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."
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 hisHong 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.”
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.
"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
Tampa Art Galleries,Florida FocusRecycling as a Lifestyle and a Business
By:
Chris Futrell, Florida Focus
TAMPA, Fla. – Have you ever seen the building on the corner of Fletcher and I-75 with a bunch of buoys strung everywhere? This small business that many think is an old bait n’ tackle shop is actually Hong Kong Willie. 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
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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.
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?"
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."
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 hisHong 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.”
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.
"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
Tampa Art Galleries,Florida FocusRecycling as a Lifestyle and a Business
By:
Chris Futrell, Florida Focus
TAMPA, Fla. – Have you ever seen the building on the corner of Fletcher and I-75 with a bunch of buoys strung everywhere? This small business that many think is an old bait n’ tackle shop is actually Hong Kong Willie. 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.
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?"
The Story Behind the Eye-Catching Art at I-75 Exit 266 Tampa Florida.
Folk artist Joe Brown, better known as "Hong Kong Willie," makes art with a message at his home/studio near I-75's Exit 266.
By Tristram DeRoma
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."
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 hisHong 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.”
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.
"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
LANDFILLS ARE FOREVERLandfills are forever, like massive coffee percolators. This is the reason we should explore other uses of our refuse. Follow this link. Update to how a landfill CATASTROPHE can be.
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
This is a excerpt from a study OF THE LANDFILL (CITY DUMP) HONGKONGWILLIE LIVED ON.. Follow this link Gunn Highway Landfill The Gunn Highway Landfill is located off Gunn Highway in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida. The county operated the landfill as a trench-type facility for the disposal of MSW from 1958 to 1962. The landfill disposal areas occupied approximately fifteen acres. After the landfill was closed, the property was subdivided and developed. A total of thirteen apartment buildings and a clubhouse were constructed over the waste-filled areas of the landfill. According to an investigation report by a consulting firm, see Geraghty & Miller (1996), the foundations for these structures were built as follows: The complex is founded on timber piles and post-tensioned concrete structural slab systems due to the subsurface conditions. The construction drawings approved by Hillsborough County for the apartment complex indicate that a synthetic membrane was to be installed beneath the slabs to block and disperse the migration of methane gas, generated by the decomposition of solid waste. Even though efforts were made during construction to prevent methane gas generated by the waste from seeping into the structures, problems were discovered in the late 1980's. In addition, differential settlement of the waste has resulted in cracks in the overlying structures in spite of the attempt to establish an adequate pile foundation system for those structures. Numerous investigations have been conducted at the property evaluating whether methane gas has migrated into the on-site structures and evaluating the potential for the gas to migrate off-site through utility trenches containing electrical conduits, sanitary sewers and stormwater pipes. Some gas monitoring data report methane gas concentrations in the soils at levels significantly higher than 100 percent of the lower explosive limit (LEL) for methane. Methane gas has consistently been detected under the slabs at the clubhouse and at many of the apartment buildings. Fortunately, methane gas has not been detected in the first floor apartments. Additional ventilation has been added to on-site structures and concrete floors have been resealed to try and minimize the risks from methane gas accumulation. While investigators now believe that the levels of methane gas are decreasing at the site, indicating that the Gunn Highway Landfill may have passed its peak methane generation rate, gas monitoring is still continuing and is likely to be required for many more years.
It,(was the dump) that had all this media, and a young enterprising mind. Not enough time to capture it all.
Tampa Art Gallery University of South Florida, Florida Focus,Fletcher and 75
"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. The name of the artist. In 1958 his mother took Hong Kong Willie to an art class. The name started then. An art teacher when doing crafts out of Gerber baby bottles, made a statement, in Hong Kong reuse was common. At that time he thought this was very interesting. His father had low-land, at that time landfills were common also. The county had told Hong Kong Willie’s father, it was safe, but as we now know this was not so. Something can come from bad to be good. Hong Kong Willie the name came from that art teacher impressing on that young mind that objects made for one use could be for many other uses. Hong Kong for the neat concept. Willie for an American name. . Now 50 years later, we know now being green is important. We need to look at this very carefully. Our children and our world need a different understanding. Objects can be used in many different ways. Hong Kong Willie the tons of objects in his life that have been used, without much change, So for that art teacher what she did for my life. Thank You. I still have the Gerber baby bottle till this day. Hong Kong Willie
"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
This is a excerpt from a study of the landfill,{county dump} Hong Kong Willie,{joe brown } lived on. . Gunn Highway Landfill The Gunn Highway Landfill is located off Gunn Highway in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida. The county operated the landfill as a trench-type facility for the disposal of MSW from 1958 to 1962. The landfill disposal areas occupied approximately fifteen acres. After the landfill was closed, the property was subdivided and developed. A total of thirteen apartment buildings and a clubhouse were constructed over the waste-filled areas of the landfill. According to an investigation report by a consulting firm, see Geraghty & Miller (1996), the foundations for these structures were built as follows: The complex is founded on timber piles and post-tensioned concrete structural slab systems due to the subsurface conditions. The construction drawings approved by Hillsborough County for the apartment complex indicate that a synthetic membrane was to be installed beneath the slabs to block and disperse the migration of methane gas, generated by the decomposition of solid waste. Even though efforts were made during construction to prevent methane gas generated by the waste from seeping into the structures, problems were discovered in the late 1980's. In addition, differential settlement of the waste has resulted in cracks in the overlying structures in spite of the attempt to establish an adequate pile foundation system for those structures. Numerous investigations have been conducted at the property evaluating whether methane gas has migrated into the on-site structures and evaluating the potential for the gas to migrate off-site through utility trenches containing electrical conduits, sanitary sewers and stormwater pipes. Some gas monitoring data report methane gas concentrations in the soils at levels significantly higher than 100 percent of the lower explosive limit (LEL) for methane. Methane gas has consistently been detected under the slabs at the clubhouse and at many of the apartment buildings. Fortunately, methane gas has not been detected in the first floor apartments. Additional ventilation has been added to on-site structures and concrete floors have been resealed to try and minimize the risks from methane gas accumulation. While investigators now believe that the levels of methane gas are decreasing at the site, indicating that the Gunn Highway Landfill may have passed its peak methane generation rate, gas monitoring is still continuing and is likely to be required for many more years.
Famous art Story Alexa ranks it among 17 top sites in the world.hongkongwillie.wordpress.com's site description.
嬉皮,Hippie,Hippie Bags,Hippie Artist,Hippie Art,Famous Hippie for the Green Movement.
Hippie Green Art Galleries.
Here are two definitions of Hippie,one Chinese ,one of American. The Green movement,change and respect of the world, Human rights,people realizing life is a travel. That what can be popular or so called informative can be questioned. So is Hippie a great movement that made the change of finding the truth. People that made Americans change the way we are now for freedom,our environment,and realizing our government is not perfect. No George Washington and his Cherry tree and the two definitions are so different.
Hong Kong Willie Hippie Reuse Artist. Artist of the 60’s in the now. Acclaimed Famous Hippie Florida folk artist, Living the Life of using objects for many uses. Follow the travels of life.
"I am ready to travel with you. Made for you, there is only one of me. This is my story: I am a Hong Kong Willie Hippie Bag, arriving from one destination, joining you on your life’s journey. On these travels we will find a way that more of us change. As in my purpose and your purpose, we are all meant for many uses." Please View: USF Special www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbpC9S-gIOo FOX SPECIAL www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrV3Aj85I84 Best Place to Buy $1 Kitsch & $10,000 Folk Art Best of the Bay Award Creative Loafing Hand Made Bag Shell: Burlap Coffee Bag Source: Third Generation Coffee Roaster Stitching: Recovered Yarn Source: Key West Handle, Label, Pockets: Source: Artist Worn Clothing (HKW) Inner Chambers: 3 Dimensions: Length(Strap to Bottom)-23" Actual Length-15" Width-22" Logged in Artist Register through Fisherman Id Tag.
此條目或章節可能因為語意模稜兩可而損及其中立性 。Article or section may be due to semantic ambiguity and the loss of neutrality . 掛上此模板的編輯者需在討論頁說明本文語意模稜之處，以便讓各編輯者討論和改善。 Put up this template on the talk page editors need to illustrate the semantic ambiguity of the Department to allow the editors to discuss and improve. 在編輯之前請務必察看讨论页 。 Be sure to look before editing the talk page .
字詞轉換是中文维基的一項自動轉換，目的是通過计算机程序自動消除繁简、地区词等不同用字模式的差異，以達到閱讀方便。 Terms of a conversion is automatically converted to the Chinese Wikipedia, aims to eliminate through the computer program automatically display Traditional and Simplified, words such as different regional patterns of the different words in order to achieve ease of reading. 字詞轉換包括全局轉換和手動轉換，本說明所使用的标题转换和全文转换技術，都屬於手動轉換。 Word conversion, including the global conversion and manual conversion, using the title of this note conversion and full conversion technology, all belong to manual conversion. 如果您想对我们的字词转换系统提出一些改进建议，或者提交应用面更广的转换（ 中文维基百科全站乃至MediaWiki软件），或者报告转换系统的错误，请前往Wikipedia:字词转换请求或候选发表您的意见。 If you want to convert our words to make some recommendations for improvement system, or submitted to broader application of the conversion ( Chinese Wikipedia and even the entire station MediaWiki software), or reporting the error transform the system, go to Wikipedia: word conversion request or candidate post your opinion.
