Key West Lobster Buoy Artist
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Key West Lobster Buoy Artist
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Artist Born for this time, Lived on a landfill as a child. Reuse Became the way of life. To read the story from the inception of the Name Hong Kong Willie. Famed, by the humble statements from the Key West Citizen, viable art from reuse has found its time. To Live a life in the art world and be so blessed to make a social impact. Artists are to give back, talent is to tell a story, to make change. Reuse is a life experience.
USED KEY WEST LOBSTER BUOYS FOR SALE
KEY WEST USED LOBSTER BUOYS
KEY WEST USED LOBSTER BUOYS
Buoy Tree in Tampa Florida
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Hong Kong Willie USF INTERVIEW
Here is a Few Articles On
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Key West Lobster Buoy Artist
Hong Kong Willie
John 3:16
King James Version (KJV)
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
New Tampa Patch
By Tristram DeRoma
The Story Behind the Eye-Catching Art at I-75 Exit 266 Tampa Florida
Key West Lobster Buoy Artist Joe Brown, better known as "Hong Kong Willie," makes art with a message at his home/studio near I-75 Exit 266 Tampa Florida.
Sometimes, it’s the smallest experiences that have the biggest impact on a person’s life.
While attending an art class in 1958 at the age of 8, Tampa folk artist Joe Brown recalled being mesmerized by the lesson. It involved transforming a Gerber baby bottle into a piece of art.
“The Gerber bottle had no intrinsic value at all,” he said. “But when (the instructor) got through with me that day, she made me see how something so (valueless) can be valuable.”
By the time class was over, Brown learned many other lessons, too, such as the importance of volunteerism, recycling, reuse and giving back to the community. He recalled being impressed by the teacher's volunteer work in Hiroshima, Japan, helping atomic bomb survivors.
"One of the last words she ever spoke to me about that was, ‘When I left, I left out of Hong Kong,’ ” he said. After turning that over in his young brain for awhile, he decided to use it in a nickname, adding the name “Willie” a year later.
You've probably seen Hong Kong Willie's eye-catching home/gallery/studio at Fletcher Avenue and Interstate 75. But what is the story of the man behind all those buoys and discarded objects turned into art?
Brown practiced his creative skills through his younger years. But as an adult, he managed to amass a small fortune working in the materials management industry. By the the '80s, he left the business world and decided to concentrate on his art. He spent some years in the Florida Keys honing his craft and building his reputation as a folk artist. He also bought some land in Tampa near Morris Bridge Road and Fletcher Avenue where he and his family still call home.
Brown purchased the land just after the entrances and exits to I-75 were built. He said he was once offered more than $1 million for the land by a restaurant. He turned it down, he said, preferring instead to make part of the property into a studio and gallery for the creations he and his family put together.
And all of it is made of what most people would consider “trash.” Pieces of driftwood, burlap bags, doll heads, rope — anything that comes Brown’s way becomes part of his vocabulary of expression, and, in turn, becomes something else, which makes a tour of his property somewhat of a visual adventure. What at first seems like a random menagerie of glass, driftwood and pottery suddenly comes together in one's brain to form something completely different. One moment nothing, the next a powerful statement about 9/11.
One Man's Trash ...
Trash? There is no such thing, Brown seems to say through his art.
He keeps a blog about his art at hongkongwillie.blogspot.com. He also sells his creations through the Website Etsy.com.
In his shop, he has fashioned many smaller items out of driftwood, burlap bags and other materials into signs, purses, totes, bird feeder hangars and yard sculptures.
He sells a lot to the regular influx of University of South Florida parents and students every year who are are at first intrigued by the “buoy tree” and the odd-looking building they see as they take Exit 266 off I-75.
Brown Sells More Than Art
Of course, the real locals know Brown’s place for the quality of his worms.
If there’s one thing that Brown knows does well in the ground, it’s the Florida redworm, something he enthusiastically promotes, selling the indigenous species to customers for use in their compost piles. Some of his customers say his worms are just as good at the end of a fishing hook, though.
“To be honest, what made me come here is that they had scriptures on the top of his bait cans,” said customer John Brin. “Plus, they have good service. They’re nice and they’re kind, and they treat you like family.”
Though Brin knows Brown sells them mostly for composting, he said they are great for catching blue gill, sand perch and other local favorites. He also added that he likes getting his worms from Brown “because his bait stays alive longer than any other baits I’ve used.”
For prices and amounts, he has another blog dedicated just to worms.
Of course, many people also stop by to buy the smaller pieces of art that he and his family create: purses made of burlap, welcome signs made of driftwood, planters and other items lining the walls of his store.
He’s also helped put his mark on the decor of local establishments too, such as Gaspar’s Patio, 8448 N. 56th st.
Owner Jimmy Ciaccio said that when it came time to redecorate the restaurant several years ago, there was only one person to call for the assignment, and that was his good friend Brown.
"I’ve known Joe all my life, and we always had a good chemistry together,” Ciaccio said. "He’s very creative and fun to be around, and that’s how it all came about.”
Ciaccio says he still gets compliments all the time for the restaurant’s atmosphere he created using the “trash” supplied by Brown. He describes the style as a day at the beach, like a visit to Old Key West. “They’re so inspired, they want to decorate their own homes this way,” he said.
It’s that kind of testimony that makes Brown feel good, knowing that others, too, are inspired to create instead of throw away when they see his work. He simply lets his work speak for itself.
“Somebody once told me to keep telling the story and they will keep coming," he said, "and they always do."
While attending an art class in 1958 at the age of 8, Tampa folk artist Joe Brown recalled being mesmerized by the lesson. It involved transforming a Gerber baby bottle into a piece of art.
“The Gerber bottle had no intrinsic value at all,” he said. “But when (the instructor) got through with me that day, she made me see how something so (valueless) can be valuable.”
By the time class was over, Brown learned many other lessons, too, such as the importance of volunteerism, recycling, reuse and giving back to the community. He recalled being impressed by the teacher's volunteer work in Hiroshima, Japan, helping atomic bomb survivors.
"One of the last words she ever spoke to me about that was, ‘When I left, I left out of Hong Kong,’ ” he said. After turning that over in his young brain for awhile, he decided to use it in a nickname, adding the name “Willie” a year later.
You've probably seen Hong Kong Willie's eye-catching home/gallery/studio at Fletcher Avenue and Interstate 75. But what is the story of the man behind all those buoys and discarded objects turned into art?
Brown practiced his creative skills through his younger years. But as an adult, he managed to amass a small fortune working in the materials management industry. By the the '80s, he left the business world and decided to concentrate on his art. He spent some years in the Florida Keys honing his craft and building his reputation as a folk artist. He also bought some land in Tampa near Morris Bridge Road and Fletcher Avenue where he and his family still call home.
Brown purchased the land just after the entrances and exits to I-75 were built. He said he was once offered more than $1 million for the land by a restaurant. He turned it down, he said, preferring instead to make part of the property into a studio and gallery for the creations he and his family put together.
