In the fall of 1998, Hurricane Georges tore through the Florida Keys, leaving behind toppled trees and damaged homes. Wesley Wing had traveled south with his soon-to-be wife to help repair her family’s property when an evening around a bonfire unexpectedly altered the course of his life.
“We were drunk one night, and by a fire,” Wing told the Catalyst at his Gulfport studio. “I carved my first tiki with a little hatchet.”
Before heading home to St. Petersburg, Wing loaded a fallen log into the trunk of his car.
He carved another tiki when he returned and planted it in the yard outside his home on 22nd Avenue North.
As Hurricane Georges slowly approached Tampa Bay, friends gathered at the house for what became a days-long hurricane party. Then the storm stalled offshore, weakened and turned away. “Everybody was like, ‘Wow, you put the tiki there,’” Wing said. “They said, ‘You shut down the hurricane.’”
He laughed at the coincidence, but left the carving where it stood. Soon, strangers walking past the house began knocking on the door.
“Can I buy that?”
“Okay, sure,” Wing remembered replying.
At the time, Wing worked as a documentary filmmaker and director of photography. Tiki carving was something he did for fun. “They looked bad back then,” he said of those first carvings. “They were ugly.”
People bought them anyway.
Today, Wing no longer has to leave a single tiki in his front yard to attract customers. At the corner of First Avenue North and 34th Street in St. Petersburg, towering eight-foot tikis grin at passing traffic from an outdoor display for TikiMondo, his Gulfport-based business that creates custom tiki carvings, bars, furniture and tropical installations throughout the Tampa Bay area. His phone number hangs in plain sight, inviting curious drivers to pull over and wander through the rows of hand-carved figures.
Wing estimates that after three decades of craftsmanship, he has carved close to 10,000 tiki figures. His work can be found throughout the Tampa Bay area, including hand-carved wooden figures at Pier Teaki atop the St. Pete Pier. His business has expanded beyond traditional tiki figures to include custom bars, palm-thatched cabanas, furniture and large-scale tree carvings.
He has also spent years teaching apprentices, introducing others to the craft that unexpectedly became his livelihood.
While many people associate tiki culture with tropical cocktails and beach bars, historian Tim “Swanky” Glazner said today’s movement is built just as much around craftsmanship and community.
READ MORE: Vintage St. Pete: Aloha from beautiful, exotic Tiki Gardens
Modern tiki culture, he explained, traces its roots to the 1930s, when Polynesian-inspired restaurants and elaborate rum cocktails became popular in the United States. After fading through the 1970s and 1980s, it has experienced a revival over the past two decades.
“It really took off in the last 10 or 15 years,” Glazner said.
He said enthusiasts now travel around the country visiting commercial tiki bars and elaborate backyard bars built by homeowners themselves. As many of the companies that once manufactured tiki décor disappeared, hobbyists began teaching themselves woodworking, carving and construction.
“A lot of people making some really amazing stuff… started as hobbyists,” Glazner said. Some eventually turned those hobbies into full-time careers.
Wing’s career followed much the same path.
His Gulfport workshop today is filled with chainsaws, grinders, unfinished carvings and stacks of lumber waiting to become bars, tables or sculptures. Cedar, sable palm, oak and other woods all find their way into his projects. Over the years, his carving style has evolved from simple faces cut with straight lines into increasingly intricate work.
As his reputation spread, customers began asking him to carve more than tikis.
When Anthony De Lucia Jr. and his wife lost a nearly century-old oak tree in their Largo yard, they struggled with what to do next.
“When we found out it was only a few dollars more to turn it into art than it was to grind it down, the decision was obvious,” De Lucia said.
Over several months, Wing transformed the stump into an ocean-themed sculpture featuring sea turtles emerging from the trunk, jellyfish descending along the sides and starfish carved into the exposed roots.
Today, De Lucia said, people regularly stop in front of the house to admire it.
For many of Wing’s customers, however, the carvings themselves are only part of the attraction.
More than a decade ago, Sharon and Nick Touchton hired Wing to build pieces for what would eventually become a backyard retreat. It started with carved tiki supports beneath an outdoor counter. Over the years, the project grew to include a tiki hut, custom woodwork and a towering Neptune sculpture rising from the water.
The space became more than a backyard. “Our house was the normal party house,” Touchton said.
Friends knew they didn’t need an invitation. Sometimes families gathered around the pool. Other weekends, adults lingered beneath the tiki hut late into the evening.
“We had an open-ended invitation at all times,” Touchton said. “We wouldn’t even be home sometimes and people would be stopping by to go swimming in our pool, sit underneath the tiki.”
Over time, the backyard became less a place than a tradition of its own.
“It keeps you alive.”