“鲜花的威力”小巴 "Flower power" PLB
嬉皮士 （ 英语 ： Hippie ）本来被用来描写西方国家1960年代和1970年代反抗习俗和当时政治的年轻人。 Hippies ( English : Hippie) was originally used to describe the West in the 1960s and 1970s against the customs and politics of young people at that time. 嬉皮士这个名称是通过《 旧金山纪事 》的记者赫柏·凯恩普及的。 Hippy by the name " San Francisco Chronicle "reporter Herbert Kane popular. 嬉皮士不是一个统一的文化运动 ，它没有宣言或领导人物。 Hippie is not a unified cultural movement , it does not declarations or leaders. 嬉皮士用公社式的和流浪的生活方式来反应出他们对民族主义和越南战争的反对，他们提倡非传统宗教 ，批评西方国家中层阶级的价值观。 Hippie-style commune and with the wandering lifestyle to reflect their nationalism and the Vietnam War opposition, they advocate non-traditional religions , Western countries criticized middle class values. 他们批评政府对公民的权益的限制，大公司的贪婪，传统道德的狭窄和战争的无人道性。 They criticized the government's restrictions on the rights of citizens, corporations greed, narrow and traditional morality of the war inhumane. 他们将他们反对的机构和组织称为“陈府”（the establishment）。 They will oppose the institutions and organizations they called "Chen House" (the establishment). 嬉皮士后来也被贬义使用，用來描寫吸毒者。 Later to be derogatory hippies used to describe drug users. 直到最近保守派人士依然使用嬉皮士一词作为对年轻的自由主义人士的侮辱。 Until recently, conservatives are still using the word as a young hippie liberals insult. 当时的嬉皮士想要改变他们的内心（通过使用毒品 、神秘的修养或两者的混合）和走出社会的主流。 At that time the hippies wanted to change their hearts (through the use of drugs , the mysterious mix of self-cultivation, or both) and out of the mainstream of society. 远东形而上学和宗教实践和原著部落的图腾信仰对嬉皮士影响很大。 Far Eastern metaphysics and religious practice and belief in the original tribal totem great impact on the hippies. 这些影响在1970年代演化为神秘学中的新纪元运动 。 Evolution of these effects in the 1970s for the occult in the Campaign .
1940年代和1950年代美国的垮掉的一代称爵士乐音乐家为“hipster”和“beatnik”，同时这两个词也被用来称呼围绕着这些艺术家而出现波希米亚主义似的反文化 。 In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States Beat Generation known jazz musicians as "hipster" and "beatnik", while the two terms are also used to refer to the emergence of these artists around the doctrine of Bohemia -like counter-culture . 1960年代，从垮掉的一代中演化出嬉皮士，同时从爵士乐中演化出摇滚乐 。 In the 1960s, evolved from the Beat Generation hippies in the same time, evolved from a jazz rock . 在美国东海岸的格林威治村年轻的反文化者称他们自己为“hips”。 In the United States east coast Greenwich Village counterculture youth who call themselves "hips". 许多来自纽约市区的失望的年轻人聚集在那个村中，他们穿着他们最旧的衣服。 Many come from New York City's disappointment that the young people gathered in the village, they wear their oldest clothes. 第一个用嬉皮士这个词来描写这些穿着旧衣的中产阶级子女的媒体是一个广播电台。 The first use of the word to describe these hippies wore old clothes in the middle-class children's media is a radio station. 1965年9月6日旧金山的一家报纸使用首先使用了嬉皮士这个词来描写这些年轻的波西米亚主义者，但其它媒体在此后两年中几乎没有使用过这个词。 1965,September 6in San Francisco used a newspaper first used the term hippie to describe these young bohemian by nature, but other media in the next two years, the word almost never used. 旧金山海特·亚许柏里地区的嬉皮士是以一个叫做Diggers的团体为中心。 San Francisco, Xu Bo Hai Teya in the region is a hippie group called the Diggers as the center. 这个街头剧团体将即时性的街头剧、无政府主义行动和艺术表演结合在一起，他们的目标是要建立一个“自由城市”。 The immediacy of street theater group will be street theater, anarchistic action and performing arts together, their goal is to create a "free city." 他们受两个不同的运动影响：一方面受波西米亚主义的、地下艺术的、剧团的影响，另一方面受左派的、民权主义的、和平运动的影响。 Their effects by two different sports: one by the bohemian doctrine, underground art, theater impact, on the other hand by the leftist, populist, and peace movement. 加利福尼亚州的洛杉矶也有一个非常活跃的嬉皮士社团。 California 's Los Angeles also has a very active hippie community. 1967年夏许多年轻人（警察估计有七万五千人）聚集在海特·亚许柏里分享他们的新文化的音乐、毒品和反抗。 1967 summer many young people (police estimate there are seventy and five thousand people) gathered in the Bo Hai Teya promise to share their culture in music, drugs and rebellion. 1960年代末嬉皮士运动达到其高潮。 In the late 1960s hippie movement reached its climax. 1976年7月7日《时代》杂志将嬉皮士运动作为其封面故事：《嬉皮士：一个次文化的哲学》 1976,July 7, "Time" magazine as its cover story hippie movement: "Hippies: Philosophy of a sub-culture" 由于许多嬉皮士在他们的头发里带花或向行人分花，因此他们也有“花孩子”（Flower Kids）的外号。 Since many hippies inner tube flowers in their hair or spend hours to pedestrians, they also have "flower children" (Flower Kids) nickname.
嬉皮士经常参加和平运动 ，包括反越战的游行和争取人权的游行。 Hippies often participated in peace movements , including anti-Vietnam War marches and demonstrations for human rights. 青年国际党是嬉皮士中特别政治活跃的亚群。 Youth International Party is particularly politically active hippie sub-group. 从2005年的观点来看，嬉皮士性别歧视相当大，但实际上嬉皮士很快就接受了女性主义和平等主义的原则。 From the 2005 perspective, hippie sex discrimination rather large, but soon accepted the fact hippie feminist and egalitarian principles. 一开始嬉皮士对同性恋不十分容忍，但随着运动的发展他们越来越接受同性恋。 The beginning of hippies on homosexuality is not very tolerant, but with the development of the movement they are increasingly accepted homosexuality. 嬉皮士也通过“落出”社会的方式来表达他们的政治愿望和实现他们所寻求的变化。 Hippies also through the "fall out" of society to express their political aspirations and to achieve the changes they seek. 回到农村去、合作企业、 替代性能源 、新闻自由运动和有机农业在嬉皮士运动开始时都受到青睐。 Back to rural areas, cooperative enterprises, alternative energy sources , press freedom movement and organic agriculture in the hippie movement began when they are favored.
许多人认为嬉皮士滥用毒品的程度被支持越战的人夸张。 Many people believe that the extent of drug abuse hippies supported the Vietnam War who exaggerated. 他们用这个借口来反驳嬉皮士反对越战的理由。 They use this excuse to refute the reasons for hippies against the Vietnam War. 但实际上的确有许多嬉皮士使用毒品。 But in fact does have a lot of hippies use drugs. 他们尤其希望利用毒品所产生的幻觉来达到内心的修养。 In particular, they hope to use drugs to achieve the illusion produced by the cultivation of the heart. 尤其大麻和其它能够产生幻觉的药品如LSD和裸盖菇素 。 In particular, cannabis and other drugs can produce hallucinations, such as LSD and mushrooms, cover the bare elements . 虽然也有许多嬉皮士不用毒品，但毒品往往被看作是嬉皮士的一个标志和他们不肯遵从社会守则的原因。 Although there are many hippies do drugs, but drugs are often perceived as a sign of hippies and they refuse to comply with the social code of reasons. 使用毒品至今被看作是嬉皮士文化的一个中心内容。 Drug use has been seen as a central element of hippie culture. 许多人认为嬉皮士不抽烟，因为他们认为抽烟有害，但当时的照片显示许多嬉皮士抽烟。 Many people think that hippies did not smoke because they believe that smoking is bad, but the photos show that many hippies were smoking.
1970年许多嬉皮士的生活形式进入了主流文化，但其下的实质却很少被主流文化吸收。 In 1970 many of the hippie lifestyle into the mainstream culture, but few have been under substantial absorption of mainstream culture. 媒介渐渐丧失了对这个次文化的兴趣，年轻人对它也丧失了时髦感。 Media gradually lost interest in this subculture, young people also lost its fashion sense. 随着庞克摇滚的出现，嬉皮士甚至成为年轻人的反感形势。 With punk rock appearance, hippies and even become disgusted with the situation of young people. 但也有许多嬉皮士保持了他们的生活方式，甚至在主流文化中保持他们的生活方式。 But there are many hippies to maintain their way of life, even in the mainstream culture to maintain their lifestyle. 直到2005年全世界到处依然有嬉皮士的社群点，有些人随着他们喜欢的乐队流浪。 Over the world until 2005, the hippie community still point, some people like the band as they stray. 从1970年代初开始出现的为和平祈祷的彩虹聚会今天依然保持，其它聚会和音乐节则致力于生命或爱。 From the 1970s, began to emerge in the early to pray for peace rainbow party remains today, the other party and music festival is dedicated to the life or love.
长髮，大胡子。 Long hair, big beard. 许多人觉得长髮是一种冒犯，因为它代表不整洁或女性。 Many people think that long hair is a kind of offended, because it is not neat or on behalf of women.
