Some people walked into the museum. Their eyes were instantly drawn to our group. They made a point to look at all of us, making sure not to stare too long at Elliot, clearly something difficult to do. Invariably their eyes lingered on the wheelchair, the oxygen bottle, the mask, and then on Elliot. The faces of the people spoke loudly: My God, look at that poor man. He looks like he’s dying. Isn’t that so sad?
I smiled as my eyes went from Elliot to them and back to Elliot again. I smiled because I knew better.
The lost Tiki palaces of Detroit
by Michael Zadoorian
Woodward Avenue
I was on the bus, heading down Woodward Avenue. We had just stopped at West Grand Boulevard and I craned my neck to check out the former site of the Mauna Loa. I probably do this once a week on the bus on my way to work. I try to imagine how the place must have looked there in the New Center: a massive Polynesian temple, its thatched A-frame entryway flanked by flaming torches and swaying winter-proof palm trees on a gently rippling man-made lagoon — nestled amongst the cathedrals of twentieth-century V-8 Hydromatic Commerce, just across the street from where they decided the pitiful fate of the Corvair.
I have an extensive collection of Tiki mugs. My rarest are from the Mauna Loa. I own the Polynesian Pigeon, a section of ceramic bamboo with an exotic bird for a handle. Also the Baha Lana, an ebony Tiki head sticking his tongue out at the drinker. Both say Design by Mauna Loa Detroit on the bottom.
There were high hopes for the place. It was to be the largest South Seas supper club of its kind in the Midwest. (Second only to the majestic Kahiki of Columbus, Ohio, now fallen to the wrecking ball since greedy owners sold to Walgreen’s.) Over two million dollars were spent on this paradisiacal bastion of splendor, a lot of money in the late ’60s.
There were five different dining rooms at the Mauna Loa (Tonga, Papeete, Bombay, Lanai, and one other that I forget), as well as the lavish Monkey Bar, which featured a Lucite bar-top with 1,25 °Chinese coins embedded in it and tables made from brass hatch covers from trading schooners. A waterfall scurried down a mountainette of volcanic lava into a grotto lush with palm trees and flaming Tikis. The waiters wore Mandarin jackets and turbans as they served you.
The Mauna Loa opened in August of 1967. Barely a month after the worst race riot in Detroit’s history. It lasted not quite two years.
“I’m invisible!”
That’s what the homeless man on the bus kept saying. He boarded at West Grand Boulevard and none of us dared look at him. But then you never look anyone in the eye on the bus. All gazes are cast peripherally, on the down-low. With the homeless man, we simply examined the air around him. Even the bus driver, a large man, blue-black and stoic, who never says more than a word or two to anyone as they board, looked away as the guy paid his fare. We all knew someone got on, but we weren’t sure who it was. He could be smelled but not seen. The homeless man must have walked down the aisle defiantly, as if daring anyone to say something to him.
“That’s right! I’m invisible!”
What could we say? We had all looked away. We had made him invisible.
I was pretty sure that he was sitting three aisles up from me on the other side. The bus wasn’t nearly as full as it usually was on a Monday — President’s Day or some such nonsense. I kept my eyes on my newspaper, but they kept straying out the window searching for landmarks, lost ones as well as those still standing. I gazed upon a beautiful old abandoned factory from the ’20s, with a sign that read: AMERICAN BEAUTY ELECTRIC IRONS.
I kept my ears open. I felt the homeless man’s eyes on me. I wanted to look, but didn’t want him to catch me looking because I wasn’t sure what he would say. When I felt his eyes leave me, I glanced forward into the bus, at the spaces around him.
A little boy, about two years old, sitting in the seat in front of him, was the only one who truly acknowledged the homeless man’s existence. The little boy looked over the back of the seat at the homeless man, and started playing peek-a-boo with him. The man cracked a bitter half-smile at the child.
Then he said it again: “I’m invisible!”
I was frankly kind of impressed that the guy would say something like this. I don’t expect a homeless guy on the bus to say such things, strange and existential — an awl to the heart. It made me think, He understands his condition. I thought about Ralph Ellison.
The homeless guy looked around and repeated it yet again, as he peered around at the rest of us on the bus.
The bus driver turned, scowled, but said nothing.
I glanced away just before the homeless man saw me looking. He knew I had looked. Luckily, the child distracted him again. When I turned back, I saw him smile again at the child, wider this time, a grisly green and yellow smile, the school colors of the university we were now passing.
Then the child’s mother, reading her own paper, realized what was going on. She sat the little boy straight down in his seat, flashing a harsh glance behind her.
This set the man off. His gestures suddenly grew more animated. It was if he had decided he would show us what an invisible homeless man on a city bus could do. He pointed out the window at a young woman in a short skirt and yelled to everyone in the bus: “Look at the titties on her! Lookit those titties! Let me off!”
The bus didn’t stop. Everybody stayed quiet. An older man across the aisle from me sighed and looked out the window. A cane was leaned against the empty seat next to him.
As we continued down Woodward, we approached the Fox Theatre. A block or two behind it, down Montcalm, I could catch a glimpse of the old Chin Tiki. By all rights, I should not have been able to see three blocks behind a major building to spot another, but behind the Fox, save for a fire station and an abandoned party store, there are mostly empty fields, now used for parking for the new stadiums, baseball and football, on the east side of Woodward. For that moment, I could see the Chin Tiki’s Polynesian façade, its doorway arched and pointed, the shape of hands praying. To whom? Some great invisible Tiki God? Perhaps Chango: God of fire, lightning, force, war, and virility.
That would be a good guess. For Marvin Chin actually opened his Tiki bar when the riots were going on, around the same time as the Mauna Loa. Fires were everywhere in the city then, but not at the Chin Tiki. It would survive to become quite the popular place. Our parents ate there (when they dared venture downtown), as well as the stars: Streisand, DiMaggio, Muhammad Ali.
It held on until 1980, when it too closed up. But unlike the Mauna Loa, which suffered an ignoble end as a lowly seafood restaurant that eventually burned to the ground, the Chin Tiki was simply shuttered, all its Tiki treasures packed up and mothballed inside. To this day, it is still sealed up, a Tiki tomb of Tutankhamen, still owned by the Chin family, who are supposedly waiting it out, waiting for the inevitable gentrification. It will happen. Or it will become another parking lot. In the meantime, the place had a brief resurrection when Eminem used it to film a scene for 8 Mile.
Chango works in mysterious ways.
“Hey, white man!”
Without thinking, I turn and look at the homeless man. Apparently, I’m not so invisible to him.
“What you doing here?”
Everyone on the bus is obliquely looking at me now. I have to say something.
“I’m going to work,” I reply coolly.