Key West spiny lobster buoy wreath
Updated July 13 2011
Key West Spiny Lobster buoy wreath: Joe and Kim Brown, North Tampa Price: $59 To buy: Visit the Hong Kong Willie shop at 12212 Morris Bridge Road, Tampa or go to www.hongkong willie.com. Call (813)770-4794.
[DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN | Times]
Key West Spiny Lobster buoy wreath: Joe and Kim Brown, North Tampa Price: $59 To buy: Visit the Hong Kong Willie shop at 12212 Morris Bridge Road, Tampa or go to www.hongkong willie.com. Call (813)770-4794.
3) Key West Spiny Lobster buoy wreath Joe and Kim Brown, North Tampa
The burlap coffee bean bag? The tattered leather jacket? The battered baseball? They've all found second lives at Hong Kong Willie, a kitschy roadside shop where recycled objects are transformed into handbags and art.
This is not your typical boutique. A chicken roams the property, which is next door to an extended-stay hotel. The owner, 58-year-old owner Joe Brown, walks around barefoot and does his sewing in a back room with a floor covered in old coffee bean shells.
Every object has multiple uses, he says. If everyone changed the way they looked at material things, there would be less garbage, Brown said.
This 30-inch wreath is made of old buoys, a popular item that has found new life at Hong Kong Willie.
Indeed, his shop is decorated with strands of buoys from the Florida Keys, old, broken and mismatched flip-flops and boat parts — items once destined for landfills.
Back in 1958, an art teacher told Brown that reuse was common in Hong Kong. Brown then melted a Gerber baby food jar into a glass paper weight, and Hong Kong Willie — the most American name he could think of at the time — was born.
Dong-Phuong Nguyen, Times Staff Writer
www.hongkongwillie.com
duckrabbit.info/blog/?p=360
www.google.com/search?q=hong+kong+willie
www.google.com/search?q=HONGKONGWILLIE
www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&res...
search.yahoo.com/search?p=HONG+KONG+WILLIE&fr=yfp-t-5...
www.google.com/search?q=GOOGLE+TRUCK
www.hongkongwillie.org/