色彩鲜艳的衣着或不寻常的衣饰。 Brightly colored clothing or unusual clothing.
偶尔自己演奏音乐，一般吉他，一般在家里与朋友一起，或在公共绿地上或节日上。 Occasionally play their music, usually guitar, usually at home with friends, or in a public green space or festival.
新嬉皮士是对21世纪的嬉皮士的称呼，他们恢复了一些1960年代嬉皮士运动的观点，比如他们也强调自由，穿他们愿意穿的衣服，做他们想要做的事。 Hippie is the new 21st century hippies of the call, they restored some of the views of the 1960s hippy movement, such as they also stressed the freedom to wear clothes they would wear, do what they want to do. 与1960年代的嬉皮士不同的是新嬉皮士一般不政治性，而1960年代的嬉皮士实际上是一个政治运动。 1960s hippies and the difference is generally not a new political hippies, but hippies of the 1960s is actually a political movement.
保守的主流人士用嬉皮士一词来指吸毒的人，尤其吸大麻的人，以及不愿参加社会活动，缺乏社会义务感和缺乏卫生感的人。 With the mainstream conservative parties to refer to the term hippie drugs, especially marijuana, and persons willing to participate in social activities, the lack of a sense of social obligations and lack of health sense people. 庞克摇滚次文化的人士则使用嬉皮士一词来指陈腐的、无聊的或讨厌的人。 Punk rock sub-culture of hippies who use the term to refer to a stale, boring or annoying people.
Hippie 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. Hong Kong Willie Hippie Art Gallery In Tampa, a reuse Hippie Art Gallery. Artist Kim,Derek,and Joseph. reuse artist that have lived the life and are meant for the green movement in the world. A gallery that was born for this time. Hippie Artist living a freegan life,art that makes a social statement of reuse. Media that has a profound effect in making the word green truly a movement of reuse in the world today and the future.
LexicographerJesse Sheidlower, the principal American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, argues that the terms hipster and hippie derive from the word hip, whose origins are unknown.[2] The term hipster was coined by Harry Gibson in 1940.[3] Although the word hippie made isolated appearances during the early 1960s, the first clearly contemporary use of the term appeared in print on September 5, 1965, in the article, "A New Haven for Beatniks", by San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon. In that article, Fallon wrote about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse, using the term hippie to refer to the new generation of beatniks who had moved from North Beach into the Haight-Ashbury district. New York Times editor and usage writer Theodore M. Bernstein said the paper changed the spelling from hippy to hippie to avoid the ambiguous description of clothing as hippy fashions.
The foundation of the hippie movement finds historical precedent as far back as the counterculture of the Ancient Greeks, espoused by philosophers like Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynics also as early forms of hippie culture.[4] Hippie philosophy also credits the religious and spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ, Hillel the Elder, Buddha, Mazdak, St. Francis of Assisi, Henry David Thoreau, and Gandhi.[4] The first signs of what we would call modern "proto-hippies" emerged in fin de siècleEurope. Between 1896 and 1908, a German youth movement arose as a countercultural reaction to the organized social and cultural clubs that centered around German folk music. Known as Der Wandervogel ("migratory bird"), the movement opposed the formality of traditional German clubs, instead emphasizing amateur music and singing, creative dress, and communal outings involving hiking and camping.[5] Inspired by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, Hermann Hesse, and Eduard Baltzer, Wandervogel attracted thousands of young Germans who rejected the rapid trend toward urbanization and yearned for the pagan, back-to-nature spiritual life of their ancestors.[6] During the first several decades of the twentieth century, Germans settled around the United States, bringing the values of the Wandervogel with them. Some opened the first health food stores, and many moved to Southern California where they could practice an alternative lifestyle in a warm climate. Over time, young Americans adopted the beliefs and practices of the new immigrants. One group, called the "Nature Boys", took to the California desert and raised organic food, espousing a back-to-nature lifestyle like the Wandervogel.[7] Songwriter Eden Ahbez wrote a hit song called Nature Boy inspired by Robert Bootzin (Gypsy Boots), who helped popularize health-consciousness, yoga, and organic food in the United States. Like Wandervogel, the hippie movement in the United States began as a youth movement. Composed mostly of white teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 25 years old,[8][9] hippies inherited a tradition of cultural dissent from bohemians and beatniks of the Beat Generation in the late 1950s.[9] Beats like Allen Ginsberg crossed-over from the beat movement and became fixtures of the burgeoning hippie and anti-war movements. By 1965, hippies had become an established social group in the U.S., and the movement eventually expanded to other countries,[10][11] extending as far as the United Kingdom and Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil.[12] The hippie ethos influenced The Beatles and others in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, and they in turn influenced their American counterparts.[13] Hippie culture spread worldwide through a fusion of rock music, folk, blues, and psychedelic rock; it also found expression in literature, the dramatic arts, fashion, and the visual arts, including film, posters advertising rock concerts, and album covers.[14] Self-described hippies had become a significant minority by 1968, representing just under 0.2% of the U.S. population[15] before declining in the mid-1970s.[10] Along with the New Left and the American Civil Rights Movement, the hippie movement was one of three dissenting groups of the 1960s counterculture.[11] Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy,[16] championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedelic drugs which they believed expanded one's consciousness, and created intentional communities or communes. They used alternative arts, street theatre, folk music, and psychedelic rock as a part of their lifestyle and as a way of expressing their feelings, their protests and their vision of the world and life. Hippies opposed political and social orthodoxy, choosing a gentle and nondoctrinaire ideology that favored peace, love and personal freedom,[17][18] expressed for example in The Beatles' song "All You Need is Love".[19] Hippies perceived the dominant culture as a corrupt, monolithic entity that exercised undue power over their lives, calling this culture "The Establishment", "Big Brother", or "The Man".[20][21][22] Noting that they were "seekers of meaning and value", scholars like Timothy Miller have described hippies as a new religious movement.[23]
Escapin' through the lily fields I came across an empty space It trembled and exploded Left a bus stop in its place The bus came by and I got on That's when it all began There was cowboy Neal At the wheel Of a bus to never-ever land
During the early 1960s novelist Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters lived communally in California. Members included Beat Generation hero Neal Cassady, Ken Babbs, Carolyn Adams (aka Mountain Girl and Carolyn Garcia), Stewart Brand, Del Close, Paul Foster, George Walker, Sandy Lehmann-Haupt and others. Their early escapades were documented in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. With Cassady at the wheel of a school bus named Further, the Merry Pranksters traveled across the United States to celebrate the publication of Kesey's novel Sometimes a Great Notion and to visit the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. The Merry Pranksters were known for using marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD, and during their journey they "turned on" many people to these drugs. The Merry Pranksters filmed and audiotaped their bus trips, creating an immersive multimedia experience that would later be presented to the public in the form of festivals and concerts. The Grateful Dead wrote a song about the Merry Pranksters' bus trips called "That's It for the Other One".[25] During this period Greenwich Village in New York City and Berkeley, California anchored the American folk music circuit. Berkeley's two coffee houses, the Cabale Creamery and the Jabberwock (see Jabberwock), sponsored performances by folk music artists in a beat setting.[26] In April 1963, Chandler A. Laughlin III, co-founder of the Cabale Creamery,[27] established a kind of tribal, family identity among approximately fifty people who attended a traditional, all-night Native Americanpeyote ceremony in a rural setting. This ceremony combined a psychedelic experience with traditional Native American spiritual values; these people went on to sponsor a unique genre of musical expression and performance at the Red Dog Saloon in the isolated, old-time mining town of Virginia City, Nevada.[28] During the summer of 1965, Laughlin recruited much of the original talent that led to a unique amalgam of traditional folk music and the developing psychedelic rock scene.[28] He and his cohorts created what became known as "The Red Dog Experience", featuring previously unknown musical acts — Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Charlatans, and others — who played in the completely refurbished, intimate setting of Virginia City's Red Dog Saloon. There was no clear delineation between "performers" and "audience" in "The Red Dog Experience", during which music, psychedelic experimentation, a unique sense of personal style and Bill Ham's first primitive light shows combined to create a new sense of community.[29] Laughlin and George Hunter of the Charlatans were true "proto-hippies", with their long hair, boots and outrageous clothing of nineteenth-century American (and Native American) heritage.[28] LSD manufacturer Owsley Stanley lived in Berkeley during 1965 and provided much of the LSD that became a seminal part of the "Red Dog Experience", the early evolution of psychedelic rock and budding hippie culture. At the Red Dog Saloon, The Charlatans were the first psychedelic rock band to play live (albeit unintentionally) loaded on LSD.[30] When they returned to San Francisco, Red Dog participants Luria Castell, Ellen Harman and Alton Kelley created a collective called "The Family Dog."[28] Modeled on their Red Dog experiences, on October 16, 1965, the Family Dog hosted "A Tribute to Dr. Strange" at Longshoreman's Hall.[31] Attended by approximately 1,000 of the Bay Area's original "hippies", this was San Francisco's first psychedelic rock performance, costumed dance and light show, featuring Jefferson Airplane, The Great Society and The Marbles. Two other events followed before year's end, one at California Hall and one at the Matrix.[28] After the first three Family Dog events, a much larger psychedelic event occurred at San Francisco's Longshoreman's Hall. Called "The Trips Festival", it took place on January 21–January 23, 1966, and was organized by Stewart Brand, Ken Kesey, Owsley Stanley and others. Ten thousand people attended this sold-out event, with a thousand more turned away each night.[32] On Saturday January 22, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company came on stage, and 6,000 people arrived to imbibe punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era.[33]
It is nothing new. We have a private revolution going on. A revolution of individuality and diversity that can only be private. Upon becoming a group movement, such a revolution ends up with imitators rather than participants...It is essentially a striving for realization of one's relationship to life and other people...
