Museum With A Peel
Banana Museum Ripe for Coachella
by Sandra Schulman
April 29, 2010

It’s on the move again, and we sure hope it doesn’t slip.

The world’s largest collection of banana related items, maintained at the same hangar in Altadena, CA since 1976, and moved to Hesperia, CA in 2006 is currently moving to Hwy 111 just south of Palm Springs out by the Salton Sea. The grand re-opening will be in January 2011.

The majority of the 17,000 plus contributions have been donated and sent by the members of the “club.” The Banana Club Museum is listed in the Guiness Book Of World Records as the Worlds Largest Collection devoted to any one fruit. Oranges just aren’t funny, no matter how you slice it.

The Banana Club and Museum has been featured on 94 television shows around the world, including the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and in major newspapers around the world. Several dozen national magazines have done features including two pages in People Magazine. They are also featured in several books: “Offbeat Museums”, “Hidden LA”, “Little Museums”, The Munks Guide to CA, “Eccentric America”, “Totally Bananas” by Dennis Fox (12 pages in the last chapter are all about the Banana Club and Museum!) and the newest book is “Think You’re The Only One?” by Seth Brown .

What makes people go so ape?

The world’s first and largest Banana Club Museum was opened in April of 1976 by Ken Bananister, who had to find a place to display and show all the banana items sent by banana fanatics, friends and people he met around the world. Everywhere the “Banana Man” went he passed out banana stickers and spread the word on the Banana Club and it’s good purpose “to keep people smiling, induce more laughter, exercise the sense of humor, and stay in good health,” says Banister. Oh yeah, there’s that potassium thing.

Since 2005, the 17,000 items that constituted the International Banana Museum—which Bannister estimated cost him $150,000 to amass—occupied a city-owned space in Hesperia, California. But in January 2009, the city told Bannister he had to pack up. By the time the Wall Street Journal wrote about the museum, things looked grim: Even after cutting the collection’s price on eBay from $35,000 to $7,500, Bannister had no offers.

Enter contractor Fred Garbutt, 46, and his mother, Virginia. They contacted Bannister and made an offer. He accepted. Earlier this month, they loaded the collection into a uHaul. The brand new International Banana Museum is set to open in January, 2011, next to a liquor store owned by the Garbutts off Highway 111 in North Shore, California.

Fred had no real experience with bananas “Just buying them at the grocery store,” he says. “ This came on all of a sudden, but now I’m going to be the new king banana guy. I’m taking on the title of “Big Banana”. Ken says he’s still retaining his banana club and his logo. He’s still “Top Banana.” I’m “Big Banana.” My mom is “Big Banana Nana.”

So why did he buy the banana collection?

“The last week of March, I happened to be down at my mom’s house working on my daughter’s car. She called me up and said, ‘Hey go on my computer and check out this guy. He’s selling this banana museum on eBay’” I went on there and was like, Yeah, we ought to buy that and put it down at our liquor store. We’ve tried to think for the longest time of ways to bring in customers off the highway. So I thought we ought to put that down at the store—that’ll bring people in. Paint the store yellow.

Once I mentioned that to my mom—I said it kind of jokingly—she said, ‘Hey that’s not a bad idea.’ The more we talked about it, the more we were like “This might just be bananas enough to work.” All I see is positive coming out of it. And also I thought I could promote my business. I build and resurface tennis courts. It’s called Aces Court Construction. I might change it to Bananas Court Construction.”.

Are there any changes in store for the International Banana Museum?

“We don’t want to go and change it much from what it already was,” Bannister says. “We want to embellish on it and make it more themed then just the collection and banana-colored walls—we want to put up banana leaf wallpaper, the sky’s the limit. We’re gonna continue adding to the collection; we’re seeing all this other banana stuff. We also want to come out with other types of banana-type clothing and whatnot. Once we started looking at the kinds of banana-printed clothing out there, we realized there’s not a lot. Who knows how big the market is, but maybe it will be something that will catch on.”

We’re thrilled to have such a quality historical museum coming to town. Fred urges anyone who wants to learn more about the International Banana Museum to email him at ibmbigbanana@aol.com �