Home Tiki Bar Spotlight #58 Twa-Wal-Kut’s Rocking Jellyfish Lounge, Gig Harbor WA

Somewhere hidden in Heidi and Stephen’s Mid-century modern home you’ll find their tiki bar, the Twa-Wal-Kut’s Rocking Jellyfish Lounge, a beautiful modern-style tiki bar! I’ve been sworn to secrecy on how to get inside. Here is Heidi and Stephen’s story …

What brought you into the ‘Tiki lifestyle’ and how long has it been a part of your life?

All the pieces were there: we had two incredible Shag tiki prints, a number of tiki mugs, two fezzes, Aloha shirts, used to frequent Tiki Ti, got a taste of Maori culture through visits to New Zealand, and appreciated the décor of the 1950s and 1960s. According to Heidi, when Steve returned from his first time attending Tiki Kon, in 2018, everything about the tiki lifestyle seemed to click.

Can you give a little history of how it all came together?

When we purchased our Gig Harbor home early in 2018, we decided to decorate the home’s existing bar.  We wanted to combine a number of elements.  We wanted to feature art and decoration from around the Pacific, including the South Pacific as well as local art from the Pacific Northwest – as we say, “from PNG to the PNW.”

In addition, we like cartoon-influenced art, including “pop surrealism”, that is, Lowbrow Art. We wanted to show off various funky pieces, because, as another of our household sayings goes: “Nothing says class like a monkey with a fez.”

In addition, we wanted to add a look and feel from the mid-1960s – including our 1962 Seattle and 1964 New York World’s fair glasses, and pictures from that era.  We also put up a bulletin board over the sink for these pictures and miscellaneous stuff – from artistic tarot cards to personal items.

Although we probably have too many design elements, by looking at tiki as a jumping off point, we tried to incorporate all these elements and tie them together with a jungle and underwater vibe to the Lounge.

Any story behind the name of your bar? 

To the local tribe inhabiting Gig Harbor, it was known as Twa-Wal-Kut (also with the awkward English spelling of Tua’wILkel), according to the Gig Harbor Historical Society.  The “Rocking Jellyfish” sounds like a bar where hair band fans come to eat seafood, or a dude ranch on the SpongeBob SquarePants show. But really it reflects the rocking chairs on one side of our modest-sized Lounge …

And the floating stained-glass jellyfish on the other side …

What is your favorite Tiki drink?

Having a sweet tooth and liking coconut, a Trade Winds with rum. False Idol in San Diego also makes an interesting variation with lychee, one of Steve’s favorite fruits in cocktails.

What is your favorite Tiki bar? Not including your own! 

As a neighborhood haunt with great drinks, you can’t beat Devil’s Reef.

For décor, our favorite is Pacific Seas in downtown Los Angeles.  First, it’s in Clifton’s cafeteria, whose entry has the amazing feeling of a Santa Cruz, California forest.  Whether or not Disneyland was influenced by Clifton’s, it remains a unique place to visit in the heart of LA’s Broadway Theater district. Second, the speakeasy entrance to get to Pacific Seas adds to the drama.  And, third, Bamboo Ben outdid himself on the look and feel – embracing pieces (including an entire boat) from other defunct Tiki establishments.  Get there when they open to wander in wonder.

But, like a lot of people, we will always have a soft spot for Tiki Ti.  It’s hard to put your finger on it, but it could be the small size, the eclectic bric-a-brac, the family staff, the patrons, Ray’s Mistake … for six years we lived less than two miles away from Tiki Ti.  And even today, when visiting Los Angeles, nothing is better than checking out both Tiki Ti and our favorite art gallery – the nearby La Luz de Jesus gallery in the shopping paradise that is Soap Plant + Wacko.

Outside of great drinks, what do you think are essential elements in creating the perfect Tiki environment?

Bamboo Ben says “no white walls.”  That influenced, and later became a running joke between us and our (excellent) home contractor, who had never built such a home bar – or anything quite like this.

Then there is the lighting paradox: The more lights the better, while the darker the better. We depart from tradition by using track lighting and keeping our small gallery walls less dark to show off the prints and carvings.

Outside of those two rules, there are no rules.  We wanted our bar to be iconoclastic, to be fun.  The guiding principle was simple: if it put smiles on our faces or felt right to us, we put it in the Lounge.  So not everyone visiting is probably going to like everything.  But we hope everyone will find some things they really like.  We also learned to relax and not worry if all the decorations and art were sufficiently “Tiki.”  It reflects our weird tastes, and that’s the beauty of a home bar.

As for music, we also take a bit of a contrarian approach.  Steve plays songs he likes, even if not strictly tiki.  The current playlist is more upbeat than most Exotica – with Latin, surf, international, and lounge music.  Steve also throws in just a few songs from his favorite alternative bands (Pixies, They Might Be Giants, Loud Family, X, Talking Heads).  Steve’s also a sucker for covers of pop songs in a rock, jazz, lounge, or surf style – it’s his musical equivalent of a Deep-Fried Twinkie.

Finally, every so often we want to have two to 10 guests with some common interest – even if they don’t know each other – to hang out and while away an afternoon or evening in a relaxed, fun place.  And it doesn’t hurt if they are willing guinea pigs for Steve’s experiments and misadventures in bartending.

What does the future hold for you and your home tiki bar?

We hope to get postcards, art cards, and decals under the glass countertop of the bar itself someday.  We also hope to figure out a seating area for our dog, Junior Joey, seen in this post in the role of the little Tiki Dude.  Although the Lounge is new as of May 2019, we will have to add shelves as we acquire more stuff.  We’re also looking out for more PNW native carvings and hope someday to find and afford a 4 or 5-foot PNW totem pole.

Anything else you would like to add?

Support artists you like!  Thanks to etsy.com and the Internet, there are fantastic prints and posters – most at reasonable prices – that you can collect.  Anyone wanting a list of the artists contributing to our bar, please message us through Instagram (@sjcurran1).

And a tip of the fez to you, Ray, for this blog.  We learned a lot from other bars featured here, and this site has helped us to enjoy the ride, to get into the tiki culture and community, without stressing about one right way to do tiki. Enjoy the drinks, atmosphere, and people!