By February 1966, the Family Dog became Family Dog Productions under organizer Chet Helms, promoting happenings at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium in initial cooperation with Bill Graham. The Avalon Ballroom, the Fillmore Auditorium and other venues provided settings where participants could partake of the full psychedelic music experience. Bill Ham, who had pioneered the original Red Dog light shows, perfected his art of liquid light projection, which combined light shows and film projection and became synonymous with the San Francisco ballroom experience.[28][35] The sense of style and costume that began at the Red Dog Saloon flourished when San Francisco's Fox Theater went out of business and hippies bought up its costume stock, reveling in the freedom to dress up for weekly musical performances at their favorite ballrooms. As San Francisco Chronicle music columnist Ralph J. Gleason put it, "They danced all night long, orgiastic, spontaneous and completely free form."[28] Some of the earliest San Francisco hippies were former students at San Francisco State College[36] who became intrigued by the developing psychedelic hippie music scene.[28] These students joined the bands they loved, living communally in the large, inexpensive Victorian apartments in the Haight-Ashbury.[37] Young Americans around the country began moving to San Francisco, and by June 1966, around 15,000 hippies had moved into the Haight.[38]The Charlatans, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Grateful Dead all moved to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during this period. Activity centered around the Diggers, a guerrilla street theatre group that combined spontaneous street theatre, anarchistic action, and art happenings in their agenda to create a "free city". By late 1966, the Diggers opened free stores which simply gave away their stock, provided free food, distributed free drugs, gave away money, organized free music concerts, and performed works of political art.[39] On October 6, 1966, the state of California declared LSD a controlled substance, which made the drug illegal.[40] In response to the criminalization of psychedelics, San Francisco hippies staged a gathering in the Golden Gate Park panhandle, called the Love Pageant Rally,[40] attracting an estimated 700–800 people.[41] As explained by Allan Cohen, co-founder of the San Francisco Oracle, the purpose of the rally was twofold: to draw attention to the fact that LSD had just been made illegal — and to demonstrate that people who used LSD were not criminals, nor were they mentally ill. The Grateful Dead played, and some sources claim that LSD was consumed at the rally. According to Cohen, those who took LSD "were not guilty of using illegal substances...We were celebrating transcendental consciousness, the beauty of the universe, the beauty of being."[42]
Homemade tie-dyedT-shirts added a psychedelic flavor to hippie dress
On January 14, 1967, the outdoor Human Be-In organized by Michael Bowen[43] helped to popularize hippie culture across the United States, with 20,000 hippies gathering in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. On March 26, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick and 10,000 hippies came together in Manhattan for the Central Park Be-In on Easter Sunday.[44] The Monterey Pop Festival from June 16 to June 18 introduced the rock music of the counterculture to a wide audience and marked the start of the "Summer of Love".[45]Scott McKenzie's rendition of John Phillips' song, "San Francisco", became a hit in the United States and Europe. The lyrics, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair", inspired thousands of young people from all over the world to travel to San Francisco, sometimes wearing flowers in their hair and distributing flowers to passersby, earning them the name, "Flower Children". Bands like the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), and Jefferson Airplane lived in the Haight. In June 1967, Herb Caen was approached by "a distinguished magazine"[46] to write about why hippies were attracted to San Francisco. He declined the assignment but interviewed hippies in the Haight for his own newspaper column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Caen determined that, "Except in their music, they couldn't care less about the approval of the straight world."[46] Caen himself felt that the city of San Francisco was so straight that it provided a visible contrast with hippie culture.[46] On July 7, Time magazine featured a cover story entitled, "The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture." The article described the guidelines of the hippie code: "Do your own thing, wherever you have to do it and whenever you want. Drop out. Leave society as you have known it. Leave it utterly. Blow the mind of every straight person you can reach. Turn them on, if not to drugs, then to beauty, love, honesty, fun."[47] It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967. The media was right behind them, casting a spotlight on the Haight-Ashbury district and popularizing the "hippie" label. With this increased attention, hippies found support for their ideals of love and peace but were also criticized for their anti-work, pro-drug, and permissive ethos. At this point, The Beatles had released their groundbreaking album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which was quickly embraced by the hippie movement with its colorful psychedelic sonic imagery. By the end of the summer, the Haight-Ashbury scene had deteriorated. The incessant media coverage led the Diggers to declare the "death" of the hippie with a parade.[48][49][50] According to the late poet Susan 'Stormi' Chambless, the hippies buried an effigy of a hippie in the Panhandle to demonstrate the end of his/her reign. Haight-Ashbury could not accommodate the influx of crowds (mostly naive youngsters) with no place to live. Many took to living on the street, panhandling and drug-dealing. There were problems with malnourishment, disease, and drug addiction. Crime and violence skyrocketed. By the end of 1967, many of the hippies and musicians who initiated the Summer of Love had moved on. BeatleGeorge Harrison had once visited Haight-Ashbury and found it to be just a haven for dropouts inspiring him to give up LSD.[1]Misgivings about the hippie culture, particularly with regard to drug abuse and lenient morality, fueled the moral panics of the late 1960s.[51]
By 1968, hippie-influenced fashions were beginning to take off in the mainstream, especially for youths and younger adults of the populous "Baby Boomer" generation, many of whom may have aspired to emulate the hardcore movements now living in tribalistic communes, but had no overt connections to them. This was noticed not only in terms of clothes and also longer hair for men, but also in music, film, art, and literature, and not just in the US, but around the world. Eugene McCarthy's brief presidential campaign successfully persuaded a significant minority of young adults to "get clean for Gene" by shaving their beards or wearing longer skirts; however the "Clean Genes" had little impact on the popular image in the media spotlight, of the hirsute hippy adorned in beads, feathers, flowers and bells. The Yippies, who were seen as an offshoot of the hippie movements parodying as a political party, came to national attention during their celebration of the 1968 spring equinox, when some 3,000 of them took over Grand Central Station in New York — eventually resulting in 61 arrests. The Yippies, especially their leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, became notorious for their theatrics, such as trying to levitate the Pentagon at the October 1967 war protest, and such slogans as "Rise up and abandon the creeping meatball!" Their stated intention to protest the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, including nominating their own candidate, "Lyndon Pigasus Pig" (an actual pig), was also widely publicized in the media at this time.[52]
In April 1969, the building of People's Park in Berkeley, California received international attention. The University of California, Berkeley had demolished all the buildings on a 2.8-acre (11,000 m2) parcel near campus, intending to use the land to build playing fields and a parking lot. After a long delay, during which the site became a dangerous eyesore, thousands of ordinary Berkeley citizens, merchants, students, and hippies took matters into their own hands, planting trees, shrubs, flowers and grass to convert the land into a park. A major confrontation ensued on May 15, 1969, when Governor Ronald Reagan ordered the park destroyed, which led to a two-week occupation of the city of Berkeley by the United States National Guard.[53]Flower power came into its own during this occupation as hippies engaged in acts of civil disobedience to plant flowers in empty lots all over Berkeley under the slogan "Let A Thousand Parks Bloom". In August 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in Bethel, New York, which for many, exemplified the best of hippie counterculture. Over 500,000 people arrived[54] to hear some of the most notable musicians and bands of the era, among them Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Carlos Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix. Wavy Gravy'sHog Farm provided security and attended to practical needs, and the hippie ideals of love and human fellowship seemed to have gained real-world expression. In December 1969, a similar event took place in Altamont, California, about 30 miles (45 km) east of San Francisco. Initially billed as "Woodstock West", its official name was The Altamont Free Concert. About 300,000 people gathered to hear The Rolling Stones; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Jefferson Airplane and other bands. The Hells Angels provided security that proved far less benevolent than the security provided at the Woodstock event: 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed and killed during The Rolling Stones' performance.[55]
By the 1970s, the 1960s zeitgeist that had spawned hippie culture seemed to be on the wane.[56][57] The events at Altamont Free Concert[58] shocked many Americans,[59] including those who had strongly identified with hippie culture. Another shock came in the form of the Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murders committed in August 1969 by Charles Manson and his "family" of followers. Nevertheless, the turbulent political atmosphere that featured the bombing of Cambodia and shootings by National Guardsmen at Jackson State University and Kent State University still brought people together. These shootings inspired the May 1970 song by Quicksilver Messenger Service "What About Me?", where they sang, "You keep adding to my numbers as you shoot my people down", as well as Neil Young's "Ohio", recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Much of hippie style had been integrated into mainstream American society by the early 1970s.[60][61][62] Large rock concerts that originated with the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and the 1968 Isle of Wight Festival became the norm, evolving into stadium rock in the process. In the mid-1970s, with the end of the draft and the Vietnam War, a renewal of patriotic sentiment associated with the approach of the United States Bicentennial and the emergence of punk in London, Manchester, New York and Los Angeles, the mainstream media lost interest in the hippie counterculture. At the same time there was a revival of the Mod subculture, skinheads, teddy boys and the emergence of new youth cultures, like the goths (an arty offshoot of punk) and football casuals. Acid rock gave way to prog rock, heavy metal, disco, and punk rock. Starting in the late 1960s, hippies began to come under attack by working-class skinheads.[63][64][65] Hippies were also vilified and sometimes attacked by punks, revivalist mods, greasers, football casuals, Teddy boys and members of other youth subcultures of the 1970s and 1980s. The countercultural movement was also under covert assault by J. Edgar Hoover's infamous "Counter Intelligence Program" (COINTELPRO), but in some countries it was other youth groups that were a threat. Hippie ideals had a marked influence on anarcho-punk and some post-punk youth subcultures, especially during the Second Summer of Love. While many hippies made a long-term commitment to the lifestyle, some people argue that hippies "sold out" during the 1980s and became part of the materialist, consumer culture.[66][67] Although not as visible as it once was, hippie culture has never died out completely: hippies and neo-hippies can still be found on college campuses, on communes, and at gatherings and festivals. Many embrace the hippie values of peace, love, and community, and hippies may still be found in bohemian enclaves around the world.[12] Towards the end of the 20th century, a trend of "cyber hippies" emerged, that embraced some of the qualities of the '60s psychedelic counterculture.[68]
Hippies sought to free themselves from societal restrictions, choose their own way, and find new meaning in life. One expression of hippie independence from societal norms was found in their standard of dress and grooming, which made hippies instantly recognizable to one another, and served as a visual symbol of their respect for individual rights. Through their appearance, hippies declared their willingness to question authority, and distanced themselves from the "straight" and "square" (i.e., conformist) segments of society.[69] At the same time, many thoughtful hippies distanced themselves from the very idea that the way a person dresses could be a reliable signal of who he was, especially after outright criminals, like Charles Manson, began to adopt superficial hippie characteristics, and also after plainclothes policemen started to "dress like hippies" in order to divide and conquer legitimate members of the counter-culture. Frank Zappa admonished his audience that "we all wear a uniform": the San Francisco clown/hippie Wavy Gravy said in 1987 that he could still see fellow-feeling in the eyes of Market Street businessman who'd dressed conventionally to survive.
