Jayme vs. Texas Tiki Week

This week, for those of you not paying close attention, was Texas Tiki Week. It's an annual fundraising event put on by the U.S. Bartender's Guild in Austin, but there are also scattered events in other Texas cities. They bring in cool guest speakers, have various seminars and there are lots of tiki popup events throughout the week.

I didn't go to most of that stuff. New Braunfels is close to Austin, but not that close. Late night parties aren't super-appealing when work awaits the next morning, not to mention getting kids to school. So we contented ourselves with making the mug release party at Lustre Pearl East, and Saturday I hit up the tiki marketplace (The Wife, sadly, had a wedding booked and couldn't make it). Lustre Pearl was fun, although the bartenders were not familiar with tiki cocktails and struggled a bit with the complex array of ingredients. That was beside the point, however. We were there for this year's tiki mug, seen to the right--a prickly pear cactus! It's a cool sculpt, and quite large. It's also my user-name on Tiki Central, so that's fun, too. We saw a lot of new tiki friends and had some good conversation before heading home.

I was looking forward to the Tiki Village Marketplace at Weather Up this morning. Worryingly, a tropical wave in the Gulf threatened to turn into a depression or storm much of the week. None of that actually happened, but there was a danger of massive downpours and flash flooding this morning. We got several inches of rain in New Braunfels which filled all the drainage with rushing water, but nothing dangerous. Thank goodness. When I arrived at Weather Up, the ground was pretty wet but the rain had moved on.

One of the first folks I ran into was Mike Hooker. Mike's the guy who guest bartended our party at the Lagoon of Mystery back in the spring. He and some partners are the minds behind Quiet Village, a traditional, old-school tiki bar they hope to open in Austin just as soon as they can negotiate a good lease. And they're not just pie-in-the-sky dreamers, either: They've invested nearly a year of serious prep, and had test mugs and Mai Tai glasses on display. It all looked very cool, and I can't wait for them to go into production so I can add them to my collection.

I saw a lot of other folks--Aloha Julie, Caroline Pupule, Jason the Boozy Doodler (an incredible tiki artist--check out his work on Instagram), Andrea Jagodzinski, Joe Tropicana, Sharon Jewel, Karl Holbert and others I'm sure I'm leaving out. It was fun. There was so much cool stuff from so many cool vendors on display. It's barely over and I'm ready for next year!

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