Lobsterman Tom Bernardi, like a lot of us, bought those cheap plastic chairs for sale at big box stores. Trouble was, the wind on Matinicus blew them right off the wharf where he lives.
“You have to go down and fetch ’em in the weeds and rocks,” said Bernardi, 43, a Waldoboro native working as a sternman at Maine’s outermost island. “We ended up sitting on traps – and I said, I’m going to build a chair.”
You might say, move over, wicker furniture. Here come chairs made from trap stock that coated green wire mesh that years ago replaced wooden lobster straps. It’s available in other colors, too.
The Tourist Trap Chair didn’t start out as a business, just a solution to a vexing problem for Bernardi and his partner, Ellen Bunker. But a couple of years ago, when lobsterman Vance Bunker saw the prototype chair, complete with authentic brick weights to hold it in place on your wharf or deck, he liked what he saw.
Bunker, Bernardi’s boss and Ellen’s father, said he wanted that chair on his new lobster boat at its South Bristol launching. And who should be at the launching but a family friend, Wayne Hamilton of Hamilton Marine.
Hamilton told Bernardi he liked the chair, and now Hamilton Marine stocks the lobster trap chair at its coastal stores. So far, Bernardi has built about 100 chairs, some for friends, some for sale. He orders kits he designed from Brooks Trap Mill in Thomaston, and says it takes him an hour-and-a-half to assemble a trap stock chair.
He originally called it the Tourist Trap, figuring tourists would be his market. But regular fishermen have bought the chairs, and are favored by fellow Matinicus lobstermen, he said. The chair features an authentic netted opening to the space under your seat. Instead of luring lobsters, you can stuff your empty beer can in there and recycle it later.
Bernardi brought his invention to the Fishermen’s Forum a couple years ago, but other than that, Hamilton Marine is the exclusive outlet.
The price? Just over $100, but if you want a bright color rather than the standard dark green, you pay a modest premium. It may seem like a lot of money for a chair, but Bernardi points out traps made of these materials last for years in and out of salt water, and his chairs should last at least as long.
Next on the agenda, a trap stock love seat and a rocker. He expects the Tourist Trap Chair Company’s rocker to take off, so to speak.