For decades, homemade “Polynesian” food meant ghastly suburban gastronomy: Charred meat in sticky, salty marinades, soggy coconut battered, deep fried shrimp, and neon-colored fruity rum drinks–perfectly, nay desperately, suited for washing down broiled rumaki–bastardized versions of the recipes created by master mixologists like Joe Scialom and Don Beach. But by the mid-1980s, underground culture hunters had discovered and fallen in love with tiki via the music of Martin Denny and vintage clothing, a fantasy detour on the path carved by punk. These adventurers set to work revitalizing the style.

A unique art show runs August 19 through 22 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in San Diego featuring 25 artists renown in tiki and lowbrow/pop surrealism circles Heather Watts, Tim Biskup, DEVO’s Mark Motherbaugh, Isabel Samarasa, Crazy Al Evans, Claudette Barjoud aka Miss Fluff, Ken Ruzic/Little Lost Tiki, Derek Yaniger, Jason Rodgers and Mia Rodgers, and Ken Ruzic/Little Lost Tiki who’ve created works using plaster casts of women’s torsos–including burlesque artists and tiki aficionados as their inspiration and canvases–to raise awareness in the alt/underground scene about breast cancer prevention and detection.