I stumbled upon a random tiki video on YouTube…
I’m always on the lookout for any tiki videos on YouTube and I found one. It was a video of someone giving a tour of their home tiki bar. You couldn’t see the person but you can hear the person talking about all the pieces that make up their bar. That person is GiGi and she’s from the UK. I was impressed with what I saw in that video but I noticed that there was more. Gigi made videos for each step on her build out and it was really cool to see the transformation. The name of the bar is The Kursed Piranha and here is how it all came to be…
What is the tiki scene like where you live?
GiGi- We live in London in the UK and I think it is true to say that the UK scene is very different to the USA. London has the highest concentration of Tiki Bars across the country, but the numbers are still quite small, with maybe eight bars in the capital and a total of 40 in the whole of the UK. Trader Vic’s was our closest bar but it sadly closed on New Year’s Day 2023. Many of the other Tiki bars here lack that immersive experience, but that being said, the home bar and online scene here is very vibrant, with the main Facebook groups being Tiki Bars UK and Kalana Mamao, both of which are friendly and welcoming.
Lock Down was a hard time, and we really took the fact we were stuck at home to really work on our last bar, which when we were still restricted on socializing 18 months later was an absolute sanity saviour! We don’t really have events equivalent to Tiki Oasis or Tiki Kon in the UK and Tiki events tend to be merged into other larger, rockabilly events such as the annual Hotrod Hayride, and it is also somewhat adjacent to the Classic VW scene here. An annual event is in the planning though as the scene is vibrant and growing! Apart from that, we have a few UK based Tiki mug and bar ware suppliers, clothing, carving and DIY material suppliers here in the UK, and of course eBay Ships internationally so we can cast the net far and wide when looking for loot. We don’t really have the same historic proximity to Tiki or the Polynesian Islands as the USA does, so we are usually VERY lucky to find artifacts at charity stores, car boot sales, estate / house clearance and antique shops, but the odd thing does crop up, often misnamed as African art. We do have a lot more New Zealand and Maori carvings here, which I think is probably due to our commonwealth links, similar to mainland USA’s history with Hawaii and Polynesia. My partner Brendan and I are gradually creating a little local scene with our non-Tiki friends and neighbours too, who quite often have no idea what Tiki is, until of course they step foot in the bar and then I will make them a Mai Tai and share a little about the history, next thing we know they’ve bought themselves an Aloha shirt and some decent rum!
What brought you into the tiki lifestyle and how long has it been part of your life?
GiGi- Like many others in their mid-forties, I went through a rite of passage to get me to Tiki, through other alternative scenes such as Goth and then Rockabilly, both of which I still really enjoy. I was also very into Middle Eastern (Belly) dance for over a decade, performing, teaching and generally obsessing over the music, costumes, culture and food. I would always perform with a flower in my hair, in a mainly classical style, and again many Belly Dancers learn Hula and Tahitian dance as a progression, or in parallel; myself included. This scene made sense to me and felt right, the escapism, immersion, music, clothing and aesthetic all felt familiar to me by the time I started to put together our first little Tiki bar about 12 years ago. I had bought myself a puffer fish table lamp (which sits on my side table to this day), and along with a couple of cheap fishing floats, a bamboo bar and a couple of Rattan sofas, the obsession began! Our bar has existed in four incarnations, each bigger and more immersive than the last, however only two of these bars have carried the Kursed Piranha namesake. My partner Brendan got into the Tiki scene when started dating, and he is not as obsessive as I am, but he really enjoys the cocktail making and socializing, and he looks pretty good in his shirt collection.
Can you give a little history of how it all came together?
GiGi- We moved to our current house in July 2022, leaving the old summerhouse Tiki bar in the old garden, as it was just too much effort to move It, and to be honest it was too small for us longer term at only 8 x 12 feet. So we started afresh, boxed up approximately 15-20 boxes of Tiki possessions and had a new 10×14 feet building put together at the bottom of our new garden. This was in Jan 2023 and then it took until July to get to the stage where we could start working on it. I have documented the process over four YouTube videos (@GirlTiki) and Instagram (TheKursedPiranha) but in short we had to get the room weather-proofed, electrified and then boarded out before we could really start the fun stuff!
We worked on it together (although I am the obsessive Tikiphile in our household) and Brendan was really helpful in much of the building work. I took a bit of annual leave but the rest was done in evenings and weekends, and we had a very clear plan in our heads about what would work in the new space. We didn’t have a full length bar in the old Tiki bar, so drink preparation was really restricted to the top of the vintage bar we have, so this time it was first on the list, along with some decent storage space and a full sized fridge and freezer rather than the small beer fridge we had previously. I also really wanted a swing chair in the corner and with an additional 46sq/ft of floor space, we knew we could fit it all in! Another thing I wanted to improve on was the ceiling, looking back, the ceiling in the old bar was pretty plain with only a handful of lamps and hanging ornaments, and a hessian cover on the boards. So this time around I made it very decorative, with lots of bamboo, beams, 20 lights and another 25+ hanging ornaments, and growing! The other big change in this version of the bar was adding a scene on the windows, of a tropical seascape with volcano, so we can truly take ourselves away to somewhere exotic without a row of London back gardens ruining the escapism.
