As another cold and rainy winter sets in, a reminder of warmer times recently arrived in Felton.
On Nov. 26, Pat “Tiki King” Baron opened Tiki King’s Ukuleles of Felton, a retail outlet for his hand-carved instruments.
The ukulele — a Hawaiian word roughly translated as “jumping flea” — is an islander interpretation of the four-string, guitar-like instruments Portuguese immigrants took to the islands in the 1800s.
Baron, a self-taught ukulele player and maker, said he first tried to learn to play on “a $12 party favor.”
He became enamored with the diminutive stringed instrument and has since released three solo albums and created 15 ukulele designs for the Magic Fluke Co., a high-end ukulele maker based in Massachusetts.
Each ukulele takes about 30 hours to create and often requires delicate work with an Exacto knife to create the carved details.
Baron also creates his own tiki figures, carving them from wood or creating molds to cast them in resin. The little statues are based on carvings of deities used to protect sacred places in native Polynesian cultures.
Baron, a lifelong San Lorenzo Valley resident, said his adopted moniker had its origins in the early 1990s, when he and his wife were on their honeymoon. The newlyweds stayed in a rental house and wanted to leave a small tiki figure in hopes it would still be there for a future visit.
“It was then we realized that there really wasn’t anywhere to find a tiki,” Baron said. “So I made up a catalog of my drawings of tiki merchandise and gave it to my friends — and as a joke called it ‘Tiki King’s.’”
Soon after, the mock catalog began getting not only responses but also orders.
“That was when I started thinking I had better actually make these things,” Baron said.
Baron began marketing his ukuleles and tikis on the Internet in 1996 and decided that it was time to open a physical shop several weeks ago, when his friend told him about an open storefront in Felton.
“I was at New Leaf with my wife, and I mentioned the open storefront to her,” Baron said. “She said, ‘Well, let’s go and take a look,’ and three weeks later, we opened.”
Baron said the store’s soft opening on Black Friday led to a sort of impromptu ukulele jam session on the big deck outside the store as many local ukulele enthusiasts came out of the woodwork to visit.
The goal of his store, Baron said, is to promote acceptance of the ukulele as a legitimate instrument, rather than a sort of fad novelty.
While most of the merchandise for sale is created by Baron, he pointed out several other ukuleles that were made by other local luthiers.
The ukuleles range in price from $25 to more than $2,000, Baron said.
“There is something for all grades and seriousness of players,” he added.
