SLO clothing store is closing. The owner’s moving to Spain to write poetry in the Pyrenees
A downtown San Luis Obispo store that specialized in bamboo clothing and decor is closing after 14 years in San Luis Obispo County.
Bambu Batu, located at 1023 Broad St. across the road from the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, will shutter its doors at the end of the month. The 1,400-square-foot store is currently liquidating its products.
Asked why he’s closing the business, also known as The House of Bamboo, owner Fred Hornaday said, “It’s a long story.”
He cited the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and a desire to reunite with his wife and children in Europe, where he has lived off and on the past few years.
“I’m reuniting with my family and writing poetry in the Spanish Pyrenees,” said Hornaday, who shares his poems at kingoflimericks.com.
Bambu Batu featured clothing, home and garden decor and bed and bath products for sale.
“We attracted certain types of like-minded people here into spiritual and earth-conscious things,” Hornaday said. “And it was the only place around you could get certain products. We never worried about offending anyone’s political or philosophical views, which a lot of stores do, and because of that they’re pretty bland.”
SLO bamboo store had temple feel
Bambu Batu had a temple-like atmosphere with prayer flags and statues of Buddhas and Eastern deities.
In addition to fresh bamboo sprouts, customers could find a bamboo ukulele cutting board, a scroll with an inspirational quote or T-shirts, made of a blend of 70% bamboo and 30% organic cotton, sporting messages such as “Don’t Hate — Meditate” and “B Here Now.”
Customers came to shop and socialize. They organized Alfred Hitchcock movie marathon viewings, played music together, and held after-hours wine-tastings.
“It was a place that really represented a great part of SLO, where you could come to meet other people and feel good about the world,” said Bambu Batu customer Ursula Holz, a Los Osos resident. “You can’t replace this and SLO won’t be the same without it.”
Owner says coronavirus, life changes led to decision
Hornaday, who wrote for New Times in the mid-2000s, posts personal and reflective messages on the store’s website.
On March 28, as the pandemic was spreading across the globe, he published an intimate blog of his career and life, leading up to the shock and turbulence of coronavirus.
“If you’d told me 14 years ago, when Bambu Batu first opened, that I’d end up here — in the midst of a global pandemic, frantically trying to liquidate my inventory in order to close the shop and get back to my wife and kids, who were living overseas in the Pyrenees — I would have surely said something unsuitable for publication,” Hornaday said in his blog. “And yet, here I sit, in the House of Bamboo, listening to the pitter patter of raindrops on the tin roof, gazing out the windows to witness a dystopian ghost town, where the heart of jolly San Luis Obispo once pounded with vitality.”
After a selling a hemp store in the early 2000s, Hornaday opened Bambu Batu in 2006 in Grover Beach.
He operated the store in that city for two years, and then moved to a space next to Big Sky Cafe in San Luis Obispo for two more years, before relocating to Broad Street spot.
“As precious as my store may be, to myself and to the community, its importance paled in comparison to that of my family,” Hornaday wrote in his blog.
Since 2016, Hornaday has been living throughout Europe, most recently settling in the Pyrenees near Barcelona with his German-born wife and multilingual young children.
He handed over the reins of Bambu Batu’s business operations to a former employee and his wife.
But after a few years, Hornaday said, he realized “the new management at Bambu Batu did not have what it took to maintain the same level of quality and service that I had established over the previous decade.”
Hornaday then returned to San Luis Obispo to “put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” he wrote, and worked to clean up the store, restock the inventory and revitalize “positive energy that had always made Bambu Batu a unique shopping experience.”
The store’s renewed vitality delighted old customers, he wrote, and it was great to give hugs to old friends.
But taking over the store meant being separated from his family. And Bambu Batu like many other stores, has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 shelter-at-home order, he said.
Hornaday said he tried to sell his business before the coronavirus pandemic hit. He made the decision to close after no takers came forward and because he foresees a slow and arduous economic recovery ahead.
Hornaday said he’ll deeply miss the store and its customers, but added that it was time to shutter.
“As precious as my store may be, to myself and to the community, its importance paled in comparison to that of my family,” Hornaday wrote in his blog.
This story was originally published May 15, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
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