And all of it is made of what most people would consider “trash.” Pieces of driftwood, burlap bags, doll heads, rope — anything that comes Brown’s way becomes part of his vocabulary of expression, and, in turn, becomes something else, which makes a tour of his property somewhat of a visual adventure. What at first seems like a random menagerie of glass, driftwood and pottery suddenly comes together in one's brain to form something completely different. One moment nothing, the next a powerful statement about 9/11.
One Man's Trash ...
Trash? There is no such thing, Brown seems to say through his art.
He keeps a blog about his art at hongkongwillie.blogspot.com. He also sells his creations through the Website Etsy.com.
In his shop, he has fashioned many smaller items out of driftwood, burlap bags and other materials into signs, purses, totes, bird feeder hangars and yard sculptures.
He sells a lot to the regular influx of University of South Florida parents and students every year who are are at first intrigued by the “buoy tree” and the odd-looking building they see as they take Exit 266 off I-75.
Brown Sells More Than Art
Of course, the real locals know Brown’s place for the quality of his worms.
If there’s one thing that Brown knows does well in the ground, it’s the Florida redworm, something he enthusiastically promotes, selling the indigenous species to customers for use in their compost piles. Some of his customers say his worms are just as good at the end of a fishing hook, though.
“To be honest, what made me come here is that they had scriptures on the top of his bait cans,” said customer John Brin. “Plus, they have good service. They’re nice and they’re kind, and they treat you like family.”
Though Brin knows Brown sells them mostly for composting, he said they are great for catching blue gill, sand perch and other local favorites. He also added that he likes getting his worms from Brown “because his bait stays alive longer than any other baits I’ve used.”
For prices and amounts, he has another blog dedicated just to worms.
Of course, many people also stop by to buy the smaller pieces of art that he and his family create: purses made of burlap, welcome signs made of driftwood, planters and other items lining the walls of his store.
He’s also helped put his mark on the decor of local establishments too, such as Gaspar’s Patio, 8448 N. 56th st.
Owner Jimmy Ciaccio said that when it came time to redecorate the restaurant several years ago, there was only one person to call for the assignment, and that was his good friend Brown.
"I’ve known Joe all my life, and we always had a good chemistry together,” Ciaccio said. "He’s very creative and fun to be around, and that’s how it all came about.”
Ciaccio says he still gets compliments all the time for the restaurant’s atmosphere he created using the “trash” supplied by Brown. He describes the style as a day at the beach, like a visit to Old Key West. “They’re so inspired, they want to decorate their own homes this way,” he said.
It’s that kind of testimony that makes Brown feel good, knowing that others, too, are inspired to create instead of throw away when they see his work. He simply lets his work speak for itself.
“Somebody once told me to keep telling the story and they will keep coming," he said, "and they always do."
Tampa Art Gallery Key West Lobster Buoy Artist
Tampa gallery practices the art of creative reuse
The year was 1958. Joe Brown, 8, lived next to a county dump site in Tampa, Fla. Brown found old junk, fixed it up and sold it. Brown knew he had a higher calling in life — he was destined to be an artist.
Brown, who is now 60, makes art from trash at his Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery. He has embellished the outside of the gallery with splashes of Caribbean-color paint and found objects reminiscent of Key West.
Brown
is as colorful as the gallery — he wears a bright tropical shirt with
red, white and blue plaid shorts. Patrons tell him they can smell the
salt water when they drive up. The gallery, however, is perched inland
near Morris Bridge Road and Interstate 75 where a rusty-hair hen named
Fred, first thought to be a rooster, patrols the property. Fred,
abandoned five years ago by tourists, trots between the gallery and
adjacent hotel leaving a trail of droppings behind her.
Brown
lived on the Gunn Highway Landfill from 1958 to 1963. The Hillsborough
County landfill operated for four years and was closed in 1962. “It was
astounding how quick they could fill the 15 acres in pits that were
enormous,” Brown said.
An
apartment complex now sits on top of the old landfill. A report by the
Florida Department of Environmental Protection indicated that a lining
was placed underneath the complex when it was built to block methane gas from leaking. The gas is a byproduct of rotting garbage.
As a child, Brown
lived on his father’s dairy and beef farm. Brown said during heavy
rain, the low land on the farm flooded the neighboring Gunn Highway. In
1957, Hillsborough County officials offered to elevate the low land to
stop the flooding by turning it into a landfill. When the property was
sold in 1984 by Brown’s father, soil testing revealed heaps of old paper
and punctured cans of spray paint.
“They
dug up and took out newspapers like the day they were put in,” Brown
said. “It reminded me of nuclear bombs that were going to go off. They
dumped everything in the landfill.”
As
a child, Brown foraged at nearby dumpsters. County workers saved junk
for him that people dropped off. One day, Brown’s parents got a call
from his elementary school teacher and told them that Brown had $100 in
his pocket and that he must be stealing.
Brown
picked up the saved junk after school and turned it into something new.
Contrary to his elementary school teacher’s accusation, he wasn’t a
thief after all. Instead he was a young entrepreneur who sold other
people’s trash.
“There was so much excess coming into the landfill,” Brown said. “There was so much waste from our society.”
However,
Brown’s mother wanted him to pursue his talents and dreams, not money.
But he developed a business sense during his young junk collecting days
and told his mother, “I’m not going to be an artist. I’ve read that
artists starve to death.”
Brown’s
mother became concerned. He said his mother knew “the value of
happiness and the travels of life” and sent him to a summer art class.
The
art teacher inspired awe in Brown. She taught him how to reuse baby
food jars by melting the glass and adding marbles to the mix to create
paper weights. The teacher had traveled to Hong Kong, China and
Hiroshima, Japan after World War II. She saw how people were forced to
recycle and reuse items out of necessity after the war. This left an
impression on Brown.
It
was at this time that he personified the name Hong Kong Willie, which
harkens back to China where the mass production of merchandise occurs.
The “Willies” are people like Brown and other environmentalists who try
to reuse trash instead of throwing it into landfills.
After
high school, Brown went to college to study business but dropped out
after three years. He worked in the material handling industry until
1981. Although Brown had achieved a successful career and lifestyle, he
had become discouraged in 1979.
“The change came from knowing that I had come to the point of what people call success,” Brown said. “I wasn’t happy inside.”
He
had been diagnosed with depression in 1973, a condition that was caused
from high fructose intake and that lasted for more than four years.
In
1985, Brown and his artist wife, Kim, bought the half-acre property off
Fletcher Avenue and Morris Bridge Road. For two decades the two small
wooden shacks, built around 1965, that now house the gallery operated as
a bait and tackle shop.
Nowadays,
Brown raises and sells worms by the pound mainly for composting. He
recycled 250 thousand pounds in the worm bed in 2009. Brown still sells
the worms for $3.50 a cup for fishing.
In
1981, Brown resurrected the Hong Kong Willie name from his childhood
art class. In the early 1980s, both he and his wife, Kim, began
upcycling trash into art. Brown entered another world when he left his
mainstream lifestyle behind — he joined the art scene and booked rock
bands at the same time.
The
Brown family spent half their time in Tampa and the other half in a
small home on Boot Key Harbor in Marathon. Brown gained the reputation
of the Key West lobster buoy artist.
