beauty product, I’m in heaven. If it’s “old-fashioned,” then all the better, since that has a sort of cache (”It wouldn’t have been around so long if it didn’t work, right?”) Products like baby oil, vaseline, Noxema, Dove soap all have this mythological aura.

Look at any fashion magazine beauty spread, they always have a list of “Top 5 Beauty Must Haves” that goes something like this:

1. something by Shu Uemura ($50)
2. something by Shiseido ($25)
3. something from Kiehl’s ($35)
4. something by Laura Mercier ($40)
5. Maybelline Great Lash Mascara ($6)

That one cheapo item gives the whole list a little spice, and gives the (false) impression that fashion mags are in any way in touch with the real world. My list would be the inverse of this: all cheapo drugstore products (Target brand, Oil of Olay, Queen Helene) with one ridiuculously expensive product, Murad APS Oil-Free Sunblock Sheer Tint.

Here’s my awesome cheapo product of the month, look for it soon in the pages of your fav fashion mag: Johnson’s Foot Soap. Thanks to this miracle product, I have soft and supple feet today (with hot pink toenails).

Did anybody read the “Up With Grups” article in New York mag? It killed me! Portland is filled with Grups, and I always vary between being jealous of the freelance iPod set and thinking it’s all quite silly. But as I look into parenthood (soonish) I keep thinking about how my parents were (or seemed) and wonder if I want to be different, and what becoming a parent will do to me and how I feel/look/dress/think.

Of course, I’m watching Goonies at the moment, so maybe I’m getting overly pre-nostalgic.

Flypaper has a spot up today about Portland fashion.

Portlandia Prevails!