As in the beat movement preceding them, and the punk movement that followed soon after, hippie symbols and iconography were purposely borrowed from either "low" or "primitive" cultures, with hippie fashion reflecting a disorderly, often vagrant style.[70] As with other adolescent, white middle-class movements, deviant behavior of the hippies involved challenging the prevailing gender differences of their time: both men and women in the hippie movement wore jeans and maintained long hair,[71] and both genders wore sandals or went barefoot.[38] Men often wore beards,[72] while women wore little or no makeup, with many going braless.[38] Hippies often chose brightly colored clothing and wore unusual styles, such as bell-bottom pants, vests, tie-dyed garments, dashikis, peasant blouses, and long, full skirts; non-Western inspired clothing with Native American, Asian, Indian, African and Latin American motifs were also popular. Much of hippie clothing was self-made in defiance of corporate culture, and hippies often purchased their clothes from flea markets and second-hand shops.[73] Favored accessories for both men and women included Native American jewelry, head scarves, headbands and long beaded necklaces.[38] Hippie homes, vehicles and other possessions were often decorated with psychedelic art.
Travel, domestic and international, was a prominent feature of hippie culture, becoming (in this communal process) an extension of friendship. School buses similar to Ken Kesey's Further, or the iconic VW bus, were popular because groups of friends could travel on the cheap. The VW Bus became known as a counterculture and hippie symbol, and many buses were repainted with graphics and/or custom paint jobs — these were predecessors to the modern-day art car. A peace symbol often replaced the Volkswagen logo. Many hippies favored hitchhiking as a primary mode of transport because it was economical, environmentally friendly, and a way to meet new people.
Hand-crafted Hippie Truck, 1968
Hippies tended to travel light and could pick up and go wherever the action was at any time; whether at a "love-in" on Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco, a demonstration against the Vietnam War in Berkeley, one of Ken Kesey's "Acid Tests", or if the "vibe" wasn't right and a change of scene was desired, hippies were mobile at a moment's notice. Pre-planning was eschewed as hippies were happy to put a few clothes in a backpack, stick out their thumbs and hitchhike anywhere. Hippies seldom worried whether they had money, hotel reservations or any of the other standard accoutrements of travel. Hippie households welcomed overnight guests on an impromptu basis, and the reciprocal nature of the lifestyle permitted freedom of movement. People generally cooperated to meet each other's needs in ways that became less common after the early 1970s."[20] This way of life is still seen among the Rainbow Family groups, new age travellers and New Zealand's housetruckers.[74] A derivative of this free-flow style of travel were hippie trucks and buses, hand-crafted mobile houses built on truck or bus chassis to facilitate a nomadic lifestyle as documented in the 1974 book Roll Your Own[75] Some of these mobile gypsy houses were quite elaborate with beds, toilets, showers and cooking facilities. On the West Coast, a unique lifestyle developed around the Renaissance Faires that Phyllis and Ron Patterson first organized in 1963.
Hippie Truck interior
During the summer and fall months, entire families traveled together in their trucks and buses, parked at Renaissance Pleasure Faire sites in Southern and Northern California, worked their crafts during the week, and donned Elizabethan costume for weekend performances and to attend booths where handmade goods were sold to the public. The sheer number of young people living at the time made for unprecedented travel opportunities to special happenings. The peak experience of this type was the Woodstock Festival near Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969, which drew over 500,000 people. One travel experience, undertaken by hundreds of thousands of hippies between 1969 and 1971, was the Hippie trail overland route to India. Carrying little or no luggage, and with small amounts of cash, almost all followed the same route, hitch-hiking across Europe to Athens and on to Istanbul, then by train through central Turkey via Erzurum, continuing by bus into Iran, via Tabriz and Tehran to Mashhad, across the Afghan border into Herat, through southern Afghanistan via Kandahar to Kabul, over the Khyber Pass into Pakistan, via Rawalpindi and Lahore to the Indian frontier. Once in India, hippies went to many different destinations but gathered in large numbers on the beaches of Goa,[76] or crossed the border into Nepal to spend months in Kathmandu. In Kathmandu, most of the hippies hung out in tranquil surrounding of a place called Freak Street[77] (Nepal Bhasa: Jhoo Chhen) which still exists near Kathmandu Durbar Square.
Many hippies rejected mainstream organized religions in favor of a more personal spiritual experience, often drawing on indigenous beliefs and folk religions, among others. If they adhered to mainstream faiths, they embraced Buddhism, Hinduism and the Jesus Movement. Many hippies embraced neo-paganism (especially Wicca) as well.
The peace symbol was developed in the UK as a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and was embraced by U.S. anti-war protestors during the 1960s (though it is copyrighted). Hippies were often pacifists and participated in non-violent political demonstrations, such as civil rights marches, the marches on Washington D.C., and anti–Vietnam War demonstrations, including draft-card burnings and the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests.[78] The degree of political involvement varied widely among hippies, from those who were active in peace demonstrations to the more anti-authority street theater and demonstrations of the Yippies, the most politically active hippie sub-group.[79]Bobby Seale discussed the differences between Yippies and hippies with Jerry Rubin who told him that Yippies were the political wing of the hippie movement, as hippies have not "necessarily become political yet". Regarding the political activity of hippies, Rubin said, "They mostly prefer to be stoned, but most of them want peace, and they want an end to this stuff."[80] In addition to non-violent political demonstrations, hippie opposition to the Vietnam War included organizing political action groups to oppose the war, refusal to serve in the military and conducting "teach-ins" on college campuses that covered Vietnamese history and the larger political context of the war.[81] Scott McKenzie's 1967 rendition of John Phillips' song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)", which helped inspire the hippie Summer of Love, became a homecoming song for all Vietnam veterans arriving in San Francisco from 1967 on. McKenzie has dedicated every American performance of "San Francisco" to Vietnam veterans, and he sang at the 2002 20th anniversary of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Hippie political expression often took the form of "dropping out" of society to implement the changes they sought. Politically motivated movements aided by hippies include the back to the land movement of the 1960s, cooperative business enterprises, alternative energy, the free press movement, and organic farming.[61][82] The political ideals of the hippies influenced other movements, such as anarcho-punk, rave culture, green politics, stoner culture and the new age movement. Penny Rimbaud of the English anarcho-punk band Crass said in interviews, and in an essay called The Last Of The Hippies, that Crass was formed in memory of his friend, Wally Hope.[83] Rimbaud also said that Crass were heavily involved with the hippie movement throughout the 1960s and Seventies, with Dial House being established in 1967. Many punks were often critical of Crass for their involvement in the hippie movement. Like Crass, Jello Biafra was influenced by the hippie movement and cited the yippies as a key influence on his political activism and thinking, though he did write songs critical of hippies.
"According to the hippies, LSD was the glue that held the Haight together. It was the hippie sacrament, a mind detergent capable of washing away years of social programming, a re-imprinting device, a consciousness-expander, a tool that would push us up the evolutionary ladder."