“I had a total different appearance when in Key West,” Brown said. “I used to have hair down to my waist.”
When Brown came back to Tampa, he lived in the woods for months at a time, much like Henry David Thoreau in “Walden,” who had lived a simple lifestyle in a one room cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Mass.
Back
in Key West, Brown became friends with local fishermen. He and others
organized efforts to clean up plastic foam buoys that had collected in
the waterways from years of fishing.
“You would go and find buoys floating in the mangroves, up on the shore and they had trashed up everything,” Brown said.
The
Earth Resource Foundation reports that plastic foam is dumped into the
environment. It breaks up into pieces and chokes animals by clogging
their digestive system.
Brown
sells the buoys from the Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery for $2.00 a
piece. He said he has sold from 30 to 40 thousand buoys in the last ten
years. Some of the buoys are more than 50 years old and are collected by
tourists from China and Japan.
“If
you go to the Keys right now and you see a buoy floating, you’ll see
someone slam on the brakes to get it,” Brown said. “They’re the most
prized buoys of the world.”
Brown
made a holiday buoy tree 12 years ago from the Key West buoys. Hundreds
of buoys are strung on rope and wrapped around a utility pole next to
the gallery. Brown hopes the novelty of the buoy tree will inspire and
stimulate children to find new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle
garbage.
In
Kate Shoup’s “Rubbish! Reuse Your Refuse,” the author said much of what
we get is designed to be scrapped after only a few uses. We easily
throw away pens, lighters, razors and dozens of other items. Shoup said
Americans consume 2 million plastic drink bottles every 5 minutes.
Likewise,
Brown finds uses for items that would otherwise end up in a landfill.
He buys used burlap bags from coffee and peanut producers. He sells them
to the U.S. National Forestry Service for the collection of pine seeds
and Samuel Adams for hops production.
Brown and his wife, Kim, also make art hippie bags from the burlap sacks and sell them in the gallery. Kim,
also an artist, paints fish, turtles, crows, parrots and the like on
driftwood and on wood that Brown has salvaged from saw mills and from
old buildings in Key West.
Brown
said art is viewed and appreciated by certain people. “If it all came
out the same, it would be like bland grits all the time,” Brown said. He
likes to refer to the gallery art as reused rather than recycled, which
takes waste and turns it into an inferior product. Reuse on the other
hand involves remaking an item and using it again for the same intended
purpose.
“I
also try to stay away from imprinting a definite use for a definite
item,” Brown said. He explains that 2-liter bottles are not limited to
making bird feeders. The bottles can be used for art and craft projects
as well.
Brown said the larger message he wants to communicate is that the disposal of garbage today is creating a toxic environment.
“I still have the original Gerber baby food bottle that I melted” Brown said. “It’s sitting on my mom’s little table.”
View photographs of the Hong Kong Willie art gallery
http://kerryschofieldjournal.blogspot.com/2010/09/hong-kong-willie-photomontage.html
"Black Bird of Key Largo"
The allurement of the winds blowing in the palm trees and the moon shining through and the "Black Bird of Key Largo" looking upon.
Hong Kong Willie
**HONG KONG WILLIE artist Kim Brown, chose aged Florida sawmill stock as canvas. Recovered Brass Hanger: Key West lobster trap rigging. Originally connects and suspends rigging of spiny lobster traps in Key West waters. Candy-like appearance due to multiple protective layers. Assigned number in artist register by Fisherman ID tag, corresponding burn-etched # rear of piece. Key recovered by Robert Jordan, acclaimed treasure hunter: also in identification of piece and artist.
Dimensions:
24" L
8" W
4" H
Weight: 17+ LB
Hong Kong Willie photomontage
I'm
working on a feature story about Hong Kong Willie aka Joe Brown and
family who are reuse artists. I recently spent some time interviewing Joe Brown at his studio in Tampa, Fla. We had a pleasant talk about his
working gallery. We sat outside and there was a nice breeze, although it
was a warm sunny day still here in Florida. Join me in the midst of
writing the story. I took a few pictures to share with you. Enjoy.
Hong Kong Willie family art gallery.
Reuse artists from the 1960s.
Morris Bridge Road and Interstate 75, Tampa, Fla.
The garden shrubbery consists of recycled glass bottles and aloe vera plants.
Hundreds of lobster buoys from Key West, Fla., strung on rope,
wrapped and tied to a utility pole. Buoy Tree
orange helicopter that once served in
Vietnam and later used by a radio station.
Key West lobster buoys hang from the small 1950s wood frame building.
Tourists buy the buoys for souvenirs. Some of the buoys are 50 years old.
The exterior of the roadside building is an artful blend of
Caribbean-color paint and found objects.
Seabird plaques, sea glass, melted bottles, painted driftwood
and rusty objects are a few of the items that decorate the wood panels.
Entrance into the small building, which is lined from ceiling to floor
with burlap sacks from South American coffee roasters.
Joe Brown and family also composts and sells worms.
Patrons buy worms for fishing and composting.
They also buy South American burlap coffee bean sacks.
Hong Kong Willie reuse artists ,reuse the burlap
and make hippie beach bags.
Hong Kong Willie reuse artists use old clothes, buttons, baseball leather and
yarns to sew and decorate the burlap bags.
View photographs of the Hong Kong Willie art gallery
http://kerryschofieldjournal.blogspot.com/2010/09/hong-kong-willie-photomontage.html
Black Bird of Key Largo
$98,000 To buy click this link
The allurement of the winds blowing in the palm trees and the moon shining through and the "Black Bird of Key Largo" looking upon.
Hong Kong Willie
**HONG KONG WILLIE artist Kim Brown, chose aged Florida sawmill stock as canvas. Recovered Brass Hanger: Key West lobster trap rigging. Originally connects and suspends rigging of spiny lobster traps in Key West waters. Candy-like appearance due to multiple protective layers. Assigned number in artist register by Fisherman ID tag, corresponding burn-etched # rear of piece. Key recovered by Robert Jordan, acclaimed treasure hunter: also in identification of piece and artist.
Dimensions:
24" L
8" W
4" H
Weight: 17+ LB
Key West Lobster Buoy Artist,MY FOX TAMPA BAY,Charlie's World Fox News
Tampa Art Galleries,Florida Focus
Tampa Art Galleries,Florida FocusRecycling as a Lifestyle and a Business
Derek Brown, 26, and his family own and operate Hong Kong Willie. The little shop specializes in preservation art. The artists don’t take preservation too lightly either.
“99 percent of everything that has gone into a piece of art has been recycled and reused,” Brown said.
Just as unique as the art is, so is the company’s name. Brown says the name was created by his father, Joe Brown, in the 1950s.
“My father being in an art class, being affected by a teacher, they were melting Gerber baby food bottles," Brown said. "The teacher interjected that Hong Kong had a great reuse and recycling program even then.”
Brown's father then took that concept and later added the Americanized name Willie to the end. And that's how Hong Kong Willie was born as a location that offers recycling in a different and creative way.
