Post #142888 by Tiki-bot on Wed, Feb 23, 2005 6:29 PM

Bamboo-licious! Here's the text from the article:

The Morning Read: Tropical punch
When customers want that tiki flair, Bamboo Ben whips it up.

By PETER LARSEN
The Orange County Register

HUNTINGTON BEACH – When your name is Bamboo Ben, you buy a nice cream-colored suit and watch the salesman go pale as you admit plans to paint bamboo patterns over every single inch.

And you know the Santa Ana winds are on their way when the bamboo poles that fill your workshop start to crackle and pop like firecrackers as the humidity drops.

Or you fly to Georgia to build a tiki bar for a stranger, because you knew just how he felt when he told you how night after night, stuck in an Army tent in the Kuwaiti desert, he dreamed of bamboo, thatch and strong drinks of rum.

But most of all, you give frequent thanks to the tiki gods for letting you be born the grandson of Eli Hedley, a man whose colorful lifestyle and creative business instincts made him an important influence on the mid-century Polynesian decorating craze.

"He was the one who started making stuff from things that washed up on the shore," says Ben Bassham, 39, owner of Bamboo Ben's Tropical Decor, talking about how Hedley found fame and fortune as a beachcomber.

"It was just this fun, fairytale life, and we were born into it. Big time."

Tiki roots

In hindsight, the first half of Eli Hedley's life seems perfectlyordinary giventhe free-spirited nature of his second act.

Sure, he'd married a woman named Malcolm. And he was always game for the odd home improvement - like the sprinklers he installed on the roof so the family could turn on the "rain" to dampen the Oklahoma dust.

But it wasn't until bad investments and the Depression cost him the three Piggy Wiggly grocery stores he owned that Hedley found the freedom to follow his heart, which as it did for so many in that time, led him out of the Dust Bowl and onward to California.

After stops in Carmel and the San Fernando Valley, Hedley, his wife and four daughters landed in their dream home, a ramshackle hacienda pieced together with driftwood on the beach at White Point in San Pedro.

"He was basically a beachcomber, getting stuff that washed up," says Bassham, whose mother Charlotte was the youngest of the four girls. "One day he sold a truckload to Bullock's Wilshire and bam! That started him off."

By the mid-1940s, Hedley's curious career had made him famous through movie news reels and magazine and newspaper articles.

"One of the weirdest businesses in California, where weird businesses are a perfectly normal thing, is run by a 42-year-old ex-grocer ... who makes a living out of things the Pacific Ocean throws back," began a story in Life magazine in January 1946.

As their beachcombing decor found favor on Hollywood sets and in the homes of stars, celebrities often dropped by the San Pedro home.

"They'd come down there and disappear from Hollywood," Bassham says of the stories he's heard from his mother and three aunts. "The way he was, he'd pull a copa de oro flower off the vine, fill it with champagne and say, 'Here, drink this.' "

Actor Raymond Burr was a close friend, who at one point optioned daughter Marilyn Hedley's book, "How Daddy Became a Beachcomber."

The business grew, and by the 1950s, Hedley was in demand as a tropical decorator. He worked on tiki-themed Los Angeles nightspots, such as Don the Beachcomber and Kelbo's. He carved giant Easter Island heads for the Stardust Casino's Aku Aku bar in Las Vegas.

In the mid-1950s, Disney came calling and Hedley packed up the family and moved to a home on Katella Avenue behind where Disneyland was being built. There he helped design Adventureland and ran the Island Trade Store across from the Jungle Cruise for seven years.

After that, Hedley concentrated on a second Island Trade Store he had opened on Beach Boulevard in Midway City, which remained open until the late 1970s.

"That place was the ultimate playground," Bassham says. "It was awesome."

Late bloomer

Despite growing up surrounded by tiki heads, thatched huts and giant clam shells, the Bamboo Ben side of Bassham did not fully emerge until years after Hedley's death in 1981.

He'd grown up in Newport Beach and after high school worked at the family's lamp and faux-stone furniture business in Westminster.

"We'd always have a party in the summer at our place in downtown Huntington, and about 15 years ago, I started building tiki bars for the summer luau," Bassham said.

"Somebody would drive by the next day and see it on the lawn and say, 'Hey, is that for sale?' And I'd say, 'Sure!' "

But it was only a sideline until a friend referred him to a television producer who wanted a tiki bar for her back yard in Malibu.

"After that, things started to take off," Bassham said.

As he dreamed up more things to make from bamboo - napkin rings for Tommy Bahama, briefcases for Toes on the Nose - he closed the old family businesses and went full tilt into tropicalia.

About five years ago, he saw an eviction notice on the front door of a Von Dutch shop on Yorktown Avenue in Huntington Beach and quickly called to lease it.

"I was ecstatic, because my neighbors were starting to complain," Bassham said of all the work he was doing from his townhouse garage.

Since then, the business has flourished. Weekdays, Bassham builds tiki bars – a five-footer goes for $595 – and bamboo furniture or installs tropical rooms and decor in private homes and businesses. Weekends, he and his wife Vicki run the retail store.

As with his grandfather, the entertainment world has helped the business grow. He built a large tiki bar for the set of the film "Windtalkers." Singer Jimmy Buffett commissioned bamboo shadow boxes to display vintage Hawaiian shirts, as well as a traveling tiki bar to promote his Margaritaville brand of tequila.

In many ways, his work has brought him closer to his grandfather. He's pestered his mom and aunts for stories about the old days, gathered a trove of old articles, photos and blueprints, and learned that in the world of tiki-philes, Eli Hedley remains a much-admired figure for the restaurants, bars, motels and apartments he designed.

"Bamboo is really neat," he said surrounded by finished pieces of his work – tiki bars, picture frames, shelves and beds. "Each piece is different. You have to work with what you've got."

Still, while he loves the lapu lapus at places like the Royal Hawaiian in Laguna Beach, and while he travels to the annual tiki festival at the Mai-Kai Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale each year, there are times when the sight of another piece of bamboo is the last thing he needs.

"Sometimes, I need to get away from it," he said, laughing. "Chromeland! Let's all go to Chromeland, you know?"
Contact Bamboo Ben's Tropical Decor at (714) 960-1860.