On the West Coast of the United States, Ken Kesey was an important figure in promoting the recreational use of psychotropic drugs, especially LSD, also known as "acid." By holding what he called "Acid Tests", and touring the country with his band of Merry Pranksters, Kesey became a magnet for media attention that drew many young people to the fledgling movement. The Grateful Dead (originally billed as "The Warlocks") played some of their first shows at the Acid Tests, often as high on LSD as their audiences. Kesey and the Pranksters had a "vision of turning on the world."[84] Harder drugs, such as amphetamines and heroin were also used in hippie settings; however, these drugs were often disdained, even among those who used them, because they were recognized as harmful and addictive.[69]
Newcomers to the Internet are often startled to discover themselves not so much in some soulless colony of technocrats as in a kind of cultural Brigadoon - a flowering remnant of the '60's, when hippie communalism and libertarian politics formed the roots of the modern cyberrevolution...
Stewart Brand, "We Owe It All To The Hippies".[86]
The legacy of the hippie movement continues to permeate Western society.[87] In general, unmarried couples of all ages feel free to travel and live together without societal disapproval.[61][88] Frankness regarding sexual matters has become more common, and the rights of homosexual, bisexual and transsexual people, as well as people who choose not to categorize themselves at all, have expanded.[89] Religious and cultural diversity has gained greater acceptance.[90] Co-operative business enterprises and creative community living arrangements are more accepted than before.[91] Some of the little hippie health food stores of the 1960s and 1970s are now large-scale, profitable businesses, due to greater interest in natural foods, herbal remedies, vitamins and other nutritional supplements.[92] Authors Stewart Brand and John Markoff argue that the development and popularization of personal computers and the Internet find one of their primary roots in the anti-authoritarian ethos promoted by hippie culture.[86][93] Distinct appearance and clothing was one of the immediate legacies of hippies worldwide.[73][94] During the 1960s and 1970s, mustaches, beards and long hair became more commonplace and colorful, while multi-ethnic clothing dominated the fashion world. Since that time, a wide range of personal appearance options and clothing styles, including nudity, have become more widely acceptable, all of which was uncommon before the hippie era.[73][94] Hippies also inspired the decline in popularity of the necktie and other business clothing, which had been unavoidable for men during the 1950s and early 1960s.
The hippie legacy in literature includes the lasting popularity of books reflecting the hippie experience, such as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.[96] In music, the folk rock and psychedelic rock popular among hippies evolved into genres such as acid rock, world beat and heavy metal music. Psychedelic trance (also known as psytrance) is a type of electronic music music influenced by 1960s psychedelic rock. The tradition of hippie music festivals began in the United States in 1965 with Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, where the Grateful Dead played tripping on LSD and initiated psychedelic jamming. For the next several decades, many hippies and neo-hippies became part of the Deadhead community, attending music and art festivals held around the country. The Grateful Dead toured continuously, with few interruptions between 1965 and 1995. Phish and their fans (called Phish Heads) operated in the same manner, with the band touring continuously between 1983 and 2004. Many contemporary bands performing at hippie festivals and their derivatives are called jam bands, since they play songs that contain long instrumentals similar to the original hippie bands of the 1960s. With the demise of Grateful Dead and Phish, nomadic touring hippies attend a growing series of summer festivals, the largest of which is called the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which premiered in 2002. The Oregon Country Fair is a three-day festival featuring hand-made crafts, educational displays and costumed entertainment. The Burning Man festival began in 1986 at a San Francisco beach party and is now held in the Black Rock Desert northeast of Reno, Nevada. Although few participants would accept the hippie label, Burning Man is a contemporary expression of alternative community in the same spirit as early hippie events. The gathering becomes a temporary city (36,500 occupants in 2005), with elaborate encampments, displays, and many art cars. Other events that enjoy a large attendance include the Rainbow Family Gatherings, The Gathering of the Vibes, Community Peace Festivals, and the Woodstock Festivals.
In the UK, there are many new age travellers who are known as hippies to outsiders, but prefer to call themselves the Peace Convoy. They started the Stonehenge Free Festival in 1974, but English Heritage later banned the festival, resulting in the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985. With Stonehenge banned as a festival site, new age travellers gather at the annual Glastonbury Festival. In New Zealand between 1976 and 1981 tens of thousands of hippies gathered from around the world on large farms around Waihi and Waikino for music and alternatives festivals. Named Nambassa, the festivals focused on peace, love, and a balanced lifestyle. The events featured practical workshops and displays advocating alternative lifestyles, self sufficiency, clean and sustainable energy and sustainable living.[97] In the UK and Europe, the years 1987 to 1989 were marked by a large-scale revival of many characteristics of the hippie movement. This later movement, composed mostly of people aged 18 to 25, adopted much of the original hippie philosophy of love, peace and freedom. The summer of 1988 became known as the Second Summer of Love. Although the music favored by this movement was modern electronic music, especially house music and acid house, one could often hear songs from the original hippie era in the chill out rooms at raves. In the UK, many of the well-known figures of this movement first lived communally in Stroud Green, an area of north London located in Finsbury Park. Popular films depicting the hippie ethos and lifestyle include Woodstock, Easy Rider, Hair, The Doors, Across the Universe, Taking Woodstock, and Crumb. In 2002, photojournalist John Bassett McCleary published a 650-page, 6,000-entry unabridged slang dictionary devoted to the language of the hippies titled The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s. The book was revised and expanded to 700 pages in 2004.[98] McCleary believes that the hippie counterculture added a significant number of words to the English language by borrowing from the lexicon of the Beat Generation, through the hippies' shortening of beatnik words and then popularizing their usage.[99]
^Zablocki, Benjamin. "Hippies." World Book Online Reference Center. 2006. Retrieved on 2006-10-12. "Hippies were members of a youth movement...from white middle-class families and ranged in age from 15 to 25 years old."
^ abHirsch 1993, p. 419. Hirsch describes hippies as: "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. in the 1960s and affected Europe before fading in the 1970s...fundamentally a cultural rather than a political protest."
^ abPendergast & Pendergast 2005. Pendergast writes: "The Hippies made up the...nonpolitical subgroup of a larger group known as the counterculture...the counterculture included several distinct groups...One group, called the New Left...Another broad group called...the Civil Rights Movement...did not become a recognizable social group until after 1965...according to John C. McWilliams, author of The 1960s Cultural Revolution."
^YippieAbbie Hoffman envisioned a different society: "...where people share things, and we don't need money; where you have the machines for the people. A free society, that's really what it amounts to... a free society built on life; but life is not some Time Magazine, hippie version of fagdom... we will attempt to build that society..." See: Swatez, Gerald. Miller, Kaye. (1970). Conventions: The Land Around Us Anagram Pictures. University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Social Sciences Research Film Unit. qtd at ~16:48. The speaker is not explicitly identified, but it is thought to be Abbie Hoffman.
^Wiener, Jon (1991), Come Together: John Lennon in His Time, University of Illinois Press, p. 40, ISBN0252061314 : "Seven hundred million people heard it in a worldwide TV satellite broadcast. It became the anthem of flower power that summer...The song expressed the highest value of the counterculture...For the hippies, however, it represented a call for liberation from Protestant culture, with its repressive sexual taboos and its insistence on emotional restraint...The song presented the flower power critique of movement politics: there was nothing you could do that couldn't be done by others; thus you didn't need to do anything...John was arguing not only against bourgeois self-denial and future-mindedness but also against the activists' sense of urgency and their strong personal commitments to fighting injustice and oppression..."
^Dudley 2000, pp. 203–206. Timothy Miller notes that the counterculture was a "movement of seekers of meaning and value...the historic quest of any religion." Miller quotes Harvey Cox, William C. Shepard, Jefferson Poland, and Ralph J. Gleason in support of the view of the hippie movement as a new religion. See also Wes Nisker's The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom: "At its core, however, hippie was a spiritual phenomenon, a big, unfocused, revival meeting." Nisker cites the San Francisco Oracle, which described the Human Be-In as a "spiritual revolution".
^ DeCurtis, Anthony. (July 12, 2007). "New York". Rolling Stone. Issue 1030/1031; For additional sources, see McNeill, Don, "Central Park Rite is Medieval Pageant", The Village Voice, 30 March. 1967: pg 1, 20; Weintraub, Bernard, "Easter: A Day of Worship, a "Be-In" or just Parading in the Sun", The New York Times, 27 March. 1967: pg 1, 24.
^ Bugliosi (1994) describes the popular view that the Manson case "sounded the death knell for hippies and all they symbolically represented", citing Joan Didion, Diane Sawyer, and Time. Bugliosi admits that although the Manson murders "may have hastened" the end of the hippie era, the era was already in decline.
^ Pendergast, Tom; Pendergast, Sara (2004), ""Hippies." Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages.", Gale Virtual Reference Library, 5: Modern World Part II: 1946–2003, Detroit: Gale .
^ abc Pendergast, Sara. (2004) Fashion, Costume, and Culture. Volume 5. Modern World Part II: 1946-2003. Thomson Gale. ISBN 0-7876-5417-5
^ Junker, Detlef; Gassert,Philipp (2004), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990, Cambridge University Press, pp. 424, ISBN0521834201
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Oldmeadow, Harry (2004), Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions, World Wisdom, Inc, ISBN0941532577 .
Mecchi, Irene. (1991). The Best of Herb Caen, 1960–75. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-0020-2
Pendergast, Tom; Pendergast, Sara, eds. (2005), "Sixties Counterculture: The Hippies and Beyond", The Sixties in America Reference Library, 1: Almanac, Detroit: Thomson Gale, pp. 151–171 .