Hong Kong Willie artists are what are known as freegans. Freegans are less concerned with materialistic things and more concerned about reducing consumption to lessen the footprint humans leave on this planet.
“I’m sure everyone has their own perception of a freegan, possibly jumping into a dumpster or picking up something on the side of the road,” Brown said. “There [are] people who will have excess. There [are] also things that can be trash to one man, but art or a prize to another man.”
Brown and his family carry this practice through to their art. It’s his family’s way of life, turning trash, which would otherwise fill up landfills, into an art form.
The Brown family gets a lot of their inspiration for their art from the Florida Keys. In fact, this is where the deluge of buoys wrapping around the ‘Buoys Tree’ came from, the fishermen of Key West.
“It is Styrofoam, we understand that it does not degrade, but to blame the fishermen for their livelihood wouldn’t be correct, instead we find a usage for those,” Brown said.
Brown said there’s a usage for everything, even the hooks to hold the painted driftwood, which are also salvaged, to the wall are old bent forks. Everything’s reused here. Purses made out of old coffee bean sacks to “kitschy,” as Brown described it, jewelry made from old baseballs.
“Hong Kong Willie truly believes that a piece, whether it’s a bag or a painted artwork, it’s meant for one person.”
It,(was the dump) that had all this media, and a young enterprising mind. Not enough time to capture it all.
JEFF STIDHAM
TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
North Tampa- The night light shines like a beacon on the bait shop’s buzzer, beckoning to early morning and nocturnal fishermen.
At A-24 Hour Bait the workday doesn’t end. The rustic store sits off the Fletcher Avenue ramp to Interstate 75 South. A windowless blue mobile home and worm bed are it’s companions on a one-acre slice of land.
The buildings are a sharp contrast to their new neighbors, Hidden River Corporate Park rising out of the woods on the north and growing Tampa Telecom Park on the west.
Owners Joe and Kim Brown work about 20 hours a day, occasionally resting in “the cave”, the mobile home they live in behind the store.
The couple’s shop is well stocked with shiners and worms.
“What we try to do here is carry the best of baits,” Joe Brown said.
He’s got night crawlers from Canada, salamanders from North Dakota and wigglers from his own worm bed behind the store. A refrigerated tank is home to cured shiners and minnows sedated by the cold.
“Wild shiners in a non-refrigerated tank would be going crazy,” Brown said as he peered into a tank of fish separated by size. “They’d be jumping around trying to commit suicide. With the cold water they’re pretty sedate, but you let the water (temperature) rise, a shiner would be like a race horse.”
Larger shiners are selling for $24 a dozen a dozen today because the fish are dispersed and spawning, so they’re are difficult to catch. Normally, large shiners cost around a $1.50 each, Brown said.
Good bait, proximity to the Hillsborough River and convenient hours lure in fishermen.
“It’s all the time,” Brown said. Catfish lovers are out early to snag popular fishing spots, and during snook season there’s a real run for shiners, he said.
It’s not uncommon for someone to ring the bell at 3 a.m.
“I stick my head out of the door real fast and tell them I’ll be there. It takes a lot for someone to ring a bell that time of the day,” Brown said.
The Browns opened their shop about two years ago with a top notch but small stock of bait and tackle. Born anglers, they knew it was hard to get bait late at night or early in the morning, so they decided to stay open 24 hours.
Now they think their hard work is paying off. The shop has gradually grown to include all kinds of lures and bobbers, rods and reels. Hillsborough River fishermen know they’re there. And others find out every day, Brown said.
“I’ve seen this place a bunch of times, off the interstate, but this is the first time I’ve been here,” customer Michael Walker said one afternoon. “We got a pretty good (fishing) hole near here, so this will suit us just fine.”
Walker said he’s been to a few saltwater bait shops that were open till midnight.
“But I don’t know any that stay open past midnight,” he said.
Although sometimes blurry-eyed when he waits on customers, Brown is never too tired to swap fish stories and other tips.
Normally when he’s fishing with a shiner, Brown hooks the bait behind the rear dorsal fin with a Khale hook. A bass usually grabs a smaller fish head first, so the gills and fins smooth back as the larger fish swallows its victim, Brown said.
But during spawning season, like now, he uses a straight hook and punctures the crease at the bottom of the shiner’s mouth, hooking upward through a hole in the snout.
“Now bass are eating and striking so hard they take him and swallow him,” Brown said.
The shop has given Brown more than a chance to make a living and tell stories. A former designer of conveyor systems, he gave up two houses, boats and other luxuries to move to the woods 10 years ago.
“I had what you’re supposed to want,” Brown said. “I just wasn’t happy.”
But he loved the river, and he lived for years on the Hidden River property north of his shop. Today he said he thinks the land surrounding his home will become Tampa’s version of Central Park.
“I had the foresight to have bait and tackle because there’s 25,000 acres of Southwest Florida Water Management district property adjoining the river that will always be public,” Brown said.
Lettuce Lake Park, Trout Creek, Wilderness Park, Hillsborough River State Park and other natural settings also are permanent parts of the landscape, he said.
As the area grows, the Browns hope their business will follow suit. They feel lucky that they’re in the middle of a developing area minutes from the pristine quiet of the undeveloped Hillsborough River.
Soon Joe Brown plans to have canoes for rent.
“We’re going to grow slow, we don’t believe in carrying debt,” he said. “It takes a lot to start a business.” We’ve had to sacrifice, but we wouldn’t trade it.”
HILLSBOROUGH RIVER ROLLIN’ ALONG
FRANK SERGEANT
Tribune Outdoors Editor
The Hillsborough River has seen some tough times, It’s been dammed and drained and polluted and sea-walled almost to the point of death.
But it keeps on hanging in there. Old man river just keeps on rollin’.
The upper river, above the Fowler Avenue bridge, shows fits and starts of the sort of thing that brought the lower river to its knees years back. But all things considered, its still got a whole lot to offer a city-world wearied soul.
I went up there a week or so ago with Joe Brown and his fishing guide pal Ted Sawyer, both Hillsborough River fans since they wore knee pants.
Joe asked ask me to ride along to take a look at some of the trashing problems that are starting to peak out here and there along the shore lines, and we saw more of it than you’d hope to.
But what we saw mostly was rich-looking black water and tall, thick cypress dams, lots of birds and fish and turtles. And solitude.
It’s not pristine wilderness. But considering it’s within shooting distance of the downtown towers of a major American metropolis, the upper Hillsborough ain’t bad. Not bad at all.
The river snakes through the backyards of a number of homes and an apartment complex or two until it slips under the Fletcher Avenue bridge. From there on up, city turns country in a hurry. There’s a landing at Tampa Palms, but you can’t see any buildings, and for much of the rest of it, the river swamp spreads out all around the flow, a lot like it must have when Tampa was a two-bit fishing village 10 miles away.
There are lots of interesting creeks to explore, including several that Joe said were excellent bassing spots.
HILLSBOROUGH RIVER ENDURES DESPITE TRASH
Lettuce Lake, the only open spot in the river, gave us a look at the county park tower where folks so inclined can view the swamp without getting their feet wet. And a little further up, we found the buzzards.
