Tiki VIP #42 Jayme Blaschke – A Moment Of Tiki (A How-To Tiki Show)

It’s not hard to find cocktail how-to videos online. But what if you’re curious about how to work with bamboo or how to renew a rattan chair? Well, I have a show for you. It’s called A Moment of Tiki and the videos are top notch! Jayme Blaschke is the host of this incredible show and I’ll let him take it from here …

What is the tiki scene like where you live?

Jayme- It’s a work in progress. Texas was long a tiki wasteland, the golden era passed us by because of the state’s restrictive liquor laws, with Don the Beachcomber’s and Trader Vic’s not arriving until the 70s, when tiki was already in its death throes. The few home grown tiki restaurants in Texas were gone by then as well. Fortunately, Austin has a vibrant home bar scene and those Texas tikiphiles have reached out and welcomed my wife and I into the community.

As far as commercial bars go, Texas is finally catching up to the rest of the country. Houston has Lei Low, and to a lesser extent, Kanaloa. We love Lei Low because it has a great vibe and they’re serious about both tiki and cocktails. It’s great that every time we visit they’ve added more decor (although sometimes that decor tends to walk away. Whoever made off with that Shag print, not cool, man. Not cool at all). Arlington’s had Four Kahunas open up, and we’ve heard great things about that place, although we haven’t had a chance to visit yet. Dallas proper has Swizzle Luau Lounge scheduled to open at some point in the coming year, and Tarantula Tiki Lounge is slated to become the first dedicated tiki bar in Fort Worth since Ren Clark’s Polynesian Village. Austin has two places, Tiki Tatsu-Ya and Quiet Village, that have been trying to open for several years but keep running into setbacks. Personally, I’m most excited about Hugman’s Oasis, being built by the legendary Bamboo Ben on San Antonio’s famed River Walk. I’m trying to talk Ben into giving me a sneak peek for “A Moment of Tiki,” so we’ll see if anything comes of that. Needless to say, the corona virus pandemic has disrupted the schedules and operations of all the places listed above. Fingers crossed they navigate these challenging times safely.

As for my immediate community, that’s interesting. I live in New Braunfels, which is most famous for Wurstfest, a 10-day salute to sausage in the fall, and Schlitterbahn, one of the largest water parks in the world. You wouldn’t think that would be conducive to tiki, but as the craft cocktail scene finally takes hold in our little backwater, some of the local bartenders have developed an interest in tiki cocktails, and these drinks are making it onto menus. Jason Straughan, an amazing artist known in tiki circles as the Boozy Doodler [https://www.instagram.com/the_boozy_doodler/], lives a short distance from me and has a magnificent home bar, the Taboozy Lei. Another fantastic artist connected with the tiki scene, Nathanael Ross Smith [https://www.instagram.com/nathanaelrosssmith/], also moved here little more than a year ago, so clearly, we’re reaching some sort of critical mass!

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

Jayme- You’ve heard all those stories about how today’s tikiphiles were taken to Trader Vic’s when they were children and that made a lasting impression on them? Well, that wasn’t me. I grew up in rural Texas where we had both kinds of music: Country and Western. If we went out to eat, my family was strictly steak and potatoes. I mean, if the restaurant served parsley on the side as a garnish, that was too high-falutin’! No way would my folks have ever considered taking us to Donn’s or Vic’s, even if the closest outposts weren’t an hour away in Houston. I didn’t visit Disneyland until I was a senior in college. Yes, I thought the Enchanted Tiki Room was cute, but the Haunted Mansion made a much bigger impression on me at the time.

I’ve always been an adventurous eater and enjoy travel to explore other countries, but I never thought of tiki as something that existed outside of the 1950s, Gilligan’s Island notwithstanding. About 5 years ago now, we moved into a new house that had a swimming pool surrounded by palm trees and a long-covered patio. It was crazy tropical, a veritable oasis. We still can’t get over our good fortune. Every other place we’d lived had been too small to entertain more than a couple guests at a time, and now we suddenly had a place that begged to have large crowds of friends over. So, in 2016, we’re floating in the pool and my wife, Lisa, says, “You know, what this place really needs is a tiki bar.” Okay, I can build a tiki bar. I went online and looked up bar plans, made some custom tweaks to the designs I found and by August we had an outdoor bar. Mind you, I still didn’t know that tiki culture was an actual thing at the time. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, then for some reason I can’t remember, I Googled “Home Tiki Bars” and discovered the home bar forum on Tiki Central. Needless to say, my jaw dropped at the amazing builds I found there. I looked at my sad little stand-alone bar and realized I seriously needed to raise my game. That’s how the Lagoon of Mystery, my home bar, was born. It’s been down the rabbit hole ever since.

