Tiki Junction, Sausalito

When my mother, actress and costume designer, Kellé Reilly (aka Maureen Hurley) was working at the Gate Playhouse theatre, I was often left behind with friends to be babysat on one of the houseboats at Tiki Junction, Gate Five or Gate Six. My favorite babysitters were the Smothers Brothers and Sterling Hayden lived in a railroad car by Tiki Junction. I loved it when my mom parked the big white Ford convertible right in front of the tikis at Tiki Junction because then I could stand up on the red car seat and see them eyeball to eyeball.

My mother knew Barney West, the woodcarver who learned his trade in the South Pacific. He once told us he had to padlock the tikis together like a San Quentin chain gang because people were always trying to steal them. These tikis were huge, stealing them must've taken some planning. Not something you could pop in the trunk on a whim without blowing out your rear tires and busting an axle.

Barney West salvaged a lot of his wood after the big storms. Winter of '64 was record flood year (we measured rain by the foot in '63 too), and when it retreated, (following on the cusp of the big Alaska quake and tsunami) left a lot of debris and salvaged boatwrecks behind.

Years later, there were still huge beached logs and big burls shipwrecked and marooned in the oddest places up and down the coast. (I remember the Good Friday quake, I was home, sick, leaning back on the couch the wall, with a fever, and the wall suddenly slapped the back of my head like a cricket bat. Marin was hit hard, the tsunami, though small inside the Gate, stacked the bay water up. Many boats, snapped from their moorings, were turned into kindling).

At the junction, there was always a tiki boneyard in reserve. We'd climb the logs and burls like they were Mt. Everest. Sometimes they'd be floating in the bay, seasoning, I guess.

I remember watching Barney work, shirtless, his sun-baked skin glistening like mahogany, sometimes he worked with chainsaw and axe, or with mallet and chisel.

Barney was not one for smalltalk, or for small kids pestering him, but I was fascinated, watching the progress from blank wood to terrifying tiki. Sometimes painted, sometimes not. What remains in memory, a flotsam carpet of woodchips, the sonorous chainsaw idle and whine, the resinous odor of carved wood left me with a lifelong urge to visit the mo'ai of Easter Island.

OTHER SAUSALITO BLOGGY BITS

You rarely got what you wanted at Juanita’s Galley, but you got a lot of it 

Gate Five

Tiki Totems

ALAN WATTS

Take Five, Dave!

Guys and Dolls

When I wrote this blogpost way back in 2007,  there was next to nothing on the Internet on Barney West. So I was going solely from memory. And a very young one at that. Then in 1/2023, Mike Moyle published this biography on Facebook, and I’m posting it here as a reference.

“I was doing some research the other day and happened across the 1981 obituary of Barney West of Tiki Junction that appears on the left.  I added a few pictures on the right that have previously been shared here.  

Barney and Tiki West were also the subject of a post by the Marin History Museum a couple of years ago that included the following comments that supplement the MarinScope story, most notably about being torpedoed in the South Pacific.  Fact or perhaps a tall tale?

“In the 1960’s, Sculptor Barney West created Tiki Junction in Sausalito located at Napa and Bridgeway Streets.  West grew up in Oakland via Seattle and started at UC Berkeley in Journalism. He left to join the Merchant Marines during WWII. It was during this time, his ship was torpedoed and he swam to a nearby island. Luckily, he was welcomed by friendly natives. During his six month stay before being rescued, he learned woodcarving. 

After the war, West settled near Corte Madera Creek living on an ark. Later, he moved to Sausalito in 1958 and established Tiki Junction in 1963 on a plot of land near Zack’s Restaurant. Most of the redwood used was salvaged after storms and donations from sawmills. Known as the ‘prickly wood carver’, West’s first client was Victor Bergeron, owner of the famed restaurant Trader Vics. West’s wood carvings are known in United States Polynesian restaurants and shopping centers, in addition to London, Cuba and Hawaii. At one point, West had five apprentices working with him producing 300 pieces a year.

Barney West died on April 7, 1981 at age 62 after a long illness. Yet, his wood carvings are still around and his legacy of being known for “redwood art” lives on…”

I remember Barney West. Another Sausalito bohemian luminary, Ale Ekstrom, worked with Barney. Ale is another story. Sterling Haydn had his fancy President's railroad car, once owned by Charles McCabe of the SF Chronicle, parked on the service track right up against Tiki Junction. Whoops, there's several more yarns... Frederick M Kahn