They come in hundreds, maybe in thousands, Joe said, every winter. They show up in November, they stay until March. They festoon the trees in dozens, fight and hold discussions along the banks, bath in the river.
Yep. Buzzards bath.
Apparently they get a bit too strong even for themselves after a time. We watched a dozen of them flutter like sparrows in a bird bath as they washed up along a sandy shoreline near Nature’s Classroom.
The birds roost in the trees along the river at night, fly out over the surrounding pasture land by day looking for assorted horribles to fill their stomachs.
Sometimes they go visit the downtown towers, where they whirl for hours on the thermals of heated air rising up the glass cliffs.
We found the trash piles, too. Heaps of plastic cups, beer cans, paper plates, the fallout from the civilization that bustles around the edges of this little piece of wilderness.
Joe said he can’t understand why folks would take the trouble to come out here, to get away from the pollution and the ugliness of some parts of the city, and then turn the shorelines into a dump wit their leftovers.
I couldn’t either.
FISHING THE RIVER
Joe Brown runs 24-Hour Bait, on Morris Bridge Road just off Fletcher Avenue. It’s the nearest bait shop to the river, and the only one that operates around the clock. (Well, sort of around the clock. If you show up at 3 a.m., you have to press the buzzer and wait a couple of minutes until Joe rolls out of the sack and comes on down to the shop to serve you.)
The folks who buy bait there return with stories of their successes, and this along with his own long angling experience has allowed Brown to put together a pretty good picture of what works, when, on the river.
Wild shiners, Joe says, are the choice offering for the river’s large mouth.
“We sell ’seasoned’ shiners that have been in chilled, chemically treated water for a week or two. This gives them a slightly silvery color, makes their scales a lot tougher and makes them stay alive on the hook longer than domestic shiners or even fresh-caught wild ones,” he says.
Brown says the way to fish the shiners is to use a Kahle-style hook with a big bend, made of light wire so the bait stays lively. The hook should be inserted under the skin back of the dorsal fin. The bait is then either free-lined, with no weight or cork, or with a cork only, around beds of floating grass and along the deeper cypress shores.
Joe says that simply putting a couple of the baits out behind the boat and letting it drift with the current will also turn up plenty of fish.
He says the side creeks are good spots to fish plastic worms, rigged Texas style with a slip sinker. Colors favored by river experts are tequila shad, red shad and crawfish.
Joe says that the waters above the “pop-off canal” dam, which shuttles water to the Palm River in time of flood, are good for top-water plugs early and late in the day.
Brown is also a catfish angler, and notes that there are plenty of spots where big channel catfish gather in the river.
“Every major bend has a deep hole along the outside bank,” he notes. “Most of these holes have big catfish in the bottom.”
In fact, some of the holes marked nearly 30 feet deep on Ted Sawyers LCD depth finder, and suspended dots showed there were plenty of cats waiting in the depths.
Brown said that cut shiners were the best bait for cats. He said the fish usually feed right on the bottom, so the bait should be weighted with plenty of lead to make it hit and stay put.
PANFISH PLENTIFUL
He said speckled perch or crappie have been biting well in the river for several months, and should stay active through March.
Some of the best spots, he noted, are the hole just below the Fletcher Avenue Bridge, and the island near the upstream end of Lettuce Lake. He said Missouri minnows about two inches long are the best bait in either location.
The river offers good fishing year around, but water levels drop in late winter and early spring.
This means possible problems for boatmen new to the river, according to Brown, because there are many unmarked rocks and stumps, particularly near the Fowler ramp.
Guide Ted Sawyer suggests using only shallow-draft aluminum boats during the low water period, and proceeding slowly until you learn the water.
Joe has one request, however you fish the river: take a trash bag with you
‘FISH JOCKEYS’ HAVE RADIO LISTENERS HOOKED
Frank Sargeant
Tribune Outdoors Editor
They call themselves the Mutt and Jeff of Saturday morning fishing shows.
On the air they are argumentative, querulous and cantankerous by their own admission, but Jim Lee and Joe Brown of WFNS, 910 AM’s “GETAWAYS” radio program get along just fine when they hop into a boat and head out for some redfish and snook action, as they did a few weeks ago with captain Tod Romine of Bradenton.
Lee is an insurance man at his “real” job, while Brown runs Tampa’s only 24-hour bait shop. Both say the Saturday morning radio gig is more for fun than profit, but the 25 weeks since they started they’ve managed to collect enough sponsors to break even and enough listeners to put them in the ratings book.
“It ruins your Friday’s nights because you have to get up at 3:30 on Saturday morning to be on the air by 6,” Lee said. “And we usually like to get together at least once during the week to go over the next show and plan the sound effects.”
The program not only covers hunting and fishing, but also family adventures like locating shark’s teeth on the beaches near Venice and going on-site at Gatorland at feeding time.
” We enjoy a lot of foolishness on the air,” Brown said. ” We want to provide information, but more than that we want to entertain. It’s humbling to know you’re just a push of the button away from disappearing from your listeners.”
For a part of the trip on Sarasota Bay, the fish were somewhat humbling, too, with the temperature around 95 degrees and baits scarce, Tod Romine had to delve into his bag of tricks to turn the fish on. But after a few dry holes, he managed.
” The big problem with fishing this summer has been the bait scarcity in this area due to the red tide,” Romine. ” There’s lots of little stuff on the inside that are good for chum, but the larger sardines we want as bait are very hard to find.”
Fortunately, Romine had a “sardine mine” in a 15-foot deep hole in the grass flats where he managed to collect several dozen 4-inch baits with five or six throws of the 10 foot net. He then visited a spot near the mouth of the Manatee River where one toss of of a small-mesh net captured all the chum-sized sardines he could lift aboard.
” I like small sardines for chum because they turn the fish on but don’t fill them up,” Romine said. ” Once you get them popping on top, put out a bigger bait and you’re hooked up in a hurry.”
Lee caught the first fish, a snook of about 23 inches. He pulled it aboard and was still posing for photos when Brown nailed one of about the same size.
” That fish is just like mine, only an inch shorter,” Lee told him.
” Yeah , but it’s an ounce heavier,” Brown said.
” Mine has a higher IQ,” Lee said.
” He wouldn’t have hit if I hadn’t put it in there just right.
” Mine is better looking,” Brown said.
” Yours has a crooked nose.”
And so it went. We managed 15 snook total, all but a couple smaller than the legal 24-inch minimum, and a dozen redfish, six of them in the legal spot, six over the 27-inch maximum. In between was a mix of lady fish, jacks and undersized trout — a busy day considering the sweltering heat.
Romine fishes a mix of yellow holes on high or rising water, deep cuts and island points on the drop.
For more on fishing the Sarasota Bay area, Romine can be reached at (941) 747-3866. For more on Jim and Joe, their shows runs from 6 to 9 a.m. Saturdays.
ROADSIDE ATTRACTION
Jim Tunstall TAMPA TRIBUNE
A break with the mainstream led a couple to their own little corner of happiness from another day in time.