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Turner, Fred (2006), From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, University Of Chicago Press, ISBN0-226-81741-5 .
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Young, Shawn David. (2005). Hippies, Jesus Freaks, and Music. Ann Arbor: Xanedu/Copley Original Works. ISBN 1-59399-201-7
Indian Dreams - Hong Kong Willie - Original Art Dimensions: 23" x 7" x 1"
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Hong kong willie web site Florida's Best roadside attractions
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Tampa Art Galleries Hong Kong Willie Reuse Artist. Artist of the 60’s in the now. Acclaimed Famous Florida folk artist, Living the Life of using objects for many uses. Follow the travels of life.
Hong Kong Willie web site HONG KONG WILLIE FAMOUS AMERICAN ARTIST
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. Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery In Tampa, a reuse Art Gallery. Artist Kim,Derek,and Joseph. reuse artist that have lived the life and are meant for the green movement in the world. A gallery that was born for this time. Artist living a freegan life,art that makes a social statement of reuse. Media that has a profound effect in making the word green truly a movement of reuse in the world today and the future.
FOX World Fox News
Google: Hong Kong Willie **Best Place to Buy $1 Kitsch to $10,000 Folk Art Best of the Bay Award 2007 Creative Loafing Hong Kong Willie. The name of the artist. In 1958 his mother took Hong Kong Willie to an art class. The name started then. An art teacher when doing crafts out of Gerber baby bottles, made a statement, in Hong Kong reuse was common. At that time he thought this was very interesting. His father had low-land, at that time landfills were common also. The county had told Hong Kong Willie’s father, it was safe, but as we now know this was not so. Something can come from bad to be good. Hong Kong Willie the name came from that art teacher impressing on that young mind that objects made for one use could be for many other uses. Hong Kong for the neat concept. Willie for an American name. So for many years Hong Kong Willie had a life of reuse. Hong Kong Willie saw forms in a different light, His life now was meaningful, knowing this was and would be his life. Art made from found objects, making less of a footprint on this world. Art and art teachers, HOW IMPORTANT. For the ones that have, and the ones who have not. Media can be found. Now 50 years later, we know now being green is important. We need to look at this very carefully. Our children and our world need a different understanding. Objects can be used in many different ways. Hong Kong Willie the tons of objects in his life that have been used, without much change, So for that art teacher what she did for my life. Thank You. I still have the Gerber baby bottle till this day.
Hong Kong Willie.Hong Kong Willie Website
By:
Chris Futrell, Florida Focus
TAMPA, Fla. – Have you ever seen the building on the corner of Fletcher and I-75 with a bunch of buoys strung everywhere? This small business that many think is an old bait n’ tackle shop is actually Hong Kong Willie. 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.” Tampa Art Galleries. Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery
Tampa Art Galleries Hong Kong Willie Reuse Artist. Artist of the 60’s in the now. Acclaimed Famous Florida folk artist, Living the Life of using objects for many uses. Follow the travels of life.
Tampa Art Galleries
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. Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery In Tampa, a reuse Art Gallery. Artist Kim,Derek,and Joseph. reuse artist that have lived the life and are meant for the green movement in the world. A gallery that was born for this time. Artist living a freegan life,art that makes a social statement of reuse. Media that has a profound effect in making the word green truly a movement of reuse in the world today and the future.
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. The name of the artist. In 1958 his mother took Hong Kong Willie to an art class. The name started then. An art teacher when doing crafts out of Gerber baby bottles, made a statement, in Hong Kong reuse was common. At that time he thought this was very interesting. His father had low-land, at that time landfills were common also. The county had told Hong Kong Willie’s father, it was safe, but as we now know this was not so. Something can come from bad to be good. Hong Kong Willie the name came from that art teacher impressing on that young mind that objects made for one use could be for many other uses. Hong Kong for the neat concept. Willie for an American name. So for many years Hong Kong Willie had a life of reuse. Hong Kong Willie saw forms in a different light, His life now was meaningful, knowing this was and would be his life. Art made from found objects, making less of a footprint on this world. Art and art teachers, HOW IMPORTANT. For the ones that have, and the ones who have not. Media can be found. Now 50 years later, we know now being green is important. We need to look at this very carefully. Our children and our world need a different understanding. Objects can be used in many different ways. Hong Kong Willie the tons of objects in his life that have been used, without much change, So for that art teacher what she did for my life. Thank You. I still have the Gerber baby bottle till this day. Hong Kong Willie.
Famous Tampa Art Galleries. . Green Artiist.. Advertise Here call 813 770 4794.
Updated
September 6 2010
Famous Tampa Green Artist. Google Hongkongwillie. Tampa Art Galleries WILL YOU EVER ForGet The Name Hongkongwillie. World Famous Art Galleries in Reuse
Tampa Art Gallery
University of South Florida
Florida Focus
Recycling as a Lifestyle and a Business
By:
Chris Futrell, Florida Focus
TAMPA, Fla. – Have you ever seen the building on the corner of Fletcher and I-75 with a bunch of buoys strung everywhere? This small business that many think is an old bait n’ tackle shop is actually Hong Kong Willie. 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.” Famous Tampa Art Galleries, Famous Tampa Art Gallery.
ROADSIDE ATTRACTION: Located off East Fletcher Road between hotel chains and high-end office parks is the gift shop and folk art gallery Hong Kong Willie's.
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.
Facebook ,Is Facebook knowingly involved in Fraud.
Facebook do they know their advertisers. Is Facebook agreeing to Swipebids fraud,Is Facebook a company that is involved in Fraud. Facebook has a advertising agreement,. Now should Facebook be investigated and charged with Fraud. The FBI unit http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/internetschemes, is and reviewing Facebook , Swipebids, as reliable sources have said. Facebook has been informed that federal indictments could be coming. This could make or end Facebook as we know it today. As we have seen other social site as Myspace dwindle, could this Fraud end Facebook. As today Facebook continues to run the Swipebibs Add. Will indictments of Key players in Facebook change the way we see advertisers that are knowing fraud. Facebook may be proven to be a willing party in this fraud. Also sources say the jail time for the Facebook people involved could face 20 to 30 years. A key player in this fraud has said that everyone new what was going on. Now it is said Facebook executives are scrambling to cover up the knowledge of the fraud and the sites that informed everyone of the events, it is said emails that key players have disappeared.It is also been reported that a key player at Facebook has turned to Federal people to testify to avoid prison time.It is also reported that Facebook could face fines in the muti million dollar range. Facebook may be the first to find out knowing that information is their Business and should have know-ed. Is this going to be Facebook Gate. internet fraud might have hit a big Fish this time. Did Facebook know,Did Facebook contrive and conspire this ,Is Facebook in the bushiness of knowing what is in the world of info. Fraud ,Facebook, Swipebids,is it or is this just hot air.
Merriem Wombacher These people need to be shut down. It is a scam, and I did get my money back, but it took alot of work!
Prior to filing a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), please read the following information regarding terms and conditions. Should you have additional questions prior to filing your complaint, view FAQ for more information on inquiries such as:
Request for Civil Class-Action Investigation and Lawsuit of Jesse Willms and www.SwipeBids.com Petition, hosted at PetitionOnline.com
Emi Khalib-Simmons Apparently we are not the only small ppl that been scammed by this f#@#ng swine Jesse, even a big corporate company fell into his scam too!! Why is he not being locked up yet ??!!
'Free trial' offers could end up costing you hundreds of dollars.
Emi Khalib-Simmons Oh well..stupid, stupid ME!I got scammed today by ths parasite called SwipeBids.com!!I hd just joined them for about 15 mnts & decided to pull out my account.Did contact the online customer care and she told me tht they r charging my credit card for $154.00 for the bidding pack which I did not sign up for!! How low can... these ppl be? She asked me to mail them the refund forms by mail??What a bunch of scum!I told that person to get a better job to earned a decent living! Aaarrrghhh.. I am so mad at myself for being so gullible over some stupid I-pad!! :-(
Julie Powers you're so right. I'm sorry to say I was scammed into thinking I would win Mac book + iPad +10,000 bids. Unfortunately. The few people that wins are probably their own staff, friends of the company that knows the game and they are winning all the big "25,000" bids auction. I'm uploading a couple of photos of the sam...e guy who won in the last two weeks, everyone of the "25,000" bid auction. Basically, you are bidding against some guy that according to my calculation have over 1,000,000 + bids to win the higher price item. Let see I have 400 bids against his million. Hmmm... I wonder who wins?? You got it. The same guy. Clems11ryan. He's won so many Mac books and iPads he's making a killing. Maybe it is just all a scam to make other buy bids and never win anything. I hope someone start a class action suit. I would like to be included in this lawsuit!!
Mischelle Bornes Contact BBB in Alberta Canada. I was also scammed and they also owe me 5 items. I hired a attorney and he filed a class action suit against swipebids.... You need to take action right away!!!!
Friska Kaunang so sad to know that i got scammed too... i put my bank account, and it was declined for unknown reason.. so, i put my parents' bank account, and it went through.. this morning i just checked my email, and there was an email from my bank account that online transaction has been made amounted to $159.00.. i was surprised co...z i knew that this bank account even got rejected when i registered..and besides, i didnt recognize the stated amount.. then i checked my parents' online account.. and they charged also to this account.. what a great surprise they made me today.. im trying to settle things down.. i called my bank, and they told me that the email was not from them.. i hope it won't show up on my bank account and just merely email scam.. i'm gonna go with my parents to their bank to settle the other charge.. i printed the refund request form too and have it mailed tomorrow.. let's see what will happen next..