Any story behind the name of your bar?
GiGi- Kursed Piranha (pronounced Kur-Sed) came to me when I was going through the Tiki Bar Name Generator app one day, and I kept generating names that felt like someone else may already have. I think because we are not 100% purist Tiki and probably explorer-themed (we have African and South American artifacts) I wanted to keep the name reflective of that, so I knew I wanted a Piranha in the title but I couldn’t quite get the first word right – Tipsy, Mystic and then finally the Kursed Piranha, deliberately Spelt with a K and pronounced in a sort of pirate way, like ‘Arrghhhh it be kurs’d’! We have two piranhas in the bar (one as a light feature and the other is made from a coconut) and of course there are lots of puffers and the odd angler fish in there too to keep them company.
What is your favorite Tiki drink?
GiGi- My favourite Tiki drink, aside from the Mai Tai, really depends on my mood but I do enjoy a Seyhorse and anything with either banana or coconut (or even better; both!). Brendan loves a Diablo, which we tend to add rum to rather than just tequila, and the Royal Daiquiri, but we tend to try a different cocktail each night we spend in the bar. We use a handful of books and online references, but the best source for us is Beachbum Berry’s Total Tiki app, we try to keep on top of updating our ingredients so know what we can make with what we have in stock
What is your favorite Tiki bar? Not including your own!
GiGi- My favourite Tiki bar is, or was Trader Vics for the ambience, decor and drinks. It had such a lovely old school vibe and the Hula Dancers I learned to dance with regularly performed there. I am very sad it is gone, but I do also feel the quality of service was a bit hit and miss there. We loved the brunches there on a Sunday, which included PuPu platters and bottomless Cocktails from a shorter drinks menu, and the service was always fantastic on those days. If we go to other bars such as Kona Kai – we tend to go earlier in the evening before it gets too crowded and the dance music starts. There are a few bars we are starting to visit and rate on our YouTube channel across 2024 under The Tiki Detectives label (under @GirlTiki), as we love the USA bar visits filmed a few of our favourite YouTubers such as Spike, The BossaNovas (and you of course) as well as Trader Doom’s Sip it or Skip it which has a great formula for rating public Tiki bars.
Outside of great drinks, what do you think are essential elements in creating the perfect Tiki environment?
GiGi- The perfect Tiki environment has to be fully immersive and stimulate all the senses. The music has to fit the vibe, whether it be full on Martin Denny or other exotica styles, even a little Middle Eastern (Misorlou!) or tribal music, the sound of a thunderstorm or a jungle has got to be better than pop, R&B or chart music for us. We also make sure our bar smells right, we have tropical fruit oil diffusers And coconut incense which smell beautiful in combination. Lighting is key, we have 27 lights in total but when they are all on, it is still very dark, moody yet colourful. It just wouldn’t be right with anything brighter, although four of our bulbs are smart so we can easily flip them to bright white if we need to do some maintenance, clean, or in Brendan’s case be able to read the question cards from a board game! We do not have a TV, but we have three smart speakers dotted around the bar, so we feel really immersed in the sound. We also think a single feature piece such as a painting, carving or light works well in a Tiki bar as a talking point, and for us we tied it into our bar name by creating our skeleton Piranha Porthole light. There should always be something to look at, including the ceiling, and we are also keen over next year to develop and then print out our own menu with our top drinks on it for our guests to choose. A Tiki space has got to be welcoming, it should draw you in to relax and socialize, and we know when we step foot into ours, close the doors and put on a playlist, we are instantly transported to our own exotic universe!
We are definitely not Tiki snobs or ‘gatekeepers’, and we are probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of what’s out there. For us seeing people enjoy their home bar space is the most important thing, just don’t ever ask ‘Is this Tiki?’ to the purists if you don’t want the brutal truth! We understand and appreciate authentic set ups, but we enjoy the fact that we do have some curios from other exotic locations around the world.
For me personally and as the only female in my household (even the dog is male!), I am also very proud to be part of an emerging woman-led Tiki aesthetic. Tiki Tom-Tom recently wrote an article following the publication of his book Polynesiacs, which talked about the lack of female Tiki bar owners, only 16% of the bars in his book were female owned/designed and I do feel sometimes that us women could feature a bit more in for example Youtube Tiki channels. I am excited to see that there are more of us popping up though and how this impacts on the style and design of our bars. I think there is definitely space for this aesthetic and for me this is reflected in my choices of fabrics, lighting, Tiki mugs and artwork, which I think if Brendan had led on collating, would definitely have a more masculine feel to it.
What does the future hold for you and your home tiki bar?
GiGi- Our bar was finished (as much as they ever are) we have welcomed Violets in May clothing to use it for their photoshoot, and the Pictures look amazing! We plan to hire out the space for filming and photo shoots, when the opportunities are right, and we love the idea of collaborating with Tiki brands that need a space to shoot in. We also have plans to ‘Tikify’ the rest of our back garden in spring, including a seating area outside the bar which we can then open up in to one large entertainment space. I am also now trying to save up for a pair of Marquesan Tikis from ‘Trader Tark’ to go either side of the doorway inside the bar, but that will be a little while into the future. So in the meantime we are focussing on expanding our rum collection.