” I believe every individual has a purpose. When you start going on your journey to discover yours, you learn some things along the way.”
JOE BROWN
Joe Brown loves to express himself.
If you want to see how, take a spin by his place on the southwest corner of Interstate 75 and Fletcher Avenue. His yard is coiffed with a sassy blend of crab-trap buoys, bottle art, fishy wind socks and a dog and two cats that co-exist on a mainly peaceful basis.
Then there’s the man. Brown, a page out of the 1960’s better side, owns A-24 Hour Bait and Tackle.
On one hand, he’s private enough not to want his photograph taken, on the other, he’s gregarious enough to talk the ears off anyone interested in fishing. Fact is, this 51-year-old Tampa native is primed to gab about next best to anything on the minds of his visitors, including the way things used to be.
Like in 1983 when he and his wife, Kim, planted roots on this corner and the new Interstate was their only new neighbor.
Before that, Brown had been part of the establishment, but he chucked his mainstream career and spent 3 years on a 700-hundred acre spread across Fletcher, searching for himself.
I was seriously unhappy,” he says.
“I left (the job) Nov. 13, 1981. That Date, the moment I left the office, it blazed in my brain, I was 31 and dealing with severe depression.”
One day he heard a voice.
“People will tell you you’ve got serious problems when you hear voices,” he says behind a grin. “But this wasn’t that kind of experience. It just said, ‘Joe, what if it gets better?’”
Well, slowly it did.
He and Kim took an option on the corner that been home to a worm farm for 25 years.
” The worm business was at it’s ebb,” Brown says.
” I bought it to sell. I had no idea I was going to continue it.”
Over the years, neighbors started putting down roots to the west, including apartment complexes and more than a half dozen hotels, such as Extended Stay America and Residence Inn.
The bait and tackle business stayed reasonably strong until the economy went south last year, Brown says, adding that he still carries a full line of rods, reels, cane poles, lures, crickets, shiners, and shrimp.
” But we did a lot a wholesale and we lost 90 percent of that business Sep. 11,” he says.” ” That’s dead. It’s not coming back.”
Fortunately the Browns have branched out.
Last year, they opened a gift shop that sells gator heads, sea shells, stuffed critters, t-shirts, and other trinkets.
Brown also started dabbling in bottle art — melting everything from vodka to Sprite bottles, reshaping them then letting them cool and harden.
Through the last 20 years, he seems to have learned to be a survivor.
He’s also learned his reason for being on this corner.
“I believe every individual has a purpose,” he says, turning serious for a moment.
“When you start going on your journey to discover yours, you learn some things along the way. I like working with the public and making them happy. And if you’re doing what you want to do, it’s a beautiful thing.”
BUOY OH BUOY
BITS OF THE BEACH
BILL DURYEA
TIMES STAFF WRITER
A BAY AREA BUSINESS COUPLE SALVAGES DEBRIS FROM THE KEYS THAT CAN BUOY ANY ATMOSPHERE.
TAMPA– Every month or so, Kim and Joe Brown pile into the family flatbed truck, he one that’s decorated with multi-colored stencils of fern fronds, and drive down to Key West.
There, they inevitably find what they’re looking for: a few thousand discarded plastic foam crab and lobster buoys, maybe a battered surf board or a life preserver. After a week or so, they strap the whole load down, turn the truck around and head home to Fletcher Avenue at Interstate-75, where they have lived for nearly 25 years.
If you’ve driven by there recently, and you’d know if you’d had, then you have a pretty good idea, of what the Brown’s do with the buoys once they get them off the truck.
They wrap them around metal poles, until they resemble marshmellow Christmas trees. They festoon them outside the gift and bait shop they run. They line their parking lot with them.
“It can drive you crazy,” Kim Brown said as she stared at a mound of them. “There’s got to be something else to do with them. I was thinking maybe I’d cut them in half and make them into little planters.”
Occasionaly, a restaurant owner who fancies a nautical theme will relieve them of a few thousand buoys. Sometimes a home owner from New Tampa wants a dozen for his new poolside bar.
But generally speaking, the treasures of the Key West trips come in at a rate far faster than they go out. Doesn’t matter a bit to the Browns.
“I have a pretty good life. I don’t have to bust my butt,” Kim Brown said. “I don’t make a lot of money, but when someone likes my stuff, that’s cool.”
In a corner of Tampa dominated by late-arriving corporate parks and hotel chains, they live a life of enviable self-sufficiency. If they appear eccentric, it is only by the relelentlessly conformist standards of their neighbors. If the decor appears kitschy, maybe it’s because we’ve lost touch with what’s truly authentic.
On a recent morning, Kim Brown was giving an impromptu tour to a surprise visitor. She was wearing a loose-fitting white shirt and a long gray cotton skirt. Walking around in her tanned bare feet and sunglasses she seemed glamorous and unfussy. She casually mentions her age, 46, without a trace of self-consciousness.
The sky was threatening rain and that wasn’t doing much for sales at A-24 Hour Bait. “Fish are going to eat today,” she says, shaking her head at the squandered opportunity.
But it gave her time to tell some stories.
“Those rings, they came from a Cuban refugee raft,” she says, indicating a clump of artifacts outside thet baitshop. ” When I can, I take a picture of the man or the woman and that becomes part of the story of what we sell.”
She grabbed a bass lure dangling from the inside of a metal cylinder and gave it a good tug. It clanged loudly. “We make the bells out of dive tanks that were going to be thrown away,” she says.
“I’ve got a real nice anchor. It’s over 100 years old. That came from a Cuban who got it caught in his lobster traps.”
“The Lobster guys are lucky,” she says with real admiration in her voice. “They find this stuff all the time, just floating out there.”
Kim grew up near Lowry Park Zoo. Her husband was raised out on Anderson Road. They met in 1981, the circumstances of which are one of a few stories she’s reluctant to tell in detail. At the time she was boarding horses across the road in what is now the Hidden River Corporate Park.
“When I met Joe, he was in a suit and tie. He always had a thousand dollars on his back,” she said. He was in the materials handling business, but it wasn’t long for that corporate life.
They saw some land was available for sale on Morris Bridge Road, the part where it bends in the southwest corner of I-75 and Fletcher. The acre or so had a worm farm on it when they bought it. The previous owner had a Coca-Cola cooler out front, and fishermen on their way to the Hillsborough River would come by and fill a can with worms, leave a little money in a cup. All on the honour system.
“That tapered off. Fishng wasn’t simple anymore. You couldn’t just get a cane pole and a can of worms and go catch some dinner,” Kim says. “Now you’ve got to have permits and expensive reels and the latest lure.”
“That’s why we kind of went back to our art.”
In the early 1990’s they made their first trip down to the keys. They began to meet fishermen. They stayed in their homes, ate dinner with them. Joined in the parties at the beginning of stone crab season.
It wasn’t long before they saw all the buoys overflowing the trash cans. Buoys generally last a few years. Turtles gnaw them. Storms scatter them. Sun and salt bleach them.
“Hey, we can do something with those,” Kim remembers saying. “We make something out of nothing.”
