Roadside Attraction Jim Tunstall Tampa Tribune .Updated 5 / 4 / 2024

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Category: Art and Photography

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."

Things to do in Tampa. Fox News. Updated 5/16/2023

Things to do in Tampa Fox News , My Fox Tampa Bay reports on Tampa Art Galleries. One Tank Trip ,things to do in Tampa.

GOOGLE HONG KONG WILLIE

Tampa Art Gallery,MY FOX TAMPA BAY

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.”