By happy coincidence, Lisa is a professional photographer with a keen interest in boudoir, burlesque and pin-up. If you draw up a Venn diagram of subcultures that overlap with tiki, those are right up there at the top. She’s developed a great relationship with the Jigglewatts [http://www.thejigglewattsburlesque.com/] out of Austin, and surprise, surprise, that troupe’s membership has a keen interest in tiki! It seems that tiki is nearly invisible until you become aware of it, but once you do, it’s something you notice everywhere.

Can you tell us about what your show A Moment Of Tiki is all about? What made you decide to start making videos?

Jayme- When I started working on the Lagoon of Mystery, that is, turning that covered patio and pool area into a fully immersive tiki experience, I decided I would document my efforts and share them on my blog as a build-along [https://jlbgibberish.blogspot.com/search/label/build-along] and sharing selections to Tiki Central (my Tiki Central name is “Prikli Pear,” mainly because all the good pun names were already taken). David Phantomatic from San Antonio saw my posts and asked me to guest on his show, “Marooned: A Texas Tiki Podcast” [https://maroonedpodcast.podomatic.com/]. Ever since, he’s been low-key after me to launch my own home tiki bar build podcast. I never thought that would work well, because it’s hard to covey such visual cues in a purely audio context, but after watching “Tiki With Ray” and “BossaNova Life,” I started thinking a YouTube channel might be a viable option. I started filming some of my projects with the idea I might put together a show someday. Then the pandemic lockdown happened, and I said to myself, “No time like the present.”

Ostensibly, “A Moment of Tiki” is about the different techniques and approaches I use for my home tiki bar build. I quickly discovered several problems with that: 1) a lot of the transformative work that turned a generic patio into the Lagoon of Mystery had been completed before I started filming, and 2) I don’t work linearly. I don’t start and complete a project in a weekend. I have a minimum of 3-4 projects going at any one point in time, and with my time thus divided, it takes me months and months to finish any single thing. So, my core episodes are focused on various builds and projects like prepping bamboo, making baseboards, etc. But other episodes can run the gamut of tiki and tiki-adjacent subjects. I’ve got a review of Martin & Rebecca Cate’s “Smuggler’s Cove” in one episode. I make passion fruit syrup in another. I have some feijoa bushes in my yard, otherwise known as pineapple guava. They have an edible flower that has a spicy, cinnamon-ginger taste, so I have an episode where I make a feijoa flower-infused rum. The subject matter’s whatever catches my imagination. I like to say “I make the mistakes so you don’t have to.” I try to keep it fun and relevant for those who’ve been involved with tiki for a long time, but also accessible for newcomers, who like me, come to this subculture with wide eyes and lots of questions.

What is your favorite Tiki drink?

Jayme- Man, that’s not a fair question! My tastes and cravings change regularly. I love a well-made Three Dots and a Dash. An Eastern Sour with a good rye can be sublime. I find myself making Martin Cate’s Kaiteur Swizzle regularly of late. When I visit a new-to-me tiki bar, I like to ask, “What can I get here that I can’t get anywhere else?” But if I absolutely have to pick just one cocktail as my favorite, I’d have to go with a Chief Lapu Lapu. That was the first cocktail I ordered when I visited Hale Pele some years ago, and it rocked my world. Lisa and I had visited a number of so-called “tiki bars” over the previous year, really wanting to get into tiki culture, but each experience had been, “Meh.” If I’m being honest, “Meh” is way too generous. We’d been in Hale Pele all of 30 seconds when we looked at each other and said, “Oh. This is what the big deal is all about.” So that Chief Lapu Lapu has stuck with me. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a sucker for passion fruit.

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

Jayme- I think I’ve pretty much already answered this, haven’t I? Hale Pele will always have a special place in my heart. We also visit Lei Low any time we’re in Houston. I should point out that the Mai Kai far and away outstrips any of the modern bars, but then again, the Mai Kai isn’t just a tiki bar. It’s a vestige of a bygone era we’ll never see the likes of again, and a 1:1 comparison isn’t fair to anyone. The Mai Kai is the Mai Kai, and then there’s everything else.

What does the future hold for you and your tiki show?

Jayme- I launched with weekly episodes, because I had the time and the content. I’m not a professional videographer or sound editor, so I was teaching myself as I went along. I hope my more recent episodes are a bit more polished than the early ones. But I quickly realized that my publication pace was unsustainable. My original concept was to do a monthly show, and that’s what I’m committed to now. The first Monday of each month should see a new Moment of Tiki drop, although if time and opportunity permit, I reserve the right to release bonus episodes outside of that schedule.

A Moment of Tiki episodes can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7CNDuQ2d3BN59llP7ICa-w

I maintain a Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/amomentoftiki/

My Lagoon of Mystery build-along blog entries may be found at https://jlbgibberish.blogspot.com/search/label/build-along

I also maintain an Instagram account, Lagoon of Mystery, at https://www.instagram.com/lagoonofmystery/

My wife’s pin-up and boudoir photography, Secrets By Miss Lisa, may be found at https://www.instagram.com/secretsbymisslisa/ and https://www.instagram.com/secretsbymisslisa/