Elsie Roach Vsmm I too got scammed. Was not till later in the day I went back in was checking on how to make the auto bid thing work, when I went over the video how it works and noticed they said there was a small charge for joining, well when I registered I did not see that I was going to be charged, as they make you scroll down thro...ugh a whole page of crap to go to step 2 you miss the thing that at least is there now about charging 159.00 and getting 300 bids,and I also when I did it again but used a fake name, and did not actually put in the info on step 2 noticed they had something written above the submit button that says if you hit the submit button you will be charged 159.00 but you really don't notice it too well, now that made me feel really crazy as I never saw it when I did it the first time, so don't know if they added it later that day or what, but I was looking I thought, but being it was never mentioned before you start the registration, I guess I could of missed it. hmmmm
Elsie Roach Vsmm I won like 17 bids on the 40 bid pack, but as I really watched the auctions I thought you will never win anything here. So I thought I would come back later and see if the same stupid things were still just going up in price, and that is when I saw that they had charged me the money in my purchases and I paid the like... 17.20 or so for the auction packs. I immediately contacted customer service and they said long story short I would get a refund if I mailed the dang paper in. Well I am going to mail it, but know I won't get any money back. My bank would not give it back either. Kind of wierd though the charges on my account are still processing and the date was 8/27/10 so not sure what is going on with the bank why the charges have not gone through, might be because I called and cancelled that card so the jerks could not put more on it as I read they did to some people.
Elsie Roach Vsmm Also I noticed that I was in there early this morning doing a case study on the top winner for the month, and they said I won a bid on a 5000 bids for 249.00. It was in my won auctions. I never bid on anything after i contacted them to get my money back on 8/27/10 so I don't know what that was about unless they think... I might bid on something like the 40 bid packs and go to pay for them and click on the 249.00 by accident or think that it is such a great deal that I will pay for it, go figure. And my case study is to prove that they are using bots as the top winner it said he put in over 3 million bids, now you do the math, and with one day only I had proff he supposidely bought at least 4000.00 worth of bid packs and at the 40 for a 1.00 he would have spent 220000.00 or so this month to win the 16999.00 car. yeah right.
Elsie Roach Vsmm So if I was any of you, I would cancel your card and have them send you a new one to insure they do not put any false charges on it. They are real slime balls, and the other thing they make it look like they are run by the police force now that is really shitty. That is part of what makes you think they are not a sca...m and not be more careful looking at everything on the dang page. grrrrrr I contacted Will too and signed the petition too. I hate that they are ripping off so many people and putting them into financial hardship by overdrawing their accounts as the scums only take visa as they know that most of the visa's are attached to bank accounts. Hugs Tenderspirit
Barbara Myers Foxworth I completed the money back guarantee refund form and did everything exactly as directed and contacted the live agent online and they told me that I qualified for a refund and they would be mailing me a cheque and I should receive it in 2 weeks. Well after 2 weeks went by, I went back to the online agent who told me th...at due to strict credit card regulations they would not be able to send my refund by cheque and that I needed to contact my bank and have them credit the refund back to my account. So I called the bank and they didn't have a record of the transaction. So I go back to the live agent and they told me that I needed to dispute the charge with my bank. By the time I got back with the bank, it had just passed the 60 days that you could dispute the charge and I'm not able to do that. So I guess their moneyback guarantee is also a scam. I'm not giving up. I have never dealt with someone so crooked in all my life. Those of you that got a refund are just plain lucky.
Mischelle Bornes ATTN: EVERYONE....I HAVE A LAWYER THAT BROUGHT DOWN THEM BEFORE AND HIS NAME IS WILL HASELDEN AND HIS # IS 312-572-7211...AND HE JUST FILED A CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST SWIPEBIDS...SO PLEASE EVERYONE CALL HIM AND IT CAN GET THINGS ROLLING ALOT FASTER....HE IS LOCATED IN CHICAGO
Roy Evan Burstiner Ok, I don't know if I'm a lucky one, but I just got a refund from them. This is what I did. Last week, I went online with swipebids, did the live chat with an agent. Itold them I had spoken with my bank (it was my debit card I had used). the bank told me that since the amount of $159 was over $50, that this was conside...red a criminal offense. I told the Swipebids agent that unless I got a refund immediately, I would be filing a police report and that I would name the agent in the report also. After a minute they informed me I would get a refund in 7-10 days. I was not expecting them to do it, but today I did get a refund. So maybe everyone should be real touh woth them, threaten them with Police action (and be sure to include the agents name, I think that might of scared them). Good luck to everyone, and even though I got my money back I am still seeking action against them to prevent them from doing this to anyone else.
Looking for a deal on high-end electronics? Some sites may help find bargains, but deals may come with hidden charges.
Mischelle Bornes thanks Ty...i just contacted lawyer and getting things rolling....it is going to be a process but i am feeling better and not as stressed
Ty Hodge site updated, now has a link to contact an attorney who is taking the case on swipebids
Lucy Wen I fell for the same trap today too, ugh. $159!! Funny thing is - I even googled the site before I entered my information and for some reason only sites saying that it is legit showed up under the results. I wouldn't have known this site existed if CNN.com didn't post it on their website. So much for reading the news du...ring lunch time...that was one expensive lunch. Anyway - I talked to a rep at SwipeBids named Peter over online chat and he said I have to follow the steps (actively bid, use all pts, submit form, etc.) to get refund, so I did that. Of course I didn't win any auction. Then I talked to another woman named Shalyn and she said I qualify for money back guarantee and when submit my form I will get full refund within 2 weeks. She then added that I have to check back in 1 week for confirmation. I made her guarantee that I will for sure get the refund within 2 weeks, no excuses or delays, and she said okay. We'll see. Doubtful.
Duane Meek DUANE MEEK --THEY JUST RIPPED ME OFF FOR $159.00 AS SOON AS AS I COMPLETED APPLICATION--I ASKED WHAT THEY TOOK ME MONEY FOR--SAID THEY WERE CHECKING ON IT--THEN JUST TERMINATED CONNECTION
Nicholas Boccio PennyBurners (Which I run/own) has donated SwipeBidsVictims.com to assist in the legal battle against Jesse Willms and his company. SPREAD THE WORD! Please check it out and contact the lawyers listed on the site.
Ludwig Avagemian I have now got my refund back, thank god!!! I contacted the online support shit and cussed them the fuck out, that sure as hell did it :) I will definitely be putting this out in the public.
BBB Business Reliability Report for 1021018 Alberta Ltd in Sherwood Park, AB. Business reviews, consumer complaints, and ratings for 1021018 Alberta Ltd an Untested Medical Product Provider.
Swipebids.com is a SCAM! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjUcuiMeciE Swipebids scam, Fraudulent penny auction, Jesse Willms http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV83VTh0Q5E SwipeBids SCAM [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9VQBfYBrdI] Facebook ,Is Facebook knowingly involved in Fraud. [caption id="attachment_7566" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Fraud on Facebook"]
This is what will happen when you chat with Swipebibs Please wait for a site operator to respond. you are now chatting with 'Rosy' Rosy: Thank you for visiting SwipeAuctions.com Livechat Line. Our goal is to provide you with excellent customer service while assisting you with any questions or concerns you may have. We are here to help you win auctions, save money and have a great time. May we start with your name please? you: My name is 0000, my son used my credit card without my permission no more than 10 minutes ago. I am requesting an immediate refund. Thank You Rosy: I would be happy to assist you with your concern, so in order to pull up the details of your account, can you please provide me with your full name, e-mail address and zip code? you: My name is 0000, 0000. The email address my son used is 000000 Rosy: Please wait while I check your order details in our system. you: Billing zip is 0000, he may have used 0000 Rosy: I can definitely help you with your situation. Typically, any charges incurred on your credit card are your responsibility. Regardless, I am very happy to show you how easy it is to obtain a full refund. However, our bank will require your physical signature in order to reverse any unauthorized purchases. Please CLICK HERE to get the refund. Is there anything further I can assist you with today? you: No I wish to have a full refund now please, I have researched your company and its history. you: It was unauthorized you: I have spoken to counsel. Florida state law requires an immediate refund, Thank You, Rosy: One moment please. you: Thank You Rosy. Rosy: You just need to follow the money back guarantee and your will be processed. you: No. You will refund my account, this is fraud. I did not authorize this. In addition the scam sites which litter the internet expose their will be no refund. You will refund. you: NOW you: Supervisor Please Rosy: If you wish to refund then you need to follow the money back guarantee. you: Supervisor Please you: Supervisor Please you: Supervisor Please you: Supervisor Please Rosy: I am the supervisor of this shift. you: Refund My Account Now you: My son is handicapped, it was unauthorized Rosy: I do apologies for the inconvenience but if you wish to get refund then you need to follow the money back guarantee. you: http://www.scamraiders.com/forum/categories/internet-1/listForCategory you: http://www.facebook.com/pages/SwipeBidscom-is-a-Bloody-SCAM/129080260459443 you: http://bloggerboon.com/2010/06/23/how-swipe-bids-scam-works/ you: http://www.webcops.net/just_think_media_spam_scams_8001.html you: I am compiling nam
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