The gift shop, known as Hong Kong Willie, is full of stuff that was perilously close to oblivion before the Browns identified some hidden potential.
Kim makes “coconut grams”. They’re painted coconuts with a space clearly marked for the address. There’s not much room for the message. But the U.S. Postal Service will actually deliver them, Kim says.
The gift shop’s ceiling is packed with coffee sacks. Glass bottles that have been heated in the Brown’s kilns sit on shelves slumped like Dali clocks. Gnarled pieces of polished Lignum Vitae are scattered about; Kim’s son Derek, 22, is responsible for that work.
Nothing has a price, because prices depend on too many variables for it to be worth specifying. (A string of five buoys will cost you $12.99, though the price drops for bulk purchases.) But whenever possible a piece will come with a picture of the shop, or of the person who provided the piece, to commemorate the item’s passage
through history.
“This telephone was on Duval Street,” Kim says. “It’s got all these names and numbers written on the side. And a picture of a raccoon on the front. Who knows why?”
The demand for items such as this is unpredictable. Ditto the 1961 mailbox with the rusted front. But the Browns’ customers tend to share their enthusiasm.
“I bought 1,200 buoys a month ago,” said Jimmy Ciaccio, owner of Gaspar’s, a restaurant on 56th Street in Temple Terrace that has a brand new patio with an aggressive Key West theme.
“I must have 3,000 of them around here,” Ciaccio says as he walks the deck, talking a torrent. “I got a raft, those traps, they all came from Joe. I’ve bought a lot of novelty stuff from them. That’s what they’re all about and that’s what we’re all about. And there’s always a story behind everything. I love that. He gave me that thing, it’s like a piece of wood or something I don’t know what it is, but it’s from Key West. We’ve got that chemistry.”
If there were a few more customers as fervid as Ciaccio, Kim Brown might not be toying with the idea of getting into the food business. But there aren’t and she is.
“Not everybody wants a buoy or a bell,” Kim says. “But everyone wants to drink a cup of coffee. I don’t want to be a Starbucks but maybe a little coffee shop. Maybe a good Cuban sandwich.”
“But then you get into hiring and firing. I’ve got friends in the retaurant business. I see how hard they work. It’s never-ending,” she says, beginning to argue with herself. “I just don’t want to work that hard.”
She circles back to a calm contentment with life as it is currently defined.
“We’re happy. We don’t want to sell. We’re not rich, but we pay our bills.
click to enlarge
Alex Pickett
Drive south on I-75, look to the right around East Fletcher
Avenue, and you can't miss it. The tree appears first, hundreds of
buoys wrapped around its branches, resembling a sort of Dr. Seuss-ian
Christmas ornament. Then the rest of the 20,000 buoys come into view --
thousands of strands of the multicolored foam balls stretching from the
tree to two wooden shacks, hanging from their roofs and walls, and
stretched out over the property.
Strewn about the lawn is a menagerie of surfboards, car doors, CB radios, wooden sculptures and painted signs. A 1979 Ford pickup sits in the front driveway, painted with a rainbow of colors, four racks of antlers affixed to its roof. An old stuffed caribou sits in a lawn chair beckoning visitors.
Of the thousands of motorists who pass by this eclectic landmark off Exit 266 every day, few stop in the funky gift shop and Key West-themed folk art gallery that is Hong Kong Willie's. But this is not your typical roadside store selling cheesy Florida magnets and beach T-shirts (although they have those, too). From the moment the owners come out to greet you, it's clear that for them this isn't just a business -- it's a lifestyle.
As I step out of my car, Joe Brown ambles toward me wearing a red Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. With his disheveled shoulder-length brown hair and strong jaw line, Brown, 56, looks a lot like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. He ends most of his sentences with "Do you follow me?" and stares with wild gray eyes until you nod in agreement. His 46-year-old wife, Kim, who bears a strong resemblance to Grace Slick, sits near the shop's open sign, branding her latest creation. Wearing large sunglasses, she gives a smile, hardly looking up.
Joe and Kim -- Tampa natives -- bought the half-acre property off Fletcher Avenue and Morris Bridge Road in 1985. For the next two decades, the Browns operated A-24 Hour Bait and Tackle, living on the premises and bagging worms for K-Mart and Wal-Mart to make a few extra bucks. But in 2001, they decided to abandon fish food to pursue the fickle business of art, although they will tell you Hong Kong Willie's was always "part of the journey."
"We were artists," says Joe. "We were born that way. We had no choice. You follow me?"
The underlying theme of Hong Kong Willie's is creating art out of objects destined for the landfill, and while browsing the items, I get the feeling the Browns are trying to make a point rather than a sale.
"Thirty percent of the gifts given will be in the dumpster by next Christmas," Joe says. "Most Christmas gifts will be given because they think they have to. Very few will have a social impact."
Every item at Hong Kong Willie's is either art made out of an object destined for the landfill or products that other companies were throwing away and the Browns retrieved before they made it to the dumpster. But don't call this recycled art. The Browns prefer "preservation."
Recycling implies the material will be used for the same purpose. "If you get stuck in that word, then you get stuck in that form," Joe explains. Instead, the Browns create a whole new use for an item that would have been otherwise thrown away.
Kim looks up from her painting after Joe finishes his long ramble. "We've always been able to take nothing and make something out of it," she says.
Although most people assume Joe is "Hong Kong Willie," he says the name refers to the origin of junk: Hong Kong produces much of the useless merchandise that Americans buy and quickly throw away, he says. So it's up to the Willies of the world -- i.e. the Browns and other conservationists -- to find new uses for the trash.
"All of us who believe what we believe is Hong Kong Willie," Joe says.
The gift shop is a space not much bigger than a tool shed, cluttered with handmade candles, pottery, ceramic figures and deer skulls painted tie-dye style. Joe, who's not content to allow me to wander by myself, darts from item to item, sharing each one's origins. One of the first objects he shows me is an old scuba tank cut in half, stenciled with yellow and purple spray paint with a weighted rope attached on the inside. What would have been a heavy addition to a landfill or junkyard, the Browns now sell as a nautical-themed bell. Another popular item: a used Starbucks Frappuccino bottle filled with sand and shells, and the words "Florida Beachfront Property" written in paint on it.
"Is it really pragmatic to say this had one life -- to have Frappuccino in it?" he says, holding up the $3 gift. "That's not true. You follow me?"
Joe picks up a droopy glass vase -- the result of an Arizona Ice Tea bottle stuck in a kiln for too long. He says it's a collector's item: Only 300 were made and none look alike.
"People really want something that is one of a kind and something that means something," he says, holding up the vase and pointing to a stack of Beanie Babies. "Which one is the real collectible? The one that cannot be copied or the one that is mass-produced just on a small scale? You follow me?"
Most of the materials the Browns work with come from Key West. Every few months they hop in the pickup, drive the 425 miles to the Keys and start looking for the junk no one else wants: used dive tanks, the lobster trap buoys, burlap bags and even old wooden planks from ships or homes destroyed by storms.
In fact, the latter is one of their biggest sellers. They bring back an imperfect piece of lumber, slap some urethane on it and Kim paints everything from colorful fish and birds to old Key West landmarks on it. Every piece is branded, marked with a lobster cage tag and affixed with brass rings or forks with which to hang them. In the building opposite the gift shop, among stuffed animals and fish (Joe was once a taxidermist), 30 of these painted planks hang from the walls.
Customers are few at Hong Kong Willie's, but the Browns say they're doing well. They never try to push their art on anyone, figuring that if someone stops and buys something, it was meant to be. ("A piece of art is a love affair," Kim says.) They count Gaspar's Patio Bar and Grille in Temple Terrace as one of their best customers. Their other business comes from Tampa residents looking to add a tiki feel to their backyards. Among Joe's most popular creations are old car doors outfitted with waterproof speakers. A few Key West bars bought the unique sound systems to hang from their ceilings.
But the Browns are not just content to sell their art to passersby -- they want to live the ideals that inspire their art. The couple is working on getting their business off the electrical grid and powered completely by solar energy. Kim wants to start a coffee and ice cream shop with free wireless Internet to bring in likeminded people. Joe wants to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for hanging the greatest number of buoys to a structure (it's not a category yet). And they're always trying to find new uses for the trash they see lining area roads.
"We're not just sitting out here being weird," Joe says suddenly. "We're actually taking objects and making these thousands of people say, 'What's that?' We're doing it because it's the right thing to do."
His eyes get wide.
"You follow me?"
Strewn about the lawn is a menagerie of surfboards, car doors, CB radios, wooden sculptures and painted signs. A 1979 Ford pickup sits in the front driveway, painted with a rainbow of colors, four racks of antlers affixed to its roof. An old stuffed caribou sits in a lawn chair beckoning visitors.
Of the thousands of motorists who pass by this eclectic landmark off Exit 266 every day, few stop in the funky gift shop and Key West-themed folk art gallery that is Hong Kong Willie's. But this is not your typical roadside store selling cheesy Florida magnets and beach T-shirts (although they have those, too). From the moment the owners come out to greet you, it's clear that for them this isn't just a business -- it's a lifestyle.
As I step out of my car, Joe Brown ambles toward me wearing a red Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. With his disheveled shoulder-length brown hair and strong jaw line, Brown, 56, looks a lot like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. He ends most of his sentences with "Do you follow me?" and stares with wild gray eyes until you nod in agreement. His 46-year-old wife, Kim, who bears a strong resemblance to Grace Slick, sits near the shop's open sign, branding her latest creation. Wearing large sunglasses, she gives a smile, hardly looking up.
Joe and Kim -- Tampa natives -- bought the half-acre property off Fletcher Avenue and Morris Bridge Road in 1985. For the next two decades, the Browns operated A-24 Hour Bait and Tackle, living on the premises and bagging worms for K-Mart and Wal-Mart to make a few extra bucks. But in 2001, they decided to abandon fish food to pursue the fickle business of art, although they will tell you Hong Kong Willie's was always "part of the journey."
"We were artists," says Joe. "We were born that way. We had no choice. You follow me?"
The underlying theme of Hong Kong Willie's is creating art out of objects destined for the landfill, and while browsing the items, I get the feeling the Browns are trying to make a point rather than a sale.
"Thirty percent of the gifts given will be in the dumpster by next Christmas," Joe says. "Most Christmas gifts will be given because they think they have to. Very few will have a social impact."
Every item at Hong Kong Willie's is either art made out of an object destined for the landfill or products that other companies were throwing away and the Browns retrieved before they made it to the dumpster. But don't call this recycled art. The Browns prefer "preservation."
Recycling implies the material will be used for the same purpose. "If you get stuck in that word, then you get stuck in that form," Joe explains. Instead, the Browns create a whole new use for an item that would have been otherwise thrown away.
Kim looks up from her painting after Joe finishes his long ramble. "We've always been able to take nothing and make something out of it," she says.
Although most people assume Joe is "Hong Kong Willie," he says the name refers to the origin of junk: Hong Kong produces much of the useless merchandise that Americans buy and quickly throw away, he says. So it's up to the Willies of the world -- i.e. the Browns and other conservationists -- to find new uses for the trash.
"All of us who believe what we believe is Hong Kong Willie," Joe says.
The gift shop is a space not much bigger than a tool shed, cluttered with handmade candles, pottery, ceramic figures and deer skulls painted tie-dye style. Joe, who's not content to allow me to wander by myself, darts from item to item, sharing each one's origins. One of the first objects he shows me is an old scuba tank cut in half, stenciled with yellow and purple spray paint with a weighted rope attached on the inside. What would have been a heavy addition to a landfill or junkyard, the Browns now sell as a nautical-themed bell. Another popular item: a used Starbucks Frappuccino bottle filled with sand and shells, and the words "Florida Beachfront Property" written in paint on it.
"Is it really pragmatic to say this had one life -- to have Frappuccino in it?" he says, holding up the $3 gift. "That's not true. You follow me?"
Joe picks up a droopy glass vase -- the result of an Arizona Ice Tea bottle stuck in a kiln for too long. He says it's a collector's item: Only 300 were made and none look alike.
"People really want something that is one of a kind and something that means something," he says, holding up the vase and pointing to a stack of Beanie Babies. "Which one is the real collectible? The one that cannot be copied or the one that is mass-produced just on a small scale? You follow me?"
Most of the materials the Browns work with come from Key West. Every few months they hop in the pickup, drive the 425 miles to the Keys and start looking for the junk no one else wants: used dive tanks, the lobster trap buoys, burlap bags and even old wooden planks from ships or homes destroyed by storms.
In fact, the latter is one of their biggest sellers. They bring back an imperfect piece of lumber, slap some urethane on it and Kim paints everything from colorful fish and birds to old Key West landmarks on it. Every piece is branded, marked with a lobster cage tag and affixed with brass rings or forks with which to hang them. In the building opposite the gift shop, among stuffed animals and fish (Joe was once a taxidermist), 30 of these painted planks hang from the walls.
Customers are few at Hong Kong Willie's, but the Browns say they're doing well. They never try to push their art on anyone, figuring that if someone stops and buys something, it was meant to be. ("A piece of art is a love affair," Kim says.) They count Gaspar's Patio Bar and Grille in Temple Terrace as one of their best customers. Their other business comes from Tampa residents looking to add a tiki feel to their backyards. Among Joe's most popular creations are old car doors outfitted with waterproof speakers. A few Key West bars bought the unique sound systems to hang from their ceilings.
But the Browns are not just content to sell their art to passersby -- they want to live the ideals that inspire their art. The couple is working on getting their business off the electrical grid and powered completely by solar energy. Kim wants to start a coffee and ice cream shop with free wireless Internet to bring in likeminded people. Joe wants to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for hanging the greatest number of buoys to a structure (it's not a category yet). And they're always trying to find new uses for the trash they see lining area roads.
"We're not just sitting out here being weird," Joe says suddenly. "We're actually taking objects and making these thousands of people say, 'What's that?' We're doing it because it's the right thing to do."
His eyes get wide.
"